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“Like it would have been when she first started throwing herself at you?”
“No, not like that,” I say, dropping her phone on the table and stepping closer to her. “It wouldn’t have been a shit show back then, it would have been the right thing to do. I fucked that up. This time, I thought the best thing to do was to get rid of her with as few waves as possible. I never have to see her again; you never have to see her again. I didn’t think riling her up would be the surest way to get her to leave us all alone.”
“I don’t know how to believe you,” she says, sounding like a wounded animal.
“I know you don’t. That’s going to take time, but we’ll get there.”
“How do you know that?”
How do I know? Because I still love her, because she’s the mother of my child, because I won’t stop until we’re on the same page. Because I’d give up my whole life to make life for her and Sadie better. Isla isn’t ready to hear any of that yet, it would only make her more wary of me. Someday I’ll have the chance to tell her and know she trusts it.
“I just do, Cole,” I say with a casual shrug. Just then, Saint lets herself known with a loud mewling. “Shit, she’s going to wake up Sadie.”
“It’s weird you have a cat,” Isla says, following me as I pick up my furball and drop onto the couch with her on my lap.
“She’s good company,” I say, reaching for her hand and pulling her down next to me. “Isla, meet Saint.”
“Your favorite pussy.”
“No,” I say, and she blushes a pretty shade of red. “Is this what’s been happening all this time? Pictures from strange accounts?”
“Yes.”
“When did they start?”
“My first birthday without…” she says, but stops abruptly and looks away toward the wall of windows. The world is as dark outside as the feeling in my soul.
“Me. The first birthday without me.”
“Yes,” she says, nodding. “It was a selfie too.” She sounds scared, not sad or mad, but truly scared.
“Of her and me,” I ask, wrapping my arm around her shoulders and snuggling closer to her.
“In bed.” The two short words pierce my heart.
“The fuck?” I would have never let her take a picture of us in bed. “Do you still have it?”
“Probably, if I unblock all the accounts.”
“How many accounts were there? Never mind, go get your phone. Let me see it all.”
Isla does it without a word, which at least means she’s not arguing with me. She plops back down, unlocks the screen, and hands it to me.
“Mostly, they came through Insta. Some on Facebook, but I deactivated that account a long time ago.” Her focus shifts to my cat, who—like the traitor she is—moves off my lap to gain more attention from the one currently petting her head. “She’s pretty.”
I almost say not as pretty as you, except I’m instantly consumed by the long list of blocked accounts on Isla’s account. There’s at least fifty here as I scroll.
“Do these all have pictures of me?”
“No. Some were random dick pictures. I think those were from her, too. Maybe she wanted me to think they were you, but…”
“But you know my dick,” I say absently.
“No, thank you,” she snarks.
I screenshot every page of blocked accounts before I start the process of unblocking the first handful. “We’ll block them again after I finish looking through them, okay?”
She hums but doesn’t pay me much attention. Pulling up the first picture that was sent to her, my blood runs fucking cold as ice. Not only is the picture harassment for Isla, but it was a complete invasion of my privacy as I lay there in my bed, fast asleep. While Trina drapes herself artfully next to me and snaps an intimate picture. I’m naked as the day I was born, the corner of the sheet barely covering my junk while it also covers the important bits of Trina’s body.
