It was effortless for us to find ourselves in this position. We’d sat like this, talking for hours on end, ever since we’d stumbled back into each other’s lives nearly ten years before.
“You haven’t slept,” Izzy presumed softly, her brow furrowing as she switched to Spanish. “¿Qué pasa?” When I only sat there, struggling with what to say as I memorized the lines of her face, she begged, “Dime.”
What’s wrong?
Tell me.
“Madison’s back.”
It was barely a whisper, but the words sent a physical shock through Isabel.
Her chest rose and fell with a heavy breath as she absorbed what I was saying. Her fingers tightened in my hair as if the action could keep me there—keep me hers.
When her forehead fell to mine, her dark eyes were glassy.
She didn’t speak, and neither did I.
I just held her as minutes came and went. As I tried to sort through the chaos in my mind.
“She’s married,” I said a while later.
A tremor rolled through Isabel as soon as I began speaking. A shuddering breath escaped her once she realized what I was saying, but relief didn’t come with it.
“Her being married isn’t what kept you up all night, Hunter,” she said softly, hinting at what I’d already been thinking.
Just seeing Madison changed things.
A part of me was screaming to comfort her, to ease her worries, but Isabel knew every bit of my past.
The good. The bad. The parts I probably never should’ve shared with anyone else. There was no point in lying to her—she would know I was.
When she spoke, her voice was nearly inaudible and warped with the threat of tears. “Hunter, what does this mean?”
I held her a little tighter.
There were a million things I wanted to say . . . yesterday. Before she’d left for a family reunion. Before my past had come back into my life.
Now, everything that was Izzy and me was getting distorted and mixed up in the confusion of Madison.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly, repentantly.
Her body seemed to cave. Her head rolled away from mine as she stood and stumbled a couple steps away.
“Izzy—”
“Don’t,” she said quickly, holding a trembling hand up to stop me. She waited until she’d pulled herself together to speak, refusing to meet my eye. “It’s past dawn, Hunter—it’s already morning. You need to go take care of the animals. I’m gonna make coffee and breakfast for when you’re done.”
She’d only taken another step away before I grabbed her hand and pulled her back. Cradling her to me and holding her close as she fought the sobs building in her chest.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into the crook of her neck, causing an immediate reaction from her.
She shoved against my chest and scrambled out of my arms and off of my lap, her head shaking wildly as she cut me with a pained glare.
Izzy . . .
“Do not start apologizing to me,” she ground out. “Don’t you—no.” She turned away, but not before I saw the first tear slip down her cheek. “I’m making breakfast. Go.”
I stood and followed to where she was standing in front of the range. Slamming a pan onto the stovetop, then gripping the edge of the counter when a shudder worked through her body.
I placed my hands on either side of hers, caging her there and dropping my mouth to her neck. Lightly trailing my lips along her skin before letting them linger on her shoulder. Breathing her in and listening to her choke back her cries.
Letting each one pierce another part of me.
“Go take care of the animals,” she said weakly as she lifted a hand to thread her fingers into my hair.
“I will.” I grabbed the pan haphazardly resting between all the burners and shifted it farther from us. “But how about we skip breakfast for now? You’re dangerous when you have food.”
A strangled laugh left her, but she just nodded. “Coffee?” she asked after a moment.
“Please.”
She gave my hair a little tug before releasing me. “Go.”
I knew I needed to take care of morning duties—that I should’ve started on them a couple hours before—but I just wrapped an arm around her waist and held her for a little longer.
Wondering and worrying over what would happen when I let go and left the house, while Izzy struggled so damn hard to keep her emotions in check. And that wasn’t like her.
Isabel was all fiery passion with everything.
Cooking, fighting, fucking, life . . .
If she felt something, she felt it deeply. There was no hiding or trying to contain it. It was one of the things that had drawn me back to her again and again in the beginning. It was one of the things I loved most about her.
If there was an opportunity to argue, she took it. Didn’t matter if it was over something amusing or small or if she knew she was in the wrong. She’d grab tight and go in with her entire heart.
Battling with that feisty spirit until I relented or things got so heated that the argument faded into nothing as we tore at each other’s clothes.
And she was fighting tears. She was hiding them from me. She’d let the teasing dig at her go without turning it into one of my favorite kinds of arguments.
As I’d known it would, Madison coming back had changed everything.
Married . . . mom . . . complete-fucking-stranger . . . owner-of-half-my-goddamn-heart, Madison.
I sat in the hallway, listening in, even though my parents had told me half a dozen times to go to my room.
I’d rolled my eyes because it was such a ridiculous thing to be told at eighteen years old. Especially after all I had been through in the past year. But I’d still pretended to leave before silently making my way back to the entrance of the hall.
Because there was a Dixon in our home.
I’d barely caught sight of his face as my mom ushered me out of the kitchen, and it’d been years since I’d seen any of them, but I was pretty sure it had been Hunter.
Didn’t matter. There was a Dixon in our home.
I was shaking with rage just thinking of that name.
I’d grown up with that family. I’d played with those boys every weekend of my life up until four or five years ago. I’d pretended to help my dad in their orchard, only half paying attention as he told me about the peaches and varieties and pruning and blah, blah, blah.
At that point in my life, it had been: Friends. Playing. Cute boys. Bye, Papá.
My dad had been one of only six people on the Dixon Farms skeleton crew—the crew that worked year-round, practically every day. He’d worked for them for nearly twenty years before Mr. Dixon started screwing them all over.
It started off small at first.
Not giving raises—okay, that’s fine.
But then cutting everyone’s pay one year . . . and again the next, and the next. Then “forgetting” to pay them at all.
The crew stayed, mostly out of loyalty. Even worked overtime without compensation when the seasonal crews quit.
It wasn’t until they found out Mr. Dixon had been sending bad product to stores if grocers’ prices dropped that the skeleton crew left so their names wouldn’t be tied to what he was doing.
And now a Dixon was in our house.