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Crossing my arms over my chest, I turned my attention back toward the middle of the gym where Isabel was leading a class.
She moved in and out of the bags, shouting encouragement and occasionally stopping to help someone. Her hair, as always, was slicked off her face, and when she dropped to the floor to demonstrate something she wanted, it was long enough over her shoulder that it almost brushed the floor.
Wonder Woman, Anya had called her. And she’d asked her if she liked to sing. I knew she was thinking about that fucking list the moment she said that.
“You’re doing it again.”
This time, I didn’t look at Clark. “Can’t figure out my manager.”
In my peripheral vision, I saw his pencil slow, stop, and then start again. He always thought best when he was either drawing or building. “Why not?”
“I can’t get a read on her,” I said slowly. “But I feel like she’s … uncomfortable around me.”
Clark stopped drawing, spinning in my desk chair until he faced me. “She do a good job?”
“Yeah.”
As it always seemed to, without my permission and without any approval or forethought, my attention strayed to her. She was an irritation under my skin, not because of anything particularly vexing but simply because I felt like she was hiding something. Hiding herself.
And I didn’t like how that felt.
Because it lit the fuse on an urge that I’d long since buried.
Interest.
Everyone else at the gym had made a concerted effort to seek me out and get to know me. And it was the exact opposite with her. Maybe that was why I found my gaze drawn to her.
The softness she’d shown my daughter was the most disconcerting of all. Before that, all I’d seen of Isabel were shifting pieces that I couldn’t pinpoint, like she was standing in front of a fun-house mirror.
Clumsy one moment, graceful the next.
Impenetrable with a client, blushing in the next interaction.
Kind with the employees, refusing my kindness in turn.
Warm with those who knew her, candidly wary with me.
She was beautiful, as my daughter had said. Rarely smiled, rarely laughed. Not that I’d seen yet.
And I hated, more than I could’ve put into words, that I wanted to figure her out.
Hated that I’d checked her employee file, musing uncomfortably over the fact that she was a decade younger than I was yet seemed so much older than her age.
None of those things would I verbalize to my brother, who was already watching me with that analytical brain of his. I’d probably said too much as it was.
Because the second I saw her making Anya laugh, the second I watched them interact, the very first thing in my mind was absolutely terrifying:
Not this one. It can’t be her.
For a host of reasons. Too many to count.
Before I knew what Anya had asked her, I’d mentally cataloged each piece of Isabel that I knew. When she came up as the opposite of each thing Beth had listed to our daughter a million hours earlier, I felt the impact of it like a blow.
Disappointment.
“Aiden?” Clark asked.
“Forget I said anything,” I murmured. “I’ll get over it.”
