Chapter Six
? Isla ?
Mom won’t look at me.
She hasn’t said it, but I know she blames me for what happened and maybe she’s not wrong. Maybe I did start this. I should have stayed in my room until supper.
But that would have only upset her further, honestly. If I wanted to hide, I could have stayed home. Her house isn’t some place I can loiter.
Bet she regrets that choice now, I think as she follows Walker, helping Jacob up the front steps.
He’s taking his time, moving like every step could be his last. Mom holds the front door open the entire time it takes him to hobble up the walk, doing the very thing I would have gotten scolded for as a child — letting the heat out.
Already, the front of the house has begun to match the temperature outside.
Despite the cold, I stand just inside the doorway, redressed in jeans and fluffy, purple sweater. I watch Jacob sweat as he leans heavily on his brother. The crutches click with every strenuous effort.
The sight of him strapped to a fat chunk of plaster across his left leg horrifies me.
Not because I never thought Dominic was capable of breaking a man’s leg, but because no one has ever stood up for me before.
Ever. All my life, I have been responsible for my own security.
I have had to deal with the unwanted advances of men.
I have had to stand up to bullies in school.
I have had to figure out how to avoid altercations and I have learned that running is always the best solution.
Not this time.
If I leave before Christmas, Mom will disown me.
I will be banned from every future event.
She will ignore me no matter how much I apologize.
For days. Months even. And I won’t be able to talk to Dad about it.
He’s always too busy, and Mom is no longer his problem.
I’ll have to figure it out on my own and I don’t have a solution except to twist up in anxiety.
I already know I’m the cause of every problem everyone has.
Mom’s cold withdrawal would only heighten that knowledge.
“Mom?”
Even to my own ears, I sound pleading. A child who knows she’s fucked up. I swallow every second of her silence until the icy chill of it fills me. I drown in her disapproval, and I pick at my thumb nail. I scratch at the scab. Smear the blood across my nail.
Still, Mom stands rigid and hard set on the front porch. Her beige coat is two times too big on her slight frame. With the cold nipping pink into her cheeks and her pale curls bunched over her collar, she reminds me of a child in her mother’s clothes.
Down the walkway, Jacob milks his injury by stopping to pant. His every forced breath plumes into the air with white clouds of exaggeration.
But it tightens the lines around her mouth. Her nostrils twitch like his suffering somehow causes her pain. Even though I know she knows he’s faking it.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
Mom sucks in her bottom lip like she’s bottling back the thoughts choking her.
“Perhaps you should make yourself busy,” she says at last. “I think you’ve caused enough problems for one afternoon, don’t you?”
I twist my fingers together. Pick harder on the wound until it hurts.
“I didn’t mean—”
Mom’s hard brown eyes finally jump to me, to my face. They cling like there is nowhere less she would rather look.
“You did this,” she hisses, careful to keep her voice low. “Dressing like that, what did you expect? And rather than calming the situation, you let it escalate.”
I move to my index finger. I tug at the frayed edge of the nail, tearing off chunks.
Tears blur my vision. Turns Mom into a silhouette against the faint fingers of sunlight still spiking the sky.
The weight of her displeasure forms a noose around my airway.
Cuts the flow of blood to my brain. My head rings even as I fight to keep my voice steady.
“I’m sorry.”
Mom sucks in a breath and turns to watch Walker help his brother gingerly up the porch steps. All the hard muscles and tight lines vanish into a sympathetic purse.
“Just go…” she hisses to me before hurrying to offer Jacob her hand. “You’re doing great, Jake. One more step.”
I run.
I turn and hurry deeper through the house.
There really isn’t a place I can go that won’t be a further inconvenience.
I know they’ll take Jacob into the parlor.
Mom will head into the kitchen to make him whatever he wants.
Nicolas and Dominic are most likely back at the guesthouse, curled up in each other’s arms. Going to my room would start a new argument.
That left the basement or the bathroom. Neither is appealing.
My feet carry me to the kitchen. It’s a risky gamble but I’m not sitting in the bathroom, and the basement is creepy.
The kitchen is no better. It’s a ghost town of abandoned tarts. The counters are layered with wax paper and lined with cold pastries. Several squares of unfilled dough are crusted on the island next to a gelatinous bowl of apple filling.
My stomach dips even before Mom stalks in after me. Her dark eyes blink twice in rapid succession as if disbelieving the sight before her.
“Are you serious?” she cries, rushing to the mess she left behind. “You didn’t wrap these up?”
I say nothing as she scrambles to salvage the tarts. But the dough is stiff, the filling dry. The few already baked ones are crunchy from sitting out for most of the day.
“I had to leave to clean up your mess, and you couldn’t even bother to do this one thing?
” With a sweep and swing, she empties the entire tray of baked tarts straight into the trash.
They hit the bottom like bombs going off.
Each one makes me flinch. “What were you even doing all day while I was at the hospital with your uncle?”
I know what I was doing — nothing I’m proud of. Nothing I can tell her now that the high is no longer controlling my actions.
Mom isn’t listening anyway. She’s filling the trash with everything she’d done that morning. The bin is brimming by the time she’s twisted the top together and shoved the plastic into my fingers.
“Do you think you can manage taking this to the garage?” She sweeps her hand back through her hair, shoving the curls out of her eyes. “I have to restart everything. So much time and money wasted…”
It’s on my tongue to apologize again. To explain. But there’s nothing I can tell her that will make her believe I hadn’t meant to ruin her work. She’s a bundle of anger as she stalks around the room, flinging open cabinets and yanking out ingredients
I can only pull in a slow, shaky breath to keep the tears from falling. They cling to my lashes, and I struggle not to blink in fear of unleashing them.
But with my fist tight around the waste, I turn in the direction of the backdoor a second before it flies open and Nicolas and Dominic invade the room.
Their combined presence swarms the space, consuming the air before they step foot over the threshold.
Both find me immediately as if we’re magnets clicking together.
Only, I look away first. I drop my gaze to the floor, face hot enough to shame the oven Mom snaps on.
“Well, hello you two!” Mom chirps, all signs of her fury gone as if it never happened. She beams widely at them and motions they take a seat at the island. “I’m about to make a hot round of turnovers if you want to keep me company. Walker is in the parlor with Jacob if you want to go see them.”
Not an ounce of indignation for Dominic for being the one who broke Jacob’s leg. No accusation. No blame. It’s as if it never happened.
I feel my anger is justified when I shove past the two and stomp out onto the back porch. The biting chill rolling across the yard feels like heaven washing over the hot sweat clinging to my skin. A fine powder of snow crunches beneath my feet as I march along the path to the side of the house.
Walker keeps the garage doors unlocked. Piper Falls is a moderately close-knit community with neighbors watching over each other’s yards. Plus, the only thing my stepdad keeps inside is Mom’s car and the bins for the trash. Nothing remotely valuable for anyone to steal.
I don’t bother with the light switch when I delve inside and pick my way alongside Mom’s Mazda to the three-color coded bins stationed at the very end next to the roll up door.
Mom always keeps them in the exact same spot to make it easier to pull out on garbage days.
The black is always at the beginning, and I shove the top open to toss the bag inside.
It does dawn on me for a heartbeat of a second that I could just stay here. Mom never locks her car doors. I can crawl into the backseat and hide. I doubt anyone would even notice until supper.
I’m contemplating it, gaze fixed on the handle.
The wussy part of my brain clings to the knowledge that it’s too cold in the garage.
The concrete walls have converted the space into a deep freezer.
I doubt the car will be any warmer and I don’t want to run back inside to grab a coat or blanket.
The worst part of it all is the knowledge that no one will come looking for me until Mom decides to take her car out.
Even then, I doubt she’d bother looking in the backseat.
“Isla?”
The deep, masculine rumble echoes through the silence. It implodes between my ears, tearing the very soul from my body as I release an undignified yelp and spin.
“Holy shit on a cracker,” I shriek, slapping a hand over my thundering heart and glowering at the looming figure standing between me and escape.
Nicolas stares at me, gray eyes enormous in the gloom.
“Jesus!” I snap. “Why are you sneaking up on people in the dark?” I swear there’s a hint of a smile on his face, but the shadows are too thick. “Did you need something?”
He says nothing for such a long time that I begin to suspect he’s fallen asleep standing up.
My gaze shifts from his blurry silhouette to the door behind him, gauging my chances of making it past him without any sort of contact.
The other part of me wonders if I stand still long enough, he’ll simply leave me alone.
But he remains in place, letting both our discomfort plume through the settling cold.
Not that I need him to speak. Deep in my soul, I already had this silent conversation with him in my head.
I know he’s furious. Possibly disgusted.
He’s going to tell me it was a mistake and it will never happen again.
He’s going to tell me I need to stay away from his boyfriend.
That what happened was a lapse in all our judgment and I should be ashamed for letting it get that far.
What the voices in my head hadn’t counted on was the soft mumble of, “Are you okay?”
I’m not prepared.
I don’t have a script for this in my head.
“What?” I say stupidly.
His clothes make a faint rustling sound with his subtle shifting.
“Are you okay?”
So much has happened in the last several hours that I don’t know what he’s referring to. Regardless, no, I’m not okay. I wish Christmas would end already so I can go back to my shitty little apartment and pretend this year never happened.
“I’m fine,” I lie, hoping that would be the end of it.
But he doesn’t leave like most people would have. He doesn’t accept my response at face value, nor does he full-on accuse me of lying. He simply remains in my way. A hulk of a man blurring at the edges to melt into the darkness around us.
“Did I hurt you?”
It’s said quickly with sharp edges that slice through the silence.
I pick at the sliver of torn skin at my thumb.
“I’m fine,” I mumble a second time, hoping it will be enough to make him go away.
“That isn’t what I asked,” he retorts instead.
Against my better judgment, I make a skirting beeline straight for him. My strides are kept brisk and purposeful. My goal is heading straight past him and…
Long fingers capture my wrist. They curl around the delicate bones and drag me to a stop mere inches from freedom.
“You can’t always keep running,” he growls through gritted teeth.
It’s on my tongue to tell him, watch me. But I just want out of that stuffy cubicle. I want space and distance from everyone. I want to be literally anywhere but here with the one person who wouldn’t spit on me if I were on fire.
Yet, for some reason, he’s taken it upon himself to do whatever this is.
“Let go,” I bite out.
His hold only tightens.
“Are you on birth control?” he grinds out with that same brittle sharpness.
Even my brain struggles with a response to that question. It clicks off its rotation as it simultaneously bristles with indignation and backpaddles with panic.
I’m not.
I haven’t been in over fifteen months. Not since my last boyfriend. I didn’t have a reason to keep taking them. It was almost a relief not having to remember every morning. How was I supposed to know I was going to get dumped in?
Fuck.
There was so much between the two. What if I do get pregnant? Probably something I should have considered before begging them to fill me.
God, a baby…
I can’t have a baby. Not alone. I can barely take care of myself, and I doubt Nicolas is going to suddenly accept that I’m not a fuck up and want a baby with me.
“Let go…”
My barely audible plea is ignored or he doesn’t hear me.
“Isla,” he snaps at the same time, giving my arm a tug.
That is enough to jolt some sense back into my head.
I jerk free and glower up at him.
“Yes!” I lie and hurriedly shove past him.
My feet practically sprint down the path in the direction of the house. The house full of people and nowhere to be alone with my spiraling thoughts. But I need to be alone. I need to figure out what to do. I get it’s too soon to start worrying about it, but I can’t not worry about it.
At the top of the back steps, Nicolas catches up with me. His fingers curl into my elbow and I’m forcibly made to face him.
“You can’t have a baby, Isla,” he states with a harshness that only adds to the weight already crushing my chest. “I don’t care what Dominic says about it, you are irresponsible and unreliable. You are everything a child does not need.”
I swallow against the bitter pill of truth. It scrapes going down my jugular and burns hitting my gut.
I would make a terrible mother. I know that. But hearing it out loud, hearing another person agree with me has hot tears burning behind my eyes.
“Good enough to be a whore, but not a mother,” I whisper and wrench my arm from him. “Got it.”
“Isla—”
I jerk open the door and throw myself inside before he can slap me with any more of my shortcomings.