Chapter 20 Isobel
Isobel
Dawson’s Bar was the last place Isobel should be right now. Of course that’s where Lenny went.
Outside the door, Isobel hesitated. The flickering rainbow lights shining through the glass cast her pale skin in every color of ruin and play. It beckoned her to shuck off her worries, to enter.
To stay.
She steadied herself with a long breath. She’d gone almost a year without drinking, and it felt good. She didn’t want to go inside, but Lenny was in there, and Lenny was looking for the people she loved most.
Isobel still held her shoes in her hand, her bare feet muddied from her pursuit. She walked to the nearest patch of grass and wiped her soles clean, slipping the heels back on before she wrapped her hand around the doorknob and pushed in.
She wouldn’t drink. She was just getting information.
The crush of people made it difficult to spot her target, so Isobel angled to the bar, where a familiar face was mixing drinks.
“Izzy?” When Priya recognized her, her whole face lit up with a golden smile. The bartender was even more dazzling now than she’d been when she and Izzy had dated, and she was by far the most attractive person in the room. Married life suited her.
“Hey, Pree.”
Isobel hadn’t started drinking in earnest until after they’d ended things.
Life had taken a dark turn for her family after Dane and June’s disastrous wedding reception.
After Arthur had left and her father’s tree had sprouted from his ribs, Eva had fallen apart entirely.
Her family had needed Isobel to hold them up, so she had.
She’d dropped out of college and come home to bear more of the workload on the farm.
She’d taken on full responsibility for the household’s upkeep, broken up with Priya, and held her sister while she grieved.
When the noise got too loud, Isobel had discovered that a round of shots made things quiet again.
But none of that mattered, because she wasn’t here to drink.
Priya had tied her cropped black hair into a tiny bun on her nape. “What can I get you?” she asked. Isobel didn’t miss the nervous edge to her smile.
“Lemonade and fries?”
Visible relief melted the tension on Priya’s face. “You got it.” She worked quickly, her eyes straying back to Isobel as she scooped the crinkle cuts into a basket. “Are you doing all right, Iz? I heard about your sister.”
“I’m fine.” Isobel thumbed a water stain on the counter, desperate for a distraction. “How’s Molly?”
To her relief, Priya took the bait and her face split into a broad grin. “She’s good. We got a dog.”
Isobel’s plastic smile softened to something real. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Peggy’s collie had her litter last month. I think I’ve been replaced.”
As they laughed, Isobel searched the crowd.
“You lookin’ for the sheriff?”
“No, I…” A familiar flash of red hair caught her attention, and Isobel turned.
There. Lenny was seated across from Avi Dawson, Priya’s brother and one of Lenny’s oldest friends.
They spoke too quietly for Isobel to hear, but the lines of their bodies were carved in tension.
When Avi downed his last bit of beer, the two men stood.
Dammit.
Isobel left her place at the bar and rushed to stand between them and the door.
“Out of my way, Moreau,” Lenny said.
But Isobel didn’t move, didn’t so much as break eye contact, even though a whisper of danger made the skin on her arms pebble with goose bumps. “No.”
Avi scoffed. “The hell she means, no?”
The words made Lenny’s cheeks turn pink. “Move. Now,” he clipped.
Isobel shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
It was about time Lenny learned that he didn’t get to have something just because he wanted it.
Dane believed Lenny had changed, but he’d also been acting as his brother’s keeper for as long as Isobel had known the Walkers.
Love could blind you to the truth. Isobel had watched this play out so many times before.
Lenny screwed up, people got hurt, and Dane always took the fall.
It was time to break the cycle.
“Is there a problem here?” Priya asked, coming up behind Isobel and brushing her palms on her apron.
“The problem,” Avi said, his body language twitching with irritation as he lifted his chin toward Isobel, “is her.” He looked down his nose at Isobel. “You’re not even supposed to be here.”
“Izzy is always welcome here,” Priya snapped.
He was right, though. This room was overwhelming. The low, pulsing lights. The smell of cheap beer. The memories thickening the air around her. Isobel’s mouth watered, the taste of a whiskey dancing on her tongue, a delicate temptation she shouldn’t—couldn’t—give in to.
Isobel searched inward for the right mask to fortify her, but it was difficult.
All these people knew her as the party girl she’d been before.
She was Izzy here, not Isobel. Between these walls, she became all the versions of herself she’d tried so hard to let go of.
Not wanting to let her discomfort show, she lifted her chin. “I know what you’re doing.”
Lenny cocked his head, his gaze dropping to his brother’s jacket around her shoulders. “It was you,” he said. “In the office.”
Isobel stiffened.
Lenny’s mouth pulled up in a sneer. “So. You were what he was so busy doing tonight. Figures.”
Isobel glared to hide the creep of a flush up her neck.
“You Moreaus are all the same, you know,” he said flatly. “You think you’re all so good.”
To Isobel’s surprise, the words, like a knife, found a chink in her armor and slid beneath. When she tried to answer, the words stopped in her throat, her mind crowding with doubts.
Maybe he was right. She’d done a lot of things she wasn’t proud of over the last eight years.
Lenny came a little closer. “But you know what?” His breath ghosted against the shell of her ear. “You’re just like me.”
“That’s enough,” Priya said uneasily.
Lenny ignored her. “You and I both know what really happened that night,” he went on in a low voice. “And fucking my brother won’t stop him from hating you when he finds out you’ve been lying to him.”
Isobel slapped him.
The next few moments happened very fast.
Lenny seized Isobel by the hair and ripped her away from the door. She tripped over an empty chair, knocking a tumbler off the nearest table as she fell. Her knees hit the linoleum, pain strobing through her.
“Hey!” Priya barked.
Isobel’s heart beat hard. She stared at the shattered glass on the floor before her. Only when a carmine drip oozed beneath her knees did she realize she’d cut herself.
“Bitch,” Lenny muttered. He grabbed Avi and the two of them tore into the night, Priya shouting obscenities after her brother. Isobel stared numbly after them. She touched the aching place on her scalp where Lenny had tugged hard enough to pull some hairs out by the roots.
Priya crouched beside her. “Fuck, Iz, I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault,” Isobel said, her voice cracking.
Priya signaled someone over Isobel’s shoulder. “Call the sheriff.”
“No!” Isobel snapped, a lump balling in her throat.
She didn’t want to see Dane right now. “I’m fine.
Just… give me a minute.” She stood and sank down onto her stool, the room throbbing around her.
People were looking at her. Normally she didn’t care, but Lenny had cracked the shell of her mask, making it impossible to pretend she was unaffected.
Usually when Isobel felt this out of control, she turned to Dane.
But Dane was too busy seeking answers to questions he shouldn’t be asking.
Isobel closed her eyes, letting the world fall away. She was sweating, her skin as slick as her mouth was dry. A shiver of thirst narrowed her world to the taste of whiskey on her tongue.
But she couldn’t taste it. She only remembered.
An out-of-towner sat on the stool nearest her, an amber shot of something good in front of him.
Don’t. It was Dane’s voice in her head, but Dane wasn’t here.
“Pree!” Isobel flushed with conviction. Just one drink. Maybe two. That’s all she needed to take the edge off and get control again. “Double bourbon. Neat.”
Priya hesitated. “Iz, I don’t think that’s a good—”
“Now.” Isobel snatched up the stranger’s glass. “I’ll pay for this,” she promised him, before throwing it back. The liquid burned its way down her throat. Oaky. Warming. Wonderful.
She let out a sigh, already feeling more herself.
Izzy couldn’t help but giggle at the words the strange man spoke into her ear. Not a local. Not a very good flirt either, but his breath tickled the hairs on her neck as they danced to the beat of a song Izzy hadn’t heard in ages.
“You want to go somewhere more private?” he asked a bit too loudly.
Izzy patted his cheek and shook her head. “I just want to dance.”
At some point after Lenny had left the bar, she’d lost her grip on her Isobel mask and slipped into Izzy again. This was who she was, after all, under all her good intentions. This was her true face.
The thought made her ache. She didn’t want to be Izzy. And she didn’t want to be sad. But it felt good to forget, just for a minute, to lose herself in dance and in the feeling of being desirable, even if it was only in a stranger’s eyes.
She saw a flash of red hair in the crowd, there and gone. The lightness in her chest dissipated when the stranger closed a hand on her waist and tugged her back. “Come on, Lily. Stop teasing me.”
She blinked. Took him in. Only moments ago, he’d looked so harmless. Young and carefree, nervous even. Now he looked irritated. When his hand went south to grab her ass, she pushed away.
“My name is Izzy,” she slurred.
The answer wasn’t quite right, even to her ears. Her words, in the voice of a stranger. She turned to walk away, but the man grabbed her wrist. She drove her heel onto his foot, causing him to howl with pain. Thrown off-balance, Izzy fell back a step and slammed smack into a broad stone chest.
A very warm broad stone chest.