Brazing (Forged in Fire #2) Read Free

show his face and everything about his page had been private. I wasn’t too disappointed. I couldn’t imagine he put a whole lot of effort into that thing anyway.
    But then here he was.
    I had no trouble recognizing him tonight while he tried to become part of the paint on the wall and watched me dance the night away without making a move to join me. Even through the crowd of people I recognized Bridger Wright easily from a distance. With those sharp cheekbones, and bright green eyes he had turned into exactly the man I always imagined him to be. His mess of dark hair looked as wild as mine tonight as it stuck up in unruly tufts all over his handsome head. His lips were in a perpetual pout the entire time he ignored the party around him, but as full and delicious as they had been when we were children.
    My heartbeat quickened the moment I noticed the man against the wall and all but pounded out of my chest when I realized it was him. I was already on the dance floor so I’d decided to let him come to me.
    Dancing was my thing . I knew I was good at it. I knew I looked hot. And with my hair loose to the middle of my back and in all its “going-out” glory, I practically glowed like a stop sign in the middle of the floor. I fended off plenty of frat-boy-randoms waiting for Bridger to notice me, but he never even lifted his eyebrows.
    When I’d finally found the courage to talk to the butthead, he’d been nothing but rude and condescending.
    And still, he had no idea who I was.
    That was the worst of it. That was why I couldn’t just move on with my life and settle for making this into a hilariously stupid story to share with my roommate, and best friend, Carter. The fact that he didn’t remember me was the reason I was following him now, ready to force a memory into his thick head so I could finally call it a night and take my tired, sore feet home to bed.
    I grudgingly decided against vehicular manslaughter and pulled up next to the drunken version of my childhood crush. One glance at his partner-in-bad-decision-making revealed one of his brothers, although I couldn’t tell which one. They looked too much alike for me to miss the familial similarities, but he had enough brothers that I couldn’t be sure which one was stumbling alongside him.
    “Y’all need a ride?” I called out to the two boys since they had not even acknowledged the bus-sized Buick pulled up alongside them. Sure, this might be the ugliest car in the entire state, but she was my baby and I loved her to pieces!
    “Yes!” the brother screamed at the same time Bridger yelled, “Go away!”
    The brother looked at Bridger and gave him a two-handed shove. Or tried to. He missed connecting his hands to Bridger’s body, but the momentum carried him forward until they smacked heads really hard. I mean… really, really hard. I heard the skulls cracking together from where I sat, behind the wheel with the radio up.
    Now they were both hollering and holding their heads, leaned over at the waist. If they didn’t settle down, the whole neighborhood was bound to wake up and then they’d be arrested for public intoxication.
    I smiled at the idea of Bridger behind bars.
    No, I wasn’t really that cruel.
    I would have been happy if he just got a ticket and had to take a six-hour class.
    When they finally settled down, I threw the car into park and unlocked the car. “Come on, one of you probably has a brain bleed after that. I’ll give you a ride back to your place where you can die in peace.”
    The brother looked up at me and grinned stupidly. The boy was like six sheets to the wind and I knew he would not be this happy tomorrow. I just hoped he didn’t have any important papers to write or homework to struggle through. “Thankssss,” he slurred at me. “We ap-eciate the hops-pitality.”
    I couldn’t help but smile back, he was kind of adorable like this. “My pleasure.”
    “We don’t needs a ride,” Bridger declared mutinously, and it