AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A big ugly lump formed in her throat at the thought. She tried to swallow it down, but it wouldn’t budge. Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them away.
Sharp slicing pain shot through her finger, and she let out a yelp. Mom spun from the sink, and her eyes widened in horror.
“Oh my God, Isla.” She grabbed a hand towel from the oven and wrapped it around her hand as she guided her to the sink. Blood dripped down her finger and pooled on the stainless steel. Mom turned the water on, and Isla brought her finger to the slow stream.
She hissed as blinding pain rushed through her. “Ouch! Ouch! Oh. My. God. Ow!”
“I’d say so.”
“Is it bad?” she asked too afraid to look. What if she cut her finger off?
“Still attached, but bad enough that we have to take a trip to the emergency room.”
The tears she blinked away fell. “I’m sorry. That was so stupid of me.”
“Don’t apologize for hurting yourself. Let me go get my bag. I’ll call your father from the car so he’s not confused when he comes home to an empty house.”
Isla nodded.
“Hold this tight.” Mom let go of her hand, and Isla wrapped the kitchen towel tighter around her hand. She returned to the kitchen table and looked down at her phone… still nothing from Nolan.
She put the phone on speaker and called Nolan’s house. His mom answered on the second ring. “Hi Mrs. Parker, I can’t get ahold of Nolan, and I just sliced my finger open. We had plans for tonight, so if you can just tell him I’m on the way to the hospital when he gets in.”
“Oh sweetie. Are you okay?”
“Just a cut. I mistook my finger for the cucumber.”
“I will tell him. Then I’ll give him a good swat for not answering his phone.”
“Thanks.”
“Keep me posted.”
“I will.”
Isla hung up, and Mom stood in the doorway. “Come on, before you bleed all over the carpet.”
Three hours later, Isla was home with two stitches and a bottle of pain pills. She got out of the car just as Nolan’s car pulled up to the house.
“I’ll leave you two to talk,” Mom said and headed inside.
“Isla!” He hurried up the lawn in his button-down shirt and tie, and she debated whether to go in the house and leave him outside. Let him know what it felt like to be ignored. She decided against it and waited for him. He grabbed her shoulders and looked in her eyes. “Are you okay? My mom said you were at the hospital.”
She held up her wrapped finger. “Two stitches. You would have known if you answered your phone. I had no idea what happened to you. For all I knew you were kidnapped and the next time my phone rang it would be the kidnapper asking for ransom.”
“Kidnapped? Really?” He laughed, but when he saw the serious expression on her face, he stopped. “My battery died, and I was out with a client. I didn’t have a charger.”
A light blinked in her head. The guy on the radio earlier had said the exact same thing when his wife accused him of missing a call.
“How could you let that happen?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t expect to be out so late, but the client had never been to the city before, and they were asking me a million questions. I didn’t want to be rude.”
“So instead you stood up your girlfriend.”
His eyebrows pinched together above the bridge of his nose. “Stood you up?” The wrinkles smoothed out as realization shined on his face. “That movie came out today you wanted to see.”
She nodded. “Yup.”
