Her head snapped up, her eyes wide and bloodshot and jumping around to look everywhere but at me.
We’d had so many damn fights over the years. Too many to count.
We fought just because she wanted a reason to argue, and I indulged her. But there were times it would go too far—I’d hurt her, or she’d take vicious stabs at me. There were times I’d seen her in emotional pain from things entirely out of my control.
Not once had this been her reaction.
She always held my stare and gave me all of her. Proving again that this went so far past anything we’d ever dealt with. That there might not be any recovering from this.
I let my fingers skim down her arm until I had her pencil in my grasp, then reached out with my other hand to take the binder.
“What? No,” she said hoarsely. “I need those.”
“Not today.”
“Yes, today.”
Once I had them on her desk, I grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the chair, already heading for the doorway.
“Hunter, no.” She tugged against my hold. “I have work to do. I have calls to make, I can’t—”
I looked back at her and pulled her close, my voice dropping low. “Not today.” When she began arguing, I said, “All that shit can wait.”
“All that ‘shit’ is your business. Your orchard.”
“I’m aware.” The acknowledgment was a rough whisper as I lightly brushed my knuckles along her jaw. “And it isn’t important right now.”
When I turned for the door that time, she didn’t argue. Just let me lead her through the house and to my room.
Her head was bowed, but I could still see the tremble in her jaw when I stopped beside my bed.
“Shoes,” I rumbled softly.
She stepped out of them after a beat of hesitation, then wrapped her fingers around my wrists when I reached for her shorts. “This isn’t—I’m really not in—”
“Isabel, all I wanna do right now is hold you.”
A muted sob fell from her lips as she released her grasp on me. Her hands moved to my chest before her head fell there, her shoulders tensing and twitching as she tried to fight her emotions.
“That okay?”
The only response she gave was a weak nod, but I took it.
Once she stepped out of her shorts, I helped her into my bed and pulled her close. But even as she slipped one of her bare legs between my jean-covered ones and rested her hand on my chest, she kept her stare locked on that hand, refusing to look at me.
“How was Savannah?” she asked, her voice thick with the emotions she was trying to bury.
I gripped her hip a little harder. To keep her there . . . to prepare her . . . I wasn’t sure.
But there was no keeping her from what happened. She wasn’t the type of girl who wanted to be spared the pain—she was too strong for that. And I wasn’t going to start lying to her when the only deception that had ever come between us was denying how we felt for each other.
“Didn’t really talk to her.”
Dark eyes flicked up to search my face in silent question. Hesitation swirling there and growing between us.
“Madison was there.”
Izzy sucked in a stuttered breath as her gaze fell again. “Oh.” It was a wounded whisper of acceptance. It was understanding.
“I didn’t know she would be there, she was just there,” I explained softly.
“And how did it go with her?” she asked, stunning me.
It wasn’t that Izzy had finally met my stare when she asked, it was the way she walked right into it. As if she’d been preparing herself for this all morning.
“It didn’t,” I finally said and then quickly amended, “I tried to talk to her. Cayson stopped me. Savannah told us to leave because Madison was there. I’ve been talking to Cayson out front for . . . God, I dunno. A long time.”
That hesitance and unease grew, and it made me want to pull her closer when everything about her was trying to keep the small space between us. “About?”
“Everything . . . all of it. He knows.” When one of her eyebrows lifted, I clarified, “About us.”
For a while, she just stayed in my arms, stare drifting as she absorbed it all. Then a soft laugh tumbled past her lips. “I’ve been waiting for the day when your family knew about me.” Her eyes rolled. “I mean, they know me . . . but knew me as something different. As . . .” She didn’t finish the thought, but the unspoken word hung in the air between us.
Yours.
She cleared her throat. “Anyway, I always thought I would be happy when they found out—when you told them. When you acknowledged me the way I’ve dreamed about.”
“. . . thought I would be happy . . .”
Felt like I took a sledgehammer to the back when she said that.
Knocked the air out of my lungs, and they were still struggling to work.
The corner of her mouth lifted, everything about the smile looking sad and pained. “But now I wish you wouldn’t have.”
“Why?” I managed through clenched teeth.
“Because there might not be anything between us by the end of the day—”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true,” she urged gently. “And then what was the point of telling Cayson? What was the point of any of this?” Her chin trembled as her eyes filled with tears.
I cradled her face in my hand as my forehead met hers, her name leaving me on a sigh. “Izzy.”
“Why did I have to push you—why couldn’t I just let it go?” she whispered, voice thick and words strained. “We wouldn’t be going through this, and it wouldn’t hurt so—”
I pressed my mouth to hers, silencing her self-punishing ramble and swallowing the strangled cry that slipped free from her. “Stop,” I breathed against her lips before kissing her again.
Slowly.
Tenderly.
The tips of her fingers traced along my jaw. Moving toward my hair before she withdrew her hands and clenched them into fists against my chest.
I brushed my mouth across hers one last time and then leaned back to look at the tears now clinging heavily to her lashes.
“Nothing would be different,” I said, voice a low rumble. “If you hadn’t, then her showing up would’ve forced me to acknowledge what you mean to me. We would still be right here. It would still hurt this bad.”
Her head moved in a faint nod. Everything about her expression said she wanted to believe it but didn’t know how.
She was still shouldering all the blame.
Again, so completely opposite of who she was. She liked to toss the blame anywhere else, even if it didn’t belong there. As always, if only to start an argument.
“Izzy—”
“We need space.”
My stomach dropped. Fell so quickly and suddenly that I felt sick and off-balance even though I was lying down.
“We need space,” she repeated. “I have to give you that.”
“No.”
“Yes—”
“Isabel, no.”
She reached up to place a trembling hand over my lips, her tears finally falling. “Everything in me is screaming to do whatever it takes to make you want to stay with me. To not let you do whatever it is you’re going to. But I have to give you this. So, yes . . . we need space, and you’re gonna take it.”