Falling For Dad’s College Rival by Flora Ferrari

Chapter Fourteen

Trent

I knew it would come. It had to eventually.

The thought of Mike Wheatley finding out about me and his daughter, it’s inevitable.

I won’t lie about my feelings. When Brooke tells me she wants to go home, or rather that she should go home, it takes every ounce of determination for me not to lose my mind over it.

Her place is here, with me. But like I keep reminding myself, I can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to. She’s still her own person at the end of the day.

Plus, more than ever I trust in this magic between us. This connection we have.

Yeah, it’s sudden and some like her dad might even doubt it. But just because something happens so quickly doesn’t make it any less powerful.

I know, without a shadow of a doubt that no matter what happens, Brooke and me we are destined to be together. Forever.

If I have to step back and wait while her dad comes to terms with things? Well, it’s not how I’d choose to go about it, but if Brooke wants to do it her way then I’m right beside her.

Simply suggesting she give him a call like anyone else might isn’t what Brooke wants to hear right now, so I offer to go along with whatever she wants.

It’s clear to me that Brooke’s torn, so I won’t make things worse by weighing in with what I think she should do.

Without going into details, I let her know again that I can take her home whenever she wants, and I’m a little more than surprised when she tells me she’ll get dressed and we can go right away.

It’s an awkward silence until I leave her alone to get dressed, offering the use of the bathroom adjoining my room, but she seems determined to go.

Okay. I wasn’t expecting her to go right this minute, but I gotta trust in the process.

I try to make out like I’m looking over some office work but who am I kidding? I don’t want her to go and I know she doesn’t either.

Maybe I’ll just call Mike myself, or better still. Have it out with him once I get her home.

That sounds more like my style.

I know Brooke wants to tell him herself, and maybe she still can. I’ll just be there to prove the facts and back her up.

“Ready when you are,” Brooke chimes from my office doorway, trying hard to look like she’s okay with all this but I can see she’s not.

I walk over to her, pulling her close and she holds onto me but asks me to just take her home.

“I’ll call you later today, once I—” she starts, but it’s obvious she’d rather not think about it for now.

It’s painful for me, and more so for her, but it’s how she wants it, so I grab my jacket and we head back down to my car, driving in silence most of the way.

“I forget which way,” I confess, not using my GPS and driving in the daytime.

“Oh, uh. Take a left here, and then it’s straight up,” she reminds me, and I find some familiar landmarks before too long.

Pulling up to her dad’s house, she makes a little sound of surprised satisfaction.

She checks her phone again.

No messages and even I can see there’s no one home.

I feel my lip curl with satisfaction myself, but I look out my side window so she can’t see, but when I do look over to her, I can see she’s smiling too.

“Well, maybe he’s not home,” she says, and almost laughing, she decides I may as well come in.

“Is that a good idea?” I warn her, suddenly not worried about her dad, but more about the two of us alone together.

Or maybe that’s just what Brooke wants. Feeling more at home when she’s at home. That sort of thing.

“Sure,” I shrug. “I could pop in for a minute,” I tell her, feeling my pants getting tight in the crotch department.

I dunno, something in the way she’s asked me in. The slight but very real risk her dad could come home any minute.

It’s so corny, so clichéd it’s hot. And if she’s feeling as ready as I am right now. I mean, if this is how she wants it? I’m more than okay with that.

I ask her if I should park down the street a bit, but she shakes her head.

“Just come inside?” she asks me again, not that I need to be asked twice.

The place seems even gloomier, smaller than the night before.

There’s a smell too. Not a bad smell, just most houses, and people, families have a ‘smell’ in their house.

It’s what makes it theirs, I guess.

I want to ask Brooke if my place has a smell, but I don’t want her to misread what I’m thinking so I file it away for later.

I wonder if Mike was home, would she have gone along with what I already decided anyway? Guess I’ll never know or it’ll have to wait for a while at least.

She seems a little edgy now that we’re inside though, and not wanting me to sit in the living room, she recommends I go to her bedroom.

But something tells me it’s only so she can properly make sure the house really is empty.

I shrug cheerfully and she points to her room at the end of the hall.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a girl’s room. In fact, I can’t remember when was the last time or maybe even if I ever was.

I play along with Brooke though, and half-close the door, sitting on the edge of her bed as I glance around.

As far as I can tell she likes some popular streamed series, reading romance novels and—

A college yearbook from the year I graduated.

It’s right by her bed and I pick it up, wondering if my eyes are playing tricks but reasoning that it being the week of her dad’s reunion. He might easily have taken it out to show her.

But it’s the pages that are marked that grab my attention.

Each page marked with a slip of paper is the one with photos of me.

I don’t recall ever seeing the yearbook, I was most likely too caught up in football to care about it.

I whistle through my teeth as I glance over the pages, making sure I’m not imagining things.

She really has marked each page. And all before she even met me.

Maybe her dad marked them?

Nah, he’s more likely to have torn them out. No. This has a woman’s touch about it. Neatly folded paper to mark her favorite—

“Oh,” she says, and I look up, noticing her in the doorway, her face reddening as she observes what I’m looking at.

She has something of her own in her hand too.

But I’m more interested to know why she has all these pages marked.

Need to know if she looked at these photos of me before she slept.

And anything else she might have done.

It gives me an instant thrill to see her reaction, and I know at once that it’s true without her having to explain.

She had a crush on me, taking out pictures of a much younger me to look at.

And boy, that younger, me. I almost stand corrected in thinking I haven’t aged much. I look like a boy, and it’s hard for me to even comprehend that Brooke could see the same person when she looks at me today.

“I found this,” she says before I can ask her anything. Showing me the handwritten note she’s found on the kitchen table.

Hi Sweetie,

I must’ve just missed you. Sorry about last night. I got tied up and will be back late Sunday. Don’t worry I’m fine.

Dad XX

I raise my brow as I read it over again.

“Your dad usually take off for the weekend without saying where?” I ask, pleased when she shakes her head.

“Never,” Brooke announces, a shiver in her voice and when I look up again, I can see her nipples stiff with arousal. Her eyes filled with a hungry look.

Here though?

I kinda did want our first time to be special. Really special, like on a yacht in the Caribbean special or something.

But I know that look. It’s the same look I’ve been sporting since I met her. A wanting, needful hungry look.

Not an invitation, a pleading look to help me understand just what she needs and especially what she needs right now.

It’s her time.

It’s our time.