Chapter 18
Wes
Istare up at the high-rise building where Isla lives, smack in the middle of downtown Palmer City.
I don’t know why I agreed to this.
“You look lost.”
My head turns in the direction of a raven-haired woman with heavy eye makeup beside me. She’s wearing professional attire and uncomfortable-looking shoes that add at least three inches to her height.
“Just questioning all my life choices.”
“In the middle of walking traffic on a game night. Bold.” Her words jar me out of my haze to realize that people are passing me on both sides, none of them looking too pleased to maneuver around me. “Heading in?”
She takes three purposeful strides toward the building without a glance backward. I suck in a deep breath. Here goes nothing.
“You’re back early,” the older man behind the desk says to her.
“Left my phone. It’s the second inning. I won’t miss much.”
“Your boy pounded one into the gap,” the man says.
“Bertram, please never say that sentence to me again,” she replies through a huff of laughter. She doesn’t break stride while walking to the elevator. “Also, he’s not my boy.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Bertram waves a dismissive hand as he rises from his seat. “He with you?”
The elevator dings and the doors open. She looks at us. “Nah, I found him looking like a lost puppy on the streets.”
No one has ever described me like that before. But I think little intimidates this woman. Maybe we all look like lost puppies to her.
“What apartment are you going to?” Bertram asks, his tone hardening. “I’ll need your I.D.”
“604,” I answer, fishing my wallet out of my pocket and sliding my driver’s license across the desk to him.
He picks up the license, scrutinizing it against whatever is on his computer screen.
“You’re headed up to Brooks’s place?” The woman’s eyes narrow in interest.
“Friend of yours?” I ask.
“I cat-sit for him, and we live on the same floor.” She blocks the elevator door with a hand. “Come on.”
I look to Bertram for approval.
“You’re on their list,” he confirms, handing my license back to me. “Go on. And watch yourself with her.”
The woman sighs, loud and dramatic.
“Thank you,” I say.
The woman steps back from the elevator door once I’m inside. She smacks a hand against her hip. “Oh, that’s right. Tonight’s the infamous dinner. That explains this outfit choice.”
I glance down at my khaki slacks and black short-sleeved button-up shirt with all the buttons done—not my usual style. Spencer laughed me out of the house earlier. But I don’t want to let Isla down.
“I hate old money people with all their rituals, and excess, and judgment,” she continues. “But Brooks isn’t like that at all. I haven’t met his sister yet. What’s she like?”
“Isla is…” My mind drifts to all the adjectives that describe her—sarcastic, assertive, beautiful, absurdly talented—before landing on the one that feels safest to admit out loud. “…no bullshit.”
“Sounds like my kind of girl.”
Mine too.
She holds out her hand as the elevator reaches the sixth floor. “I’m Deandra Collins.”
“Wes Davidson.” I shake her hand briefly.
The doors open, and we step out of the elevator onto her floor.
“You’ll want to go that way,” she says, pointing toward the right. “Good luck tonight.”
“Thanks. I’ll need it.”
I fiddle with my car keys in my pocket as I walk down the hall, watching the numbers climb until I reach 604.
A floor mat, with the words “Well, don’t just stand there” beside a cartoon of an agitated gray and white tabby cat, greets me.
I press the doorbell and suck in a deep breath as I wait for it to swing open.
Brooks Covington opens the door. I recognize him from a billboard I passed on my way to hockey practice in high school. He sported a wide grin, spinning a basketball on the tip of his finger. He doesn’t look that different now.
“You must be Wes,” he says.
“Yeah, hey.”
“I’m Brooks.” He steps backward, holding an arm out to usher me inside the condo. “You’re not what I expected.”
“In what—”
Brooks cuts off my question. “But I guess my sample size is small. Her asshole ex-husband and some preppy guys in high school.”
I pull on the collar of my shirt. “This isn’t preppy enough for a Covington dinner?”
Brooks laughs. “Touché. It’s a nice thing you’re doing for her. I’m going to take a wild guess that it isn’t only out of your deep sense of compassion. So you better be good to her, or you’ll answer to me.” He raises his eyebrows, then shouts, “Isla, your boyfriend’s here!”
“That’s not—” But I lose my words when Isla comes into view.
The reason I said yes to this dinner at her family’s house hits me square in the chest. My breath catches, watching her strawberry-blond hair sway as she rushes toward the door.
Her loose green short-sleeve dress dips at her chest, revealing a hint of cleavage, and cinches at her trim waist before billowing out and fluttering as she moves.
It takes every bit of discipline I can muster to force myself to look away from her.
Isla shoves Brooks out of the way, which takes a few tries before he finally retreats. “Don’t worry, he knows this is all fake.”
Was it fake at the bar? I want to demand. Instead, I ask, “Not going to invite me in?”
“Not tonight,” she sings, the words carrying a promise I hope she keeps. She slides into a pair of white sneakers, placing her hand against the wall for balance.
“We’re leaving,” she shouts to her brother, who stands in the kitchen, pretending not to watch us while refilling his water purifier.
“Isn’t he coming with us?” I ask.
“He’s taking his car.” She grabs a small purse from a hanging hook, leans in close, and pitches her voice lower. “In case we need to escape.”
I follow Isla as she leaves the condo and starts walking down a set of stairs. She swings her purse, her opposite hand drumming against her hip, as she descends at a brisk pace. The slap of our shoes fills the stairwell.
It’s unsettling seeing her disheveled and nervous when she’s heading to her home. It tells me everything I need to know about her family. I have no idea how I’m supposed to pretend I don’t think these people are trash for the next two hours.
As we pass the front desk, Bertram points two fingers at his eyes, then turns them around to point at me.
“You make friends everywhere you go, don’t you, Davidson?” Isla quips.
“Wait until you see me in action tonight.”
“Oh, I’m betting on it.”
“Is that why you invited me? To piss off your family?”
“Spence invited you,” she corrects.
We walk out of the building into the hot North Carolina night, humidity cloaking us like a heavy, wet blanket. I immediately miss the air conditioning of her building, the quiet of the empty hallways.
“I’m this way.” I beeline toward my car parked against the curb at the end of the street. When I reach it, I spin around to find Isla standing ten feet away, stopped in her tracks. “You parallel parked?”
“Are you impressed by me, Covington?”
“Impressed? Parallel parking a truck on one of the busiest streets in Palmer City is diabolical behavior. I’m wondering if I’m safe getting in there with you.”
I laugh, shaking my head. “If anyone isn’t safe, it’s me.”
Isla stills at my words, though I doubt she surmises their underlying meaning.
I didn’t realize how deep I’m in with her until tonight.
I’m dressed like I’m heading to a church barbecue, and earlier, I internally stumbled over all the reasons I like her while talking to a virtual stranger.
And when she finally appeared, I nearly swallowed my damn tongue.
This isn’t going to end well for me.
“You’re probably right,” she recovers, brushing past the awkward silence and continuing her walk to my truck. “My ex-husband can get desperate.”
I jog around the car to the driver’s side door and slide in quickly at a break in the traffic.
Isla hops in a moment later, securing her seatbelt before she looks over at me.
I’m convinced that I’ll never adjust to the beauty of her ocean blue eyes, no matter how long I have the privilege of staring into them.
“I like my chances against a guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth,” I say. “That is how you met him, right? At a country club or a benefit dinner or a—”
“Prep school,” Isla cuts me off. She flashes me a quick smile. “Then, a wedding at an estate five years later.”
I’m at a loss for how to respond, marveling at how her childhood existed in a polar opposite place from mine.
If I wanted clothes when I was a kid, I had to work for them.
Not because my father didn’t work, but because it costs a fucking lot to be poor in this country.
His job covered the necessities, but adding all the expenses from our sports on top of that, we scraped by.
Isla comes from a family that has amassed more wealth than most people can dream. She never wanted for anything, never needed to worry about her future or how the consequences of an action could turn her entire life upside down. She always had a soft place to land.
And yet, she has the energy of a person who has clawed for what she has, who won’t quit because something is difficult.
I want to know what made her this way. It doesn’t make sense how our backgrounds are completely different from each other, but I can recognize parts of myself in her.
“What, uh, happened between the two of you anyway?” I ask once I’ve pulled out of the spot and maneuvered into traffic.
Isla inhales deeply before slowly letting the breath rush out of her. “He wanted me to give up what I love most in the world.”
“That’s fucked up.”
Anyone who’s seen Isla skate can see she’s destined for the sport.
Her partner should support her career one hundred percent, not try to rip away a critical fabric of her being.
I’d never want to give up watching her zip around the ice with the perfect mix of grace and aggression, or miss her eyes light up after landing a complex element.