a rather insignificant piece of it.
Insignificant to him.
The world to me.
I remember all the girls who threw themselves at him. The girls he took behind the bleachers, behind the gym, and those infamous La Rouge triplet parties I only ever attended once.
I wasn’t the one who drew his eye, at least not at first. His reputation made me cautious, and I kept to my side of the rigid high school social hierarchy as long as I could.
But then I stumbled. And I fell. I fell head over heels for Brody La Rouge.
I bet little has changed for him. He’s probably still taking advantage of gorgeous women either too stupid or too frivolous to care about the monster he can be. Desperate hopefuls, they probably believe they’ll be the one to snag the un-snaggable. They don’t know the truth lurking beneath the surface.
Brody La Rouge is a monster.
I suppress a groan as my eyes continue to wander. I tell myself to stop, but I can’t help it.
The years have been kind to him. He’s taller than I remember, putting on another couple of inches after high school. He has the same rugged good looks, although they’ve been refined by the years. He packed on muscle and is trim and fabulous, and every woman’s dream. There’s more, something unrefined when I knew him, but firmly in place now. Power swirls around him, dangerous, mesmerizing power, and it calls out to me to bend before him and take that magical plunge.
I remember him being a runner, always competing in the long-distance trail events. Looks like that hasn’t changed either. I guess little about him has changed, except he’s more attractive than I remember, more devastating than before, more—Brody fucking La Rouge.
I hate how he still affects me. I’d like to think I moved beyond my high school crush, but evidently, I haven’t. My mind spins with questions.
Does he recognize me?
Does he think about me?
Is he making the same comparisons?
How do I stack up against the gangly teen he knew? I’d like to think I make some impact, but the truth is I meant nothing to him back then and mean nothing to him now.
He was a major player back then, a straight-A asshole for sure. I thought the world of Brody La Rouge until he showed me what an asshole he could be.
I know why women are attracted to him, but after I had my look under the hood, there isn’t much to be impressed by. I’ll tell any sane woman with half a brain to run and to run fast.
I desperately pray he doesn’t remember me, especially since I filled out an application for equity investment from his firm. Although, the chance of my application crossing his desk is zero to none. Evidently, he’s pretty high up in the hierarchy of Sterling Enterprises. I checked. He’s the fucking CFO of a multi-billion dollar company.
No surprise. Brody always rises to the top of everything.
After the bank refused to extend our loan, the first thing I did after coming home was to frantically fill out equity investment applications, at least until Uncle Mark asked if I wanted to take a look at our operation. There’s so much to learn.
As I stand here looking at Brody, all I see is the boy who destroyed me.
For now, I give him my back. If I’m lucky, our paths will never cross again. Looking at Sterling Enterprise’s client list, we’re small fish, probably not worth a nibble.
Still, there’s a tiny voice inside of me that hopes, but do I really want to be anywhere near Brody La Rouge?
This is why I don’t think of the past.
The shame and humiliation from my past bubble to the surface, and I choke on the sob trying to escape my throat. After all these years, Brody still elicits strong, visceral reactions from me.
Attraction. Shame. Desperate love. Intense anger.
Hatred.
My emotions follow an all too familiar path. I’d been an eager freshman who saw my vision of the future me, the woman I wanted to be. I signed up for the debate team—even though I was a freshman. I joined Future Business Leaders of America—even though I was a freshman. I tried out for, and made, the varsity cheer squad because it would look good on my application to Stanford—even though I was a freshman.
That was my downfall.
I should never have joined cheer, but I was obsessive about checking all the boxes and needed something that wasn’t totally nerdy to round out my college