by Lily Zante
She heard the sound of the front door slamming, and then Cara knocked on her door. “He’s gone, Izzy. It’s only me.”
She opened the door.
“You okay?” Cara asked as Izzy sat back down at her desk.
“You’re studying?”
“I’ve got a lot on.”
“Hey.” Cara stood behind her and placed her hands on her shoulders. “Do you want to talk about it?”
There wasn’t much to talk about. She’d told Cara everything and hadn’t left her room since yesterday. It had been difficult, trying to hide her grief from Jacob as Morris drove them back, trying to put on a brave face to Savannah when she returned Jacob home.
She shook her head. “I’m done going over and over with it.”
It was worse than she imagined. She’d been holding out for the hope that Xavier would say it was all a mistake; that maybe Jacob had gotten his facts wrong, or misheard the conversation.
She had been banking on that.
But his denial never came.
Instead, he had confirmed her worst nightmare.
The bet was real.
A $10K bet.
Who in their right mind placed that kind of a bet?
People like these. Filthy, rich, dirty assholes. Like the man who had screwed her father over.
Never in her darkest nightmares had she imagined this would happen to her.
Never.
And what hurt more than Xavier’s deception, more than his cunning, more than all those intimate words and private moments they had shared, was that he had been playing her all along.
She had opened her heart up to him and told him everything. He knew things about her family and her father that Cara had no clue about.
How stupid could she have been? How blind, and so easy to dupe?
She had become one of those vacuous airheads, the girls who lost their mind over a guy—the kinds of girls she used to feel sorry for. And now she was one of them, except that she was the main character in her own romance-gone-wrong horror movie.
A tear rolled down her cheek and she wiped it away quickly. She had tried to be brave in front of Cara yesterday when she returned. Hadn’t wanted her friend to see how deep the deception had cut. How much it had broken her.
“You look rough, Iz,” Cara said, leaning against the wall, facing her. “A good cry will get it all out of your system.”
“I’m not going to cry over that asshole.”
“That’s my girl.” Cara smiled.
“I never expected this from him. Even now, when I think about everything he ever said to me—”
Everything he ever did to me.
“I can’t get my head around it. He was such a good actor.” She would never trust another man again.
“You turned soft in the head, Iz.”
Thanks.
She fell for him, and she’d let her guard down. If only she had been strong and stayed as wary of him as she had been on the island, she might not have ended up like this. Now she questioned every single thing—him coming to the apartment that first time when he’d come down to the pool in the basement, and when he’d told Savannah about Jacob’s fears about Tobias not loving him. Xavier had commandeered all of that. He’d made it so that she’d lost her job, and opened the way for him to give her more work just so that he could get close to her.
He had done whatever he’d needed, to win the bet. He’d ripped out her heart, her trust, her softness, and he’d made her feel like a commodity.
In the end, there really hadn’t been much difference in what Shoemoney had done, to what Xavier had done. Except that Shoemoney hadn’t done it for money, he’d done it out of a sense of perversion.
Xavier had done it for fun.
“I gave him a chance.”
“He must have been good in bed,” Cara chuckled, then retracted. “Sorry, Iz. That was low. I was only trying to make a joke.”
The situation was a joke.
Izzy looked up at her friend and confessed. “We never …”
“But that time I walked in.”
“We were just kissing.”
“Day-um,” drawled Cara. “You guys were in such a hot cinch that time, I really thought…” Cara paused, as if she was contemplating something. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. It’s probably for the best, Iz, that you didn’t give him everything.”
That was what their weekend away was supposed to be for. Time away from the city, somewhere nice, somewhere different, Xavier had said. ‘Just you, me and a whole lot of getting to know one another.’
Now it was another thing she viewed with suspicion.
And Luke.
Now the visit to The Oasis fell into place. That night she had put it down to paranoia, the way Xavier and Luke had spoken, as if in code, she had noticed it enough to remember it. She hadn’t expected Luke to be like that. The guy had seemed decent enough when she’d spoken to him at the island. But then she hadn’t known he owned the bar. More than a few bars and clubs, according to Xavier. The guy was loaded.
Typical.
Two filthy rich assholes together were going to be worse than one. She lowered her head, shame burning all over her as she placed a hand over her face.
“Stop it,” Cara said, getting up and putting her arms around her. “Don’t keep thinking about the past and all the stuff that went on. Let it go. You’re going to move on from this, and I’m going to help you.”
“I can’t help it. Every conversation we ever had, tells me what I so blindly failed to see. It was in my face the whole time. I thought he was changing because he was starting to feel something for me. I thought we were changing together, me giving him a chance, him confiding in me, me confiding in him.” The stuff of normal relationships. She had opened up to him because she had believed that he had genuinely cared. “Now I see it for what it really was. An act. And all for the sake of money. My feelings meant nothing to him.”
“You weren’t to know. So you have to stop beating yourself up about it.”
“You’re right,” she decided, drawing back her shoulders and lifting her head higher. As if she could magically harden her heart and wipe away the hurt and humiliation that now tormented her. “I’m going to stop whining, and I’m going to pick myself up and block him out of my head.”
“And what about all the work you do for him?”
“He can stick that up his ass.” She still had the babysitting job with Jacob, and, she hoped, more hours once Savannah’s pregnancy progressed. Maybe she wouldn’t need to go home for the summer, and could afford to stay on here. And if she got an internship for the summer, that would be the best news of all. It would pay well enough that she could stay in New York until the next year started. And that kind of experience would look good on her resume and possibly set her up for the future.
“I can’t think about him,” she said, massaging her temples. “I can’t waste my time on him anymore.”
“Chalk it down to experience, Iz. Guys like him are scum.”
“I can usually spot scum a mile off. I don’t know why I thought he would be different.”
It wouldn’t be a mistake she would ever make again.
Chapter 46
Valentine’s Day was fucked.
Bang, bang, bang.
Workmen in safety overalls and helmets were at the far corner of the room. A handful of guys in safety gear were scattered around the dusty shell of what once used to be a memorabilia store. This was Luke’s new project.
Bang, bang, bang.
The sound of a drill, filled the air.
Men shouted at one another.
“What?” Xavier shouted back.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” Luke shouted, directly into his ear. “It’s dangerous without a helmet.”
He hadn’t exactly come to admire the new work in progress. He moved closer to his friend and shouted in his ear. “I can’t hear you. Can we talk elsewhere?”
Luke nodded, then walked outside.
Xavier followed. His friend took off his helmet. His face and hair flecked with dust.
Bang, bang, bang.
“Is it always so noisy?” Xavier asked.
“It’s under construction, pal. What do you expect?”
“It’s a good size,” he remarked. “And you’ve hit the jackpot with the location”.
“Yeah, I know,” Luke replied, looking pretty smug.
“You’re impossible to get a hold of these days, dude.” Xavier cast his eye all around the dusty, dirty, demolition site. “But I can see why.”
“I’ve been busy, and I’m going to be wrapped up in this for the next few months.”
Great. Just when he needed someone to talk to, his friend was out of bounds. “Do you want to go and get a beer or something?” He needed to offload the shitstorm that was his life now.
“I could do with a couple of beers,” said Luke, swiping his hands through his hair. “But I can’t today. There’s just too much going on.” He peered closer. “Why? What brings you here?”
“She found out.” His lungs squeezed each time he thought of it. “Izzy found out about the bet.”
“She what?” Luke squinted in confusion. The banging continued in the distance, the shouting, the drilling. It didn’t seem like the right place to get the kind of advice he was after.
“She found out. She knows, and she hates me for it.”
“How the hell did she find out?”
“I have no fucking idea.” Xavier let out a heavy breath. “Wasn’t you, was it?” he asked, his eyes on Luke’s face.
His friend looked at him in disbelief. “You’re really asking me?” He shook his head. “I never said anything. You know I wouldn’t, right?”
He had never doubted Luke’s loyalty, but given that it had only been the two of them, and that Izzy wasn’t telepathic, he was stumped.
“I don’t know how the fuck she found out, then.”
Luke looked confused. “You didn’t seem to be getting anywhere pursuing her, and I thought you’d forgotten about it.”
“I wasn’t getting anywhere, and I did forget about it.” Only, between then and now, he’d fallen for her, and the bet had hung over him like a dagger the entire time, something he’d needed to take care of, but had never found the right moment to do so. And now, the dagger had fallen.
“So, what’s the problem?”
“Things changed.”
“Things changed?”
“I like her.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I meant to tell her, but she found out.”
Luke's face was a mixture of many things, confusion, surprise, shock and disbelief. “Why did you need to tell her? I wasn’t going to tell her. She’d never have known.”
“She knows now. It’s all blown up.”
“I’ve never known you to not like pretty and sexy, and Izzy seems to be the perfect combination. What made her warm towards you?”
“Stuff,” he said, “Maybe she saw my better side.” Or maybe, he’d finally met someone he could the drop the façade with.
“You must have done your best to charm her?” Luke suggested, with a grin, that told him his friend knew all about him.
“I didn’t play her,” he answered, remembering all the times he had tried to hold back. “And what we had wasn’t based on trying to get her into bed.” A sad smile touched his lips. With Izzy it hadn’t been about sex, because they hadn’t gone that far, it wasn’t about lust, and getting dirty—even though he’d loved doing the things he’d done to her.
“Why are you smiling?” Luke asked, looking confused. “Is this still a game to you?”
“No. No.” Fuck, no. That’s exactly why he was in this serious shit. He was starting to fall for this girl, and for once it wasn’t because of the number of orgasms they’d shared.
He loved her for her heart, and mind, and soul. For her fighting spirit and all the things she believed in. For the things she’d made him see. “I’m crazy about that girl.”
“How crazy, exactly?”
“The kind of crazy I’ve never been.”
Luke whistled. “Shit.”
“You see my problem? She found out, about everything. About the bet, about the money, and that it was you and me who talked about it.”
“She knows I’m implicated?” Luke didn’t seem to like that.
His friend’s apparent unease gnawed at him. “Tell me you don’t have any designs on her?” Because it jolted him, pricked him like a thorn, that it could have been Luke who told Izzy. His newfound suspicion burrowed a hole in his gut, especially when he thought back to all the conversations he’d had with Luke, lately, about who he was seeing.
“You idiot,” Luke growled. “I’m not interested in your girl.” Xavier looked at him as if he didn’t quite believe him. He’d seen them laughing and talking a couple of times, especially early on, when he’d been trying to win Kay over with those cheesy magic tricks.
“You sure?”
“Calm your shit,” Luke said, looking annoyed. “I’m not interested in your girl.
Xavier’s jaw loosened. “Okay.”
“The bet wasn’t my idea, pal.” Luke reminded him.
He knew. “It was my fucking stupid idea. So now, tell me. How do I get out of this mess?”
“You’ve tried to explain to her?”
“Yes, I’ve tried. I’ve texted and emailed and left long messages on her phone. She won’t talk to me.”
Luke covered his face with his hand. “I can see why. You were an idiot. It was a crazy thing to do.”
“Who’s side are you on?”
“On yours, you idiot. I’m just trying to think it through.”
“I was drunk. I thought I had something to prove, and I believed she was acting all not interested, and that it was going to be easy to make her see.”
“Make her see how awesome you were?”
He cringed inside, and hated his friend for stating the obvious. “I hate hearing you describe me like that.”
“Luke?” One of the builders called him over.
Luke put his hand up and spread out five fingers, before turning to him again. “I can’t talk. My men need me. But, look. Here’s the thing, pal. You have to give her time. You have to stop pestering her. You’re going to have to wait for her to come to you, but it depends.”
Xavier looked up. “On what?”
“If she was really into you.”
“She was.”
She had been. He was certain of it. Izzy Laronde wasn’t the type of girl to give any guy—no matter how interested he was in her—the time of day.
He should know.
It was what had made him place the bet in the first place. But once he got to know her, once they started to click, once he started to fall for her, she had started to feel something for him. She wasn’t the type of girl to let a guy like him into her deepest and innermost places, but she had.
Something had changed between them.
“Then you have to give her time to find her way back.”
One of his guys came up to him again. “We need you to take a look at this wall now.”
“I’m coming.” Luke turned to him. “Sorry. I need to go. Now’s not a good time.”
“I appreciate it.”
“We’ll get together, sometime.”
“Yeah. You call me. I’m not as busy as you.”
He walked back to his car and climbed in, pinching the bridge of his nose hard. He’d gotten himself into this mess, and he was going to get himself out of it.
It all depended on what stage of hating him Izzy was at.
Time, Luke had said.
Give her time.
Knowing how long it had taken him to get her to trust him, he was prepared for the long haul, because he understood how much he’d hurt her. With all he knew about her and her family, and the things she had been through, what he had done must have crushed her to pieces. The thought killed him, and he decided to do
what it took to win her back.
His phone rang, just then, and his heart leapt, as it did each time, in case it was Izzy.
Fuck.
It was Tobias.
“Why the fuck has Matthias left me a message congratulating me on the twins? How the hell would he know?”
His first reaction was denial, quickly followed by anger. “I don’t know. Why the fuck are you asking me?”
Tobias was pissed. More than pissed. He hadn’t shouted. He hadn’t expressed rage. He sounded normal, and that was how Xavier knew, his brother was more than pissed.
“I told you the news was a secret. It was meant to stay within the family.”
“I haven’t told anyone.”
“The fuck you haven’t.”
“I haven’t.”
Tobias hung up.
Xavier punched the steering wheel. Then again, a second time.
He didn’t need Tobias’s shit right now.
Chapter 47
The weeks crawled by miserably, and the air of gloom that hung around her didn’t lighten.
College and her studies kept her busy, as did her jobs on the side. Savannah had asked her to babysit Jacob a few times lately, which was a good thing because she no longer worked for Xavier anymore.
It had taken one short email to let Xavier know she couldn’t work for him any longer, and to her surprise he had accepted her reason and told her he understood. In the beginning, he had sent her emails and messages, had even left long, rambling voicemails for her when she refused to answer his calls. But she had purposely ignored all his attempts to get in touch.
She didn’t want to hear more excuses and lies. She didn’t want to be duped again.
A consequence of severing all her ties to him was that she missed the extra money, and what she had earned from him was a generous amount. His work had been simple enough to do, and she had been hoping to ditch the online courses guy whose work demands were getting ridiculous. She would go weeks without anything from him, and then he would want a heap of stuff done within a day or two. She’d had to pull all-nighters a few times in order to get his work done. It had been hard, and her studies had suffered, and the man was a pig. Demanding and rude. She’d been hoping to ditch him, but with Xavier’s work gone, her choices were limited.
