Free Hard Love: A Bad Boy Fighter Romance by Megan West, Kristen Flowers Page A

he had fallen in love,
really.

 
    “It’s just weird. It’s weird to be here with
you,” Kurt said, eyes quickly glancing down.

 
    “I hope only because it had been so many
years?” Kurt nodded and ruffled the hair at the back of his head. She reached
out and placed her hand on his forearm.

 
    “Just think of it like old times!” she said
enthusiastically.

 
    His stomach tightened as soon as the soft skin
of her fingers made contact with his arm. He chuckled and turned to start
walking aimlessly, but his mind was stuck on the same spot. It wasn’t as easy
for him to think of it like old times.

 
    He had been in love with her and that had made
everything more difficult. Old times together were much different from his
perspective than they were from hers.

 
    “Kurt, why has it been so long?”

 
    “I don’t know,” it was an automatic response.
It was almost as if he was running on autopilot when that sort of question came
up, something that had happened more than a few times at his party.

 
    “I like where I live. I like what I do. I don’t
know why, but I don’t much like coming back here,” he said. Then he turned to
look at her, hair gleaming under the glow of the streetlamps. “At least I
didn’t,” he added as his eyes remained fixed on her. Claire turned to look up
at him and their eyes met. There was electricity between them for a brief
second before she turned away and kept looking forward.

 
    “I see,” she muttered.

 
    Kurt could tell she was wrapped up in her own
thoughts. He wanted to ask what she was thinking, but decided against it. There
were still other lingering questions he hadn’t asked her at the party. Maybe
they weren’t the best questions to ask, but he couldn’t stop his curiosity
enough to ignore them.

 
    “Claire,” he started. He could feel her turn to
look at him as he stared at the ground. “Can I- I mean; would you mind if I ask
you something?”

 
    “About Tyler?”

 
    Kurt turned to look at her surprised. She gave a
single laugh and shrugged. “First of all, you didn’t say or ask anything when
you found out. Second of all, I can’t even begin to tell you how many times
people have started off like that.”

 
    “Sorry,” he said, genuinely feeling like he
should have waited or at least started in a better way. He couldn’t even
imagine how tiring it must have been to answer an endless sea of questions
after things ended with Tyler, especially since they were actually
engaged.    

 
    “It’s okay,” she said. “ You can ask me pretty much anything.”

 
    He stopped walking for a second before quickly
starting up again. He didn’t understand why she emphasized the word ‘you’ or
what she could even mean by doing so. He let it go.

 
    “When did it end?”

 
    “I’ll give you the basics,” she said, but then
she stopped talking. She also stopped walking. Kurt turned around to face her
with an eyebrow raised in question. Claire reached out and grabbed his hand to
pull him in to a little park area with benches they had been walking by. There
was nobody there. She pulled him onto a bench and he felt her knee knock
against his before she moved away just a couple inches and turned to face him,
one of her legs draped over the other.

 
    “You know we were together since senior year.
Well, it was after five years of being together that he proposed. We had
fights, of course, but nothing major. We loved each other and that was the
direction our relationship was heading. It all made sense .” She paused and looked at Kurt before neatly placing one of
her hands over the other and resting them on her thigh. “But, I don’t know,
after some time it started to make sense that was about all there was to it.
And I wanted more out of life.”

 
    “What do you mean that was all there was to
it?”

 
    “You know, like it was what made sense so we
were doing it. We loved each other, but there was no