Page 66 of Crossing the Brooklyn Briggs
He presses his thumb below my lips, almost gripping my chin so I can’t look away from him. “I know you’ll let me have this one, Briggs. You’re too good of a person to put my chances at risk.”
I’m also smart enough to recognize when someone is trying to gaslight me because I’ve been down this road so many times before.
Why did it take me so long to see it? He’s not interested in me. He’sthreatenedby me. He’s just like all the other guys who got scared off by my degree or decided I was doing so well that they thought I would surpass them and take what was theirs.
This is James all over again.
Tears pricking at my eyes, I force myself to hold everything in as I wriggle myself free and hand his jacket back. “Can we talk about this tomorrow?” I say, voice wavering. “I’m, uh, I got that concussion the other day, so I’m not really…”
Something flashes in Mark’s eyes, but it’s gone quickly. “Of course. You should get to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow, and we can make a plan for what to tell Cheng.”
I don’t fight the final kiss he gives me, even though it’s more demanding than I’d like. I don’t have the energy to respond.
As soon as he starts up his car, I scramble for my key, but my fingers are shaking too badly for me to fit it into the lock. “You’re so stupid,” I tell myself as I fumble, tears blurring my vision. “Why do you always do this? Why do you always fall for their tricks? You’re supposed to be smarter than this, but you’re not. You’re naive and foolish and gullible and—”
The door opens, blinding me with light. Not that I can see much through my tears. Jordan stands there for a few seconds, but then he spreads his arms out wide.
I fall into his hold right as the sobs break free.
Chapter Twenty
Jordan
I don’t know what todo. One minute I’m doing everything I can to ignore the low murmur of voices on the other side of the door, and the next I’m holding an inconsolable Brooklyn and wondering who I need to call to make sure the murder I’m about to commit doesn’t get solved.
I’ve never seen Brooklyn like this. Not even when her frozen blanket of a boyfriend cheated on her in high school. At least then she’d been calm enough to tell us what happened, but right now I am literally the only thing keeping her on her feet. My whole body feels stretched to its limits as I simultaneously hold her as tightly as I can and force myself to not crush her because I’m so tense.
Honestly, I thought maybe she was drunk when she struggled so much to unlock her door, but this is so much worse. Drunk can be fixed with some aspirin and a good night’s sleep, but I have no idea what to do with the kind of tears that seem to come from deep in her chest.
“Can I take you to the couch?” I ask, trying to sound as non-threatening as I can.
She nods against my chest.
Lifting her into my arms, I don’t miss the way she curls up into me, like she’s too exhausted to do much else. It’s only been a few seconds since I opened the door, but those seconds have felt like an eternity.
I sit with her on my lap so I don’t have to let go of her, and then I start pulling out the pins from her hair as gently as I can. Once her hair is loose, I unlace the heels she’s wearing—shoes she probably shouldn’t have worn with her bad ankle, but I was too caught up in my own drama to think about that earlier. Removing her shoes takes a while, so by the time her feet are free, she has finally stopped sobbing. Tears and snot still drip into my shirt, but she’s breathing again.
I rub my hand across her back, arms aching from the tension in my body, but I’m too scared to say anything. I don’t want to make whatever this is worse, and I’m getting a little too much pleasure in imagining the black eye I want to give Mark right now.
“I’m so stupid.”
I freeze, praying that I heard her wrong. “Brook?”
She sniffs. “What kind of idiot confuses manipulation for attraction?”
Oh, I don’t like the sound of that. “The kind that sees the good in people. And you’re not an idiot, Brooklyn. You’re the smartest person I know.”
“If I’m so smart, why do I always choose the men who hurt me?”
“He hurt you?”
Brooklyn presses her palm over my heart, holding me in place. “Please don’t kill him. He didn’t do anything to me.” She sounds so empty, and I hate that she’s using what little energy she has to defend the guy who made her cry.
I swallow. “Brooklyn, I know you don’t want to, but you have to tell me what he did. Please.”
She scoffs and starts tracing her fingers across my chest. Any other day, and that soft touch would be driving me crazy, but I can’t even feel it right now. “He was never interested in me. He wants me to drop out of the running for STEM Teacher of the Year.”
You’ve got to be kidding me. “An award? He seduced you to get a stupid award?”
