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I hold up my hands. “I might’ve mentioned it.”
She rolls her eyes and continues reading. “BUT, she wants to have a formal mixer in the clubhouse that evening. She thinks we should invite all our sponsors and donors to spectate at the field day and then wine and dine them after to capitalize on all the good press.”
“So, what’s wrong with that?” I ask already picturing Izzy on my arm in a skin-tight cocktail dress… and thinking about the way I’ll rip it off her in the limo on the way home. If we make it that far… maybe the locker room could work. Izzy, back pressed against the cold metal of a locker door, her skirt hitched up around her waist while I pound into her… I shift on my feet, trying to hide my body’s reaction. “Sounds pretty standard.”
Izzy eyes me as if she’s picked up on my train of thought. “I just don’t like formal events. We don’t have a great track record…” She motions her head toward the living room where Rory must be growing impatient.
I step closer, taking a risk and grabbing her hips so she’s flush against me. The skirt of the little sundress she’s wearing bunches under my palms, and that fantasy from earlier is right back, front and center in my mind… and now, with her pressed against me, she can feel the evidence. She doesn’t flinch back, which sends a thrill through me, and I dig my fingers into the soft swell of her hips. “Don’t worry about the event. We can attend together,” I say softly. “Keep each other sane throughout the night.”
Her throat bobs as she swallows. Her gold-flecked eyes search mine. “Like as your date?”
“Yeah, like as my date…” I trail off, flicking my eyes down to her lips just in time to see her pink tongue flick to wet them. Before I can think about it, I’m leaning down, desperate to taste that tongue.
But before I reach her lips, she says, “Nathan, I don’t want this to get complicated.”
I continue my path to her lips, stopping a millimeter away. “What are you so afraid of?” I say, brushing the words against her lips.
“I can’t let Rory get hurt.”
That’s a bucket of ice water down my back. I jerk back enough to look at her, and it’s all there in her eyes. The truth that she still hasn’t admitted. My breath goes shallow. Do I want to push her to talk? Right now, with Rory in the next room?
I may not get another chance, so I say, “Why is that, then?”
“You know why.” She tries to wiggle out of my grasp, but I keep hold of her hips.
“I need you to say it out loud.”
She stops struggling, and drops her head, not looking at me as she says, “Because she’s been asking about her father all her life and she will never forgive me if I let you in our lives only for you to disappear after a few weeks.”
I already knew this information, but it still floors me when I finally hear it from her lips. Turns out, there’s just no way to prepare yourself to find out something like this. I move one hand, hooking a finger beneath her chin, and tilting her face up to mine. “Izzy… why didn’t you tell me? Were you ever going to? What would have happened if you’d never gotten this job, or I’d never transferred to Dallas?”
“I don’t know,” she says quietly, lower lip starting to wobble.
“To which question?”
“All of them,” she says. “I don’t know. I was seventeen and all I could think about was how much trouble I’d be in, the way everyone would look at me. The disappointment. It was self-preservation—running away, not telling you. I was just a kid. We both were.”
Oh, Izzy. God, if I’d just known, how different would our lives have been? “You didn’t have to do it alone. I would’ve been there.”
She shakes her head, now fully fighting against the tears welling in her eyes. “I didn’t know that.”
“How? I’d been right there all your life,” I say, a little louder than I intended.
“Not like that though. I heard you the night of your going-away party. You were so excited to be getting out. You had this bright future. I didn’t want to be the baggage you took along for the ride. You would’ve resented me and I couldn’t have that.”
“You heard…” I let go of her, needing to shake off the sudden flare of hurt and anger. “So, you overheard me bullshitting at a party and decided to never even give me a chance? I lost all this time with my kid over something I didn’t even say or do directly to you?”
She winces and starts pacing the room, talking with her hands the way she does when she’s nervous. “I’m sorry. Okay? I wish I could take it back, but I can’t.”
I want so badly to remain angry, but then she stops pacing, and the tears that were threatening finally fall. The look she gives me is the most heartbreaking sight. I’ve never been able to stay angry with Isabella. I’ve never been able to deny her anything… and as angry as I am at the lost time, it hits me all at once that this is the mother of my child.
She has been a part of my life since childhood, and she will always be, now. And I still love her, in spite of it all. I’ve always loved her and nothing about her lie has changed that.
Not that I’m ready to let her off the hook, yet.
I cross the kitchen and roughly claim her lips in a bruising kiss. She opens her mouth, deepening the kiss while her hands clutch desperately at my shirt. When I pull away, we’re both panting. “Don’t think this means I forgive you,” I whisper, before diving back in, tongue tangling with hers.
This time, she’s the one who pulls back and tilts her chin up to look into my eyes. For a moment it seems like time is frozen.
