Chapter 20 Isobel #2
“Isobel.” The voice was hard, and Izzy’s stomach swooped low. “Are you okay?” Dane demanded.
He smelled expensive. It was something in his soap she hadn’t been able to identify, a clean and masculine scent that had a way of clinging to all his clothes. It wafted into her nose as she leaned back against him, a grin stealing over her face. “I’m great, Sheriff.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Before she could answer, the stranger whose foot she’d stomped on aimed an accusatory finger at her, the bass swallowing his insult as Dane took her by the elbow and led her off the dance floor. A muscle tensed in his jaw. “Why did you leave the house? I’ve been worried sick!”
That was far too many questions, and the answers felt…
hard. So Izzy shucked him off and strode toward the bar, cheeks and neck and heart aflame.
Everything was soft-lit and spinning. She made to pick up another drink, but Dane was right there, and he slammed the glass back down on the sticky counter, next to a fleet of lipstick-kissed glasses.
His favorite shade—Rose Coquette—wasted on a room of people Izzy didn’t want.
She spun to face him, fire-eyed. “Go away.”
“No.” He sounded angry. He sounded hurt. “We have a deal.”
Damn their deal.
They’d made it years ago, after his divorce was final.
A pact, for old friends. He’d just been promoted to sheriff, and he’d gotten a call about a woman dancing on the bar and singing a very loud, music-free rendition of “Jessie’s Girl” on repeat.
When Dane had found her, she had passed out on the linoleum with a sticker on her cheek.
A blizzard had made the road up to the cottage dangerously slick, so he’d taken her back to his shoebox apartment. Esther had slept in a crib in the kitchen. Izzy had taken the scratchy couch, nursing her pride and a burgeoning hangover in a pair of borrowed gray sweatpants she’d never given back.
The next morning, he’d held her hand while she’d called to find an AA meeting.
After that, she’d promised to tell him whenever she wanted to drink.
Day or night. In return, Dane had opened up to her for the first time since his split with June had soured their once-easy trio.
He’d confided how afraid he was of failing both Lenny and his daughter.
“I’m not good at being the glue,” he’d told her miserably. “Not like you.”
She’d reassured him that night, and many nights since, “You’re a good dad.” And, begrudgingly, “a good brother too.” That was still true, even if Lenny was a human fungus parasitizing Dane’s forgiving nature.
Izzy didn’t want to admit that she needed his help tonight.
“Why did you leave?” Dane asked again.
“I… I don’t know. I had to follow Lenny—”
“To a bar?”
She flushed. “At least I did something.”
Izzy was primed for his anger. She wasn’t prepared, however, for him to soften. Dane stepped closer and folded his arms around her. “That you did,” he whispered, ghosting a soft touch to the bruise on her arm that Lenny had left behind. “You brave, terrifying woman.”
Izzy was frozen, afraid to let herself sink into his touch.
Dane pulled back and held her by the shoulders. “But what if he’d hurt you, Isobel? Hurt you more?”
“Why did you just let him go?”
“I didn’t,” Dane said, clearly appalled.
“But you’re not out looking for him.”
“I was looking for you!” The strobing, colorful lights overhead cast his pale skin in strange and sickening hues. Dane’s expression was earnest. “I had to make sure you were okay. I have deputies out searching for Lenny.”
“He’ll go after them,” Izzy said.
Dane paused, then nodded. “I think so too.”
It was all so hard to think about with her head still spinning. Izzy backed up, reaching behind her for a stool to settle on.
“I know you’re worried about Arthur and your sister,” Dane said. “But we’ll find them, Isobel.”
“I know.” She believed him. So why didn’t his words comfort her?
Dane hesitated. “I brought Esther to June’s on my way over so I can stay at your place tonight if you or your dad need anything.”
Thoughts of her father pierced through the haze. She hadn’t meant to be gone this long. How much time had passed?
“I’ll rejoin the search tomorrow morning.”
Izzy huffed. “I don’t need a babysitter.” She spun to face the bar and snatched up an abandoned glass of beer, which Dane immediately plucked out of her hand.
“Hey!”
“You don’t want that, Isobel.”
The syllables of her name slid over his tongue in the most intoxicating way.
In her boozy haze, his eye contact felt deliciously bold.
Dane rolled up his sleeves. Careful. Precise.
Ridiculous, given the venue. She let out a wet, derisive snort.
If Prince Charming was trying to keep his shirt clean, he’d come to the wrong place.
The surfaces in Dawson’s were always sticky, the air always thick with booze.
Drinkers spat their sunflower seeds onto the floor and threw darts at a hay bale with a spray-painted boob in place of a target.
If you hit the nipple, you got a free beer.
He didn’t belong in a place like this.
He didn’t belong with her.
Dane lifted her chin. His touch made the rest of the room around them blur. It was a little unfair he could pull her in like this when her focus was in tatters. She wanted to undo him, not the other way around.
Tears came to her eyes. Dammit. Izzy never cried unless she was drunk. “Why do you still defend him?” Izzy was proud of the words because they didn’t slur. Drunk Izzy didn’t slur. Drunk Izzy didn’t wobble. Drunk Izzy didn’t get sad.
Dane sighed. “I think drunk Izzy should have some water.”
She frowned. Had she said that out loud?
Dane signaled to Priya, who appeared holding a bottle, the traitor. “Drink,” he said.
A hiccup closed her throat. “I was”—hic—“drinking.” She made to push his offering away but knocked the bottle over instead.
Dane caught it, then unscrewed the cap with a sharp twist. “Drink water, love.”
Izzy consented to a grumpy sip, still waiting for his answer.
“I do not defend my brother. I’m… trying, failing maybe, to make amends.”
“With him?” she scoffed.
Dane’s eyes never strayed. “Is that so hard for you to understand?”
Lenny’s words rang between her ears like the world’s most repulsive tinnitus. Fucking my brother won’t stop him from hating you when he finds out you’ve been lying to him.
“Yes,” she admitted.
“You have Arthur, though.”
She rocked back. “What?”
“I’m just saying, you know what it is to love a… complicated person,” he said. “It’s one thing I really admire in you.”
“Arthur isn’t complicated!” Izzy snapped. He was, in fact, all too easy for her to understand. So was Lenny. Both of them had taken their grief over the loss of a parent, the loss of love, and sharpened it into a weapon.
The difference was who they pointed the blade at.
She shoved away from the bar. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”
Dane followed her out into the empty street. “Isobel, wait.”
“I don’t want to fight,” she said, head aching.
“Are we fighting?” Dane challenged.
She didn’t turn to face him, but the sound of his footsteps over the pavement warned her of his approach. Delicately, Dane put his hands on her upper arms. When Izzy leaned back into his chest, he wrapped his arms more firmly around her.
“They’re not the same,” she whispered.
The Arthur she knew had only ever tried to make life a little better. She’d missed him so much, and now he was back and her father was hurt because of him, and Dane was bent on chasing him down.
Everything about it felt wrong.
Dane kissed her hair. “Let me take you home, love.”
She turned, but Dane was a blur. Damn these tears. Damn his stupid shirt and his stupid perfect smell. Izzy wanted to see him come undone. She wanted to pull the wild out of this careful, measured man. “Is that an order?”
“Do you want it to be, Isobel?”
And though he’d said her name already that night, something about the shape of it on his lips now loosened the tension in her chest. She took a deep breath, savoring the syllables.
Dane smiled, unaware of how such a little word could so deeply rearrange her. “Come on. We’ll negotiate a truce on the way, hmm?”
And maybe it was the alcohol plying her, or maybe she was tired of carrying it all alone, but when he pulled his keys from his pocket, she stepped forward and slipped back into the person she wanted to be.
Battered, but still fighting.
Isobel, again.
As they drove through Audrey’s single stoplight, Dane reached across the console and took her hand. Isobel let him rub his thumb over the ridges of her knuckles. For diplomacy and all.
Dane gave her fingers a squeeze. “Everything will be okay.”
Isobel said nothing, wanting to believe him.