Chapter 6
Chapter six
Izzy
“Oh my God, can we please, please, please talk about Jaxon apologizing to you last night?” Becca asks as soon as I shuffle into our kitchen the morning after the most awkward conversation of my life. Not that I feel bad about yelling at him. He deserved it.
Though I maybe should’ve let him actually get a full sentence out between my ranting.
No! He deserved it.
“Have you been sitting there waiting for me all morning?” I ask as I slowly make my way to the coffee maker.
“No. After you drank a whole case of hard cider by yourself last night, I knew you wouldn’t be up too early, but you also have that charity golf thing today at the country club. I mad-dashed out here when I heard noises start coming from your room,” Becca says with a large smile.
I peer at her, my left eye refusing to open more than a slit. Golf might be interesting. “You’re at like a nine-energy level, and I need you to be at a three,” I tell my best friend.
“Is this better?” Becca asks calmly. “Will you talk to me about Jaxon if I’m at this energy level?” Her voice is comically soft and low.
“No. We will never be talking about him or his stupid apology,” I say, taking a long pull from my coffee.
“Okay, grumpy pants,” Becca says. “It just seemed like, by the way you were both drinking heavily at your respective tables while pretending the other didn’t exist, you might have some feelings to work through.”
“It was just shocking to look over the back of the booth and see him there.”
Becca stares at me as I chew on the corner of my thumb.
“One, gross. Don’t take this out on your cuticle. Two, how did you not know he was there? He was literally sitting there when we walked in.”
“Our group was egregiously big and loud if you don’t recall.
Why we had to have a pre-bachelorette planning party to plan the bachelorette party is beyond me.
They have an event planner for it!” I can feel myself starting to get worked up about the whole situation again.
I hate being blindsided by anything, and a Jaxon Steele confrontation when I didn’t even know he was in town is about the biggest shock imaginable.
“And then Kelsey!” I rant. “Ooo, Kelsey. Not only did she know—she knew!—Jaxon was in town, but she didn’t tell me. And then she and Carter let him sleep it off at their house. She is going to get a real piece of my mind.”
“I’m sure they’re required to keep it confidential. Carter—”
I cut her off. “Don’t even get me started on Carter. That man was there with him. He could’ve stopped it all from happening. He knew I was at that other table. He knew Jaxon was sitting mere inches from me. He could’ve done something.”
“Like what?” Becca asks, popping a blueberry into her mouth as she makes herself a bowl of yogurt.
“Like warned me to leave before I made a spectacle of myself yelling at an international music star on the roof of the only restaurant on Main Street,” I say forcefully.
“It’s just my luck that someone like Janice heard me, and it’s currently being spread far and wide by the good people of Wild Bluffs. ”
Becca shrugs. “I doubt it even makes it to the men’s coffee group gossip.”
“You know they know more gossip than the women in town do, Becca,” I say as I drop onto a stool, my head in my hands, my latest outburst having sucked all the energy from my body.
“You know that. And now this is going to bring my failures as a teen back into the light. How devastated I was by a boy leaving—they always say it that way, like he was some crush of mine, not my best friend—so I didn’t get into any great colleges like Kelsey or earn some fancy scholarship like Bryn. ”
Becca slides onto the stool next to mine. “You always do this.”
“Do what?” I ask, sneaking past her hand to grab a blueberry out of her bowl.
“Make it sound like you’re some kind of failure. You’re smart. You’re funny. You have a kickass business with the best person in town.”
A knock sounds at our door, and we both pause, waiting to see who it is.
After a second, Becca’s face scrunches in confusion, and I know mine must look the same.
No one ever knocks and waits for us to answer the door; they just walk right in.
Except the UPS driver, and he doesn’t come to our house until at least two, and never on Sunday.
“Just a second,” I call, looking down to make sure the workout clothes I threw on this morning are covering everything. “If this is someone here to get a quote for a tabloid about last night or my friendship with Jaxon,” I say to Becca, “we’re moving to Alaska.”
Mentally preparing myself to see a reporter or at minimum one of the town gossips—probably Janice—waiting at the door, I take a deep breath before turning the knob. A breath that promptly whooshes out of my body at the sight of the man standing in front of me.
I was so mad last night, I must not have looked at my ex-best friend.
He’s a more defined version of everything I remember about him.
Giant, maybe even an inch or two taller than when I knew him.
I have to look up into his face, a rarity for me at almost six feet tall.
He’s in the same thing he was wearing last night: jeans and a light blue T-shirt that, based on the way it hugs his shoulders, looks like it was made just for him.
A strand of his chestnut-brown hair is in his eyes, and I have to fight the urge not to tug on it like I used to.
I hate that the boy I was once friends with is now attractive.
I especially hate that my body has decided to notice.
It also sucks that now I can’t pretend it’s stage makeup and good lighting that makes millions of women all around the world want to have his babies. Turns out, even hungover Jaxon will make even the most loyal of ovaries turn traitor.
“Nope,” I say, trying to shut the door, but his big hand reaches out and grabs it.
“Move your hand, asshole. You’re not welcome here.”
“Come on, Iz, just talk to me for five minutes,” he whispers.
At the sound of my name rolling off his tongue, I give up the battle I was going to lose against his very muscular arms and go on the offensive instead.
“Don’t you dare call me Iz,” I say, pointing a finger at him. “I told you—Iz is the name that my closest family and friends call me. That is not you.”
His dark eyes dull with an emotion I would describe as sadness if that feeling made any sense in this situation.
“Please just give me two minutes, Izzy.”
“Isabel would be preferable in this situation and all future ones, thanks,” I say. “And I thought you needed five minutes.”
“Will you give me five?”
“No. But I didn’t want to give you two, and you’ve already wasted that much of my life this morning. I was having a nice morning with Becca and then—”
“I came to apologize again,” he cuts in. Which is smart. I do tend to ramble during situations like this.
“I don’t care.”
“And I don’t expect you to forgive me,” he keeps going.
“Good. Because I don’t,” I retort, starting to slam the door again.
“I want us to be friends again.” He holds up a hand before I can protest. “And I know it will take work, but I’m here to warn you—I’m going to put in the work. I’m going to earn back your friendship.”
“Why?”
“Because I hurt you. I was in a shitty place, and I hurt you, more than I could’ve guessed. And I want to make it up to you.”
“Good luck with that,” I say, trying to shut the door again.
He lets out an exasperated breath. “I’m not giving up. I’ll do anything. I’ll buy you a car, a house, I’ll—”
“Don’t you dare buy me a car or a house, Jaxon Reid,” I practically growl. “My friendship can’t and won’t be bought.”
He nods. “No gifts. But you’re going to be seeing a lot more of me.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why are you even here? You didn’t show up for your dad’s funeral, but now you’re suddenly back in town, trying to be my friend again?”
He looks down at his shoes, and I consider using the distraction to shut the door in his face. Actually…
I slam the door shut.
I hear a muffled “fuck” on the other side and a nice ray of sunshine breaks through my cloudy day.
“I couldn’t write songs anymore!” Jaxon yells through the door.
“Sucks to suck,” I shout back.
Becca raises an eyebrow from her spot in the kitchen. I shrug. It’s not my problem.
“Please open up, Izzy,” Jaxon asks, almost too quietly for me to hear.
Then, a muted knock sounds, and I swear it’s his forehead hitting the door.
“Please.”
At the dejected tone of his voice, my fire is gone, and now I’m just sad. And sad Izzy doesn’t have the willpower to say no to the man who is currently at her door begging.
“What?” I ask, pulling open the door again.
“I wrote a whole verse this morning,” he rushes to get out as he holds the door open against my shoving. His biceps flex with the movement, and the defined strength in his arms reminds me again of just how much he’s changed from the boy I once knew.
“Congratu-fucking-lations,” I say. “I don’t care. If you’re looking for someone to be your biggest fan, I would suggest looking elsewhere. Like literally anywhere else. I don’t care if you wrote the best song of your life and are about to go double platinum.”
“I haven’t written a song in over a year,” he says as he stares pleadingly into my face.
That confession stuns me, and I stop pushing the door to gawk at him. “What?”
The boy I knew wrote songs constantly, particularly in the last few years before he left. He always had a pen with him, ready to write down anything that might pop into his head. After he used his arm as paper one too many times, I started carrying a little notebook around for him.
“It’s bad, Iz—Isabel.” The raw truth in his eyes tries to pull me in, but I fight against that feeling. It’s just left over from when we were friends.
“So it seems like you’re back on track now. Good luck with life and all.”
“I’m here because apparently Wild Bluffs is the magic solution to my writing problems.”
“Okay. It’s a small town, but there’s really no need to see me…ever again really,” I say, turning to walk away, open door be damned.
“Iz—” He grabs my wrist to stop me, and his palm on my skin sends tingling sensations racing through my stomach.
From all the ciders last night, obviously.
“Isabel,” I remind him. “And let go of me.”
He doesn’t. Instead, he pulls me toward him, his face inches from mine. Fuck, is he going to kiss me?
That would be bad.
So bad.
I don’t want to be kissed by Jaxon Reid—despite the fire that seems to have caught hold along the place where our skin meets.
Instead, he says softly, “I know I hurt you. And I know I deserve every ounce of anger you want to throw my way. But I’m so fucking sorry, Iz. I don’t expect you to accept that, but I’m going to be in town for a while, and while I’m here, I’m going to do everything in my power to prove it to you.”