21. Isabella
Chapter twenty-one
Isabella
I pull up Amelie’s contact with shaky fingers, the digital beeps mocking my distress. The call barely rings once before she answers, her voice like a life preserver thrown into my sea of tissues and misery.
“Are you free?” I say, cutting straight to the chase. “Emergency.”
“Now?” Amelie asks, but there’s a rustle of keys that tells me she’s already on her way. She’s a saint in designer heels. “I’ll be there in ten.”
When she arrives, I’m a pitiful sight, curled up on the couch surrounded by a graveyard of crumpled Kleenex. My eyes are still competing with tomatoes, and not the cute cherry kind.
“Wow, you look like hell,” Amelie declares as she drops onto the cushion beside me, her blunt honesty as comforting as a warm blanket.
“Thanks,” I sniff, “I worked hard for this look.”
“Spill it,” she orders, crossing her legs and giving me her full attention.
“I broke things off with Adrian last night.”
Amelie’s jaw drops. “Seriously? Did you tell him about Leo? ”
I nod. “He didn’t believe me. We ended up arguing about it. One thing led to another, and it hit me that Adrian doesn’t trust me.”
“What makes you think that’s true?”
I shrug. “If he trusted me, don’t you think he would have taken my word for it?”
“Not necessarily. Leo’s been partner for what, ten years? If this is the first time he’s acted shady, it might be a difficult thing for Adrian to believe at first.”
“It still bothered me, Amelie. The two of us could never work if the trust isn’t there. And I told him that. I asked him if he could ever fully trust me, he said it was complicated.”
“Complicated?” Amelie’s brows furrow.
“I want commitment,” I admit, my voice coming out all creaky and vulnerable, like a door that hasn’t been opened in years. “But I think Adrian only wants to marry me because of the baby.”
“Is that all he said?” Amelie presses, leaning closer, her eyes sharp and searching.
I shrug, a mix of frustration and exhaustion knotting in my chest. “I slammed the door before I could hear more. But come on. Adrian’s as subtle as a sledgehammer. If he had more to say, he would’ve said it.”
“Right,” she says, but I can tell she’s not buying what I’m selling. Maybe because I’m not quite sold on it myself. She leans in, her expression all therapist-mode, like she’s about to drop some profound life truth that’ll make my mascara run even more. “Look, Adrian might be direct in a lot of things, but after his messy divorce, he’s probably just as scared as you are about this.”
“Scared? Adrian?” I scoff at the thought. Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Commanding, scared of anything? Please.
“You need to talk to him, Isabella. Tell him how you feel.” Her voice is gentle, but it carries the weight of an undeniable truth—one I’m not sure I’m ready to face head-on.
My heart thumps against my chest like it’s trying to escape. The idea of baring my soul to Adrian, only for him to confirm my worst fears ... “It could ruin everything,” I whisper, thinking of the fine line we’re already toeing between professional and personal.
“Isabella, you’re on the brink of having it all—a successful career and a family. Don’t let fear make you throw it away. You owe it to yourself to find out how Adrian really feels.”
“But it isn’t part of the plan,” I cling to my last defense, the plan being my meticulously constructed roadmap to life, where love slots in neatly after career milestones, not before.
Amelie smirks, her eyes twinkling with that “I know better” glint.
“Isabella: fuck the plan. What you have with Adrian—it’s a dream, too.”
A dream? More like a high-stakes gamble where the house always wins. But then again, what if—just what if—it’s a dream worth betting on?
I relax my back on the armrest, the fabric of the couch catching slightly against my sweater. The silence in the room feels like it’s pressing against me, filled with Amelie’s unspoken “I-told-you-so’s.” My head is a mess of thoughts, each one more petrifying than the last.
“Okay, so what if I’m wrong?” The words slip out before I can corral them back into the safer confines of my mind. I’m speaking to the potted plant on the windowsill, rather than to Amelie. It’s less intimidating that way. “What if he only wants to stay together because of the baby? ”
I flash back to Adrian’s face, trying to decipher any hidden meanings behind his stoic expressions. All I come up with is the mental equivalent of static noise.
Amelie doesn’t miss a beat, her answer slicing through my tangled thoughts. “Then you’ll know.” She says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “But right now, you’re only guessing. You can’t make a decision based on half the truth.”
I let out a huff, not quite a laugh but too bitter to be a sigh. “Half-truths, huh? Feels like I’m living on a diet of those lately.”
There’s a truth there, lurking beneath Amelie’s matter-of-fact tone. The only thing scarier than knowing is not knowing. And boy, do I excel at scaring myself out of my wits.
The buzz of my phone interrupts the silence like an unwelcome guest. I squint at the caller ID—Kate, my secretary—and my gut twists into a knot that sailors would envy.
“Isabella, you got a minute?” Kate’s voice is all business, but there’s an edge to it, like she’s trying not to let her words trip over each other.
“Depends on the crisis level,” I reply, bracing myself.
“High. The IT guy stumbled across some weird files on your computer,” she says, and just like that, I can feel every muscle in my body tense up.
“Weird how? Spyware? Someone’s manifesto on why pineapple does belong on pizza?” I try to keep the mood light, but my heart’s racing like it’s got a finish line to cross.
“Can’t say for sure. Something is just off about them. He thinks you should take a look ASAP.”
“Define ASAP.” I glance at Amelie, who’s raising an eyebrow so high it could get altitude sickness.
“Yesterday,” Kate deadpans, and I know that whatever this is, it’s no laughing matter .
“Alright.” I push off the couch with a sigh. “I’m heading to the office now.”
“See you there.”
I end the call and meet Amelie’s gaze—the same “I told you so” look she reserves for when I ignore her advice and it backfires spectacularly.
“Trouble?” she asks, though from her tone, it’s clear she knows the answer.
“Potentially the kind that makes lawyers break out in hives,” I admit as I snatch up my keys and bag. “Which, considering our usual stress levels, is saying something.”
“Keep me posted?”
“Of course. And hey,” I pause at the door, turning back to her with a half-smile that feels more like a grimace, “thanks for the pep talk. We’ll resume our regularly scheduled existential crisis tomorrow.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she quips, but there’s a warmth there that’s as reassuring as a shot of bourbon on a cold night.
With one last shared look—a silent exchange full of “be carefuls” and “what the hells”—I step out into the early evening, determined to unravel this latest mystery without losing any part of my already precarious sanity.