“Your kiss with Isabelle got him so riled up, he had to pay her a visit,” Grayson mutters, his voice husky with humored excitement.
As I crank my neck to watch the main entrance of Isabelle’s apartment building, I ask, “How did you get the audio?” I’ve only just asked my question when the answer smacks into me. “I left my jacket in her coat closet.” When Isaac bursts through the rotating doors of Isabelle’s apartment a few seconds later, my lips curl into a grin. “And I’m going to need to get it.”
“Yesss,” Grayson replies with a hiss. “Play the fucker at his own game.”
My steps back to Isabelle’s apartment are nowhere near as weighed down as the ones I used when leaving it. They’re extra springy and have me reaching Isabelle’s front door in a record-breaking forty-eight seconds. Yes, I was counting.
“Play it cool, BJ,” Grayson suggests, throwing me off my game with his unusual nickname. Usually, punk, dipshit, and dickface are his go-to terms of endearment. He must be cautious my overzealous knock has me walking into a trap like I did the night I babysat Olivia after Tobias informed her that her brother had gone missing. She was as miserable as me, and just as drunk. We stumbled into bed—once—and I’m still paying for it. “Be the charmer you were most of the night. Be the opposite of the man she’s craving. She isn’t seeking a hookup right now. She needs a friend.”
“I am her friend,” I mutter back just as Isabelle cracks open her door.
I’m taken back when I take in her red cheeks, water-brimming eyes, and cracked lips. I thought euphoria would be pumping out of her, not fear. “I… umm… forgot to get my coat. But you look busy, so I’ll come back later.”
“Where the fuck are you going?” Grayson asks at the same time Isabelle assures, “Brandon, it’s fine. I’m not busy.”
When she ushers me into the foyer of her home before moving to the coat closet to gather my jacket, Grayson reminds me to survey the area. “Is anything out of place?”
I shift on my feet to face the table we dined at. The glasses have been moved—mainly, my wine glass that’s minus the lipstick print Izzy’s has.
“He mentioned something about the glasses. Any chance you can offer to wash those at home for her? One of them could possibly have a print on it.”
After jerking up my chin, I head for Isabelle’s dining table. I’m barely a foot out of the entryway when Isabelle grumbles something under her breath before she curls her arm around my waist and forcefully evicts me from her apartment. “I’m sorry, Brandon, but I have to do something really important.” She bumps me with her hip to dislodge me from her doorway before jabbing her key into the lock and twisting it into place.
The confusion on my face triples when Grayson coughs out, “Nine o’clock.” When I glance at the side wall of the hallway, he laughs. “Not your nine o’clock, dipshit. Nine o’clock on her neck.”
“Jesus.” I breathe out when I catch sight of what Grayson is on about. Even with her hair pulled over her shoulders, a massive love bite is peeking out of Isabelle’s dark strands. It looks recent like it just happened, which I can testify to since it wasn’t there the two hours we dined together.
We ride the elevator to the foyer of her building in silence, my voice only finding itself when Isabelle makes a beeline for a taxi idling at the curb. “I can give you a lift if you want?”
She doesn’t give my offer any thought. After waving her hand through the air, she shouts, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The cab’s door slamming shut gobbles up my reply.
I wait for her taxi to merge into a sea of traffic before sprinting for my car. After snatching a parking ticket off the windscreen, I toss my jacket onto the passenger seat, crank the ignition, throw the gearshift into reverse, then back out of the alleyway at a speed too dangerous for the number of people still on the sidewalk. I swear Ravenshoe is worse than New York when it comes to its residents’ sleeping patterns. It doesn’t matter what time it is, the streets are always littered with cars and foot traffic.
“Slow down, punk. I’ve grown too fond of you the past eight years to scrape your insides off the pavement.”
I grin before firming the slant of my foot on the gas pedal. I’ve got nothing to lose, so I also have no fear.
“Take a left on Tracer. There’s a collision on Clarence causing traffic to back up.” Even though Grayson can’t see me, I nod. “Remind me never to get in a car with you.” He chuckles when the back end of my BMW slides out in the slippery conditions. “How do you know where she’s going?”
“Do you remember Joey saying his zipper scar was proof he had a heart?”
I hear Grayson’s cheeks rise into a smile before he says, “Yeah. It was around the time he said love bites were proof he had a girl.”
“That’s right.” I shake my head as a good memory hidden by a vault load of bad ones breaks through the haze in my head. “I thought I’d give his theory a whirl.”
Grayson laughs. “Your girl wasn’t a fan?”
“Not. At. All. I swear she mentioned castration at one stage.” I stop talking as my smile sags. “I thought it was because she didn’t like the idea of being owned.”
“That was what she meant, Brandon.”
“You don’t know that,” I fire back. “She—”
“Made a mistake… once. One. Time. You’ve given Isabelle, a girl you barely know, chance after chance after chance, but you can’t give the woman you grew up with the same leeway. That’s shit, Brandon, utter and absolute shit.”
Still incapable of arguing the truth, I keep my mouth shut. I don’t know if it appeases Grayson’s anger or doubles it, but I lose the chance to find out when I catch up to Isabelle’s cab at the front of Isaac’s nightclub. She throws a wad of cash at the driver before peeling out of the back seat. She looks as angry as Melody did when I marked her skin with a line of hickeys from the shell of her ear to her right rib.
