I halve the curiosity blazing through her eyes with a smirk. “Not that type of manager. No one is the boss of me, baby.” The term of endearment is an unexpected addition to my reply, but I’m glad I didn’t hold back. It not only sees Isabelle’s scarcely covered thigh encroaching onto my half of the booth again, but it also lessens the hostility in her eyes by a smidge. “I fought my way through college. Literally.”
“You didn’t fight, you just showed up—” I cut off Cormack’s interruption with a brutal stare. He ignores it—stupid bastard. “Don’t believe anything this guy tells you. He acts all innocent, then bam, you’ll be on your ass before you know it.”
Riled his comment has awarded him the undivided attention of both the women in our booth, I forget what day it is. “Who are you to talk? You’re the one who created the ruse.” We’ve always been competitive like this, although the stakes are far higher this time around.
Sparks of the man I once knew blast through Cormack’s eyes when he mutters, “It worked, though, didn’t it?” Having no plausible defense to his truthful statement, I sink into my seat with a smirk. His ruse did work. It helped us pocket thousands of dollars every weekend. I’m just striving to work out if he’s being as evasive tonight as he was back in our college days. The smitten looks he’s given Harlow the past ten minutes make it explicitly clear he likes her, but it also has me curious as to what changed between now and last month. He all but begged for me to keep him away from her, yet right now, the pleading in his eyes is doing the exact opposite.
With the tension in the air thick enough to cut, Harlow surrenders to the pressure first. “Come on, out with it. This is more suspenseful than theGame of Thronescliffhanger. You can’t share tidbits of information, then leave us hanging. We need details. Very informative details.”
“All right.” Cormack builds the suspense with a short bout of silence before saying, “Imagine Isaac decked out in corduroy trousers, a pair of leather-strapped sandals, a button-up, short-sleeve shirt two sizes too small, and a pair of suspenders.”
“I didnotwear fucking suspenders,” I interrupt, mortified. The fierce reputation I’ve accrued the past six years will survive a wardrobe debacle, but that isn’t the point. I’ve had Cormack’s back the past eight years, so shouldn’t he have mine just as equally?
My lips twitch into a smirk when Cormack gabbers out, “It was a few years ago. Maybe my memory isn’t as good as it was, but I swear at least once I got you into a pair of suspenders.”
The pompous delivery of his reply causes Isabelle and Harlow to giggle. They’re not dainty, humored laughs. They’re full of untapped want that grows needier when it concedes with the raking of Isabelle’s eyes down my body. She takes in my buttoned-up shirt, suddenly clinging trousers, and the veins pulsating in my hands before she eventually returns her hooded gaze to my face. There’s so much yearning in them, I can’t help but respond. Except, I don’t solely use my eyes. My hands get in on the action as well.
I drag the tip of my index finger along Isabelle’s arm and am about to track it across her tiny waist when Cormack steals the thunder long before the clouds have formed. “Anyway, we have him decked out like a choirboy about to go to church on Sunday. He arrives on the scene of an underground fight ring, acting innocent like it’s the first time he’s been to an event like that, then once an impressive purse was negotiated for a fight, Isaac revealed his true self. By then, it was too late for his opponent to back out. An easy five Gs for ten minutes of work.”
He makes it sound easy. For the most part, it was, but there was one fight I’ll never forget. It shaped my life in a way I wouldn’t wish on anyone. It made me bitter and resentful, and it almost made me the man Isabelle accused me of being six weeks ago.
“Wow.” Isabelle’s glowing eyes dance between mine as she struggles to think of something wiser to say. When she fails to stumble onto anything, she aims to settle her inquisitiveness instead. “How many years did you fight?”
“Just under two years,” I reply, confident our conversation is veering in a direction I’m not comfortable with but unsure how to stop it.
My intuition is proven right when Isabelle asks, “Why did you stop fighting?”
As years of guilt crash into me, my eyes snap to Cormack in a silent plea. Usually, I blow off people’s curiosity about my past with a quick-witted comment before making an excuse to leave. If that doesn’t work, I leave the conversation by downing whiskey as if it is water. I can’t do that this time around. Not only is my glass empty, but my attempt to slide out of the booth is thwarted by the waitress arriving to advise us our table is ready.
I dip my chin in thanks before sliding out of the booth. Believing I’m eager for festivities to continue, Cormack and Harlow follow my lead. Glee is all over their faces. The same can’t be said for Isabelle. She remains seated, peering at me with a slanted head and worry-filled eyes. A stranger shouldn’t be able to feel the unease pouring out of me. I pride myself on maintaining a rational head in confronting situations. Still, I’m certain Isabelle is aware of tension curdling in my stomach. Her empathy sees me extending Cormack’s invitation by gesturing for her to follow the waitress to our table. It’s foolish of me to do, but I’m careening too deeply into the darkness of my past to fully grasp my actions.
As I follow the waiter to our table, my final hours with Ophelia roll through my head like a movie. The horrifying footage plays on repeat, meaning I not only miss everything Cormack says during our trek, but I also act ignorant to Isabelle’s shocked gasp when our arrival at our table results in me requesting for the waitress to return with an unopened bottle of scotch. I try to push the memories of that fateful night into the back of my mind. I try to forget how it changed my life in unimaginable ways, but the more I fight the inevitable, the tighter a stranglehold of emotions chokes me.
I can hear Ophelia’s cries for me to stop, smell the tears that clung to her cheek when her brother fell to the boxing canvas with an unconscious roll of his eyes. I can even feel the sting of her palm when she took out the anger she should have directed at her father on my cheek.
I fought to save her from a life of misery.
In the end, I caused her much more pain, and then she died, foiling my chance to ever make things right. I genuinely don’t know where we’d be if I hadn’t accepted an anonymous twenty-thousand-dollar fight bid, but I doubt Ophelia would have been buried beneath six feet of dirt before us celebrating her twentieth birthday as an official couple. I didn’t kill her, but the consequences of my actions have a lot to answer for.
The fog clouding my head clears a smidge when a tiny hand squeezes my thigh several whiskeys later. My appetizer and entree were served and removed without acknowledgment, but the briefest touch of a dainty hand breaks my head through the water enough I can suck down the quickest breath.
When my eyes collide with Isabelle’s, her lips don’t utter a word. She merely stares at me like she can feel my pain as readily as I wish she could eradicate it. It’s an intense, profound connection that fades to nothing when Cormack interrupts it with words powerful enough to douse the strongest inferno. “Don’t take his lack of interest personally, Isabelle. For as long as I’ve known Isaac, he’s never been interested in dating brunettes.”
My fists ball as I struggle not to retort. Only part of his statement is a lie, but since that part includes the ghost of a deceased girlfriend, I can’t let it slide. Ophelia died. She isn’t here to defend herself, so to have her influence in my life pushed aside as if she meant nothing to me switches the remorse sluicing through my veins to anger.
“Oh.” Isabelle wets her dry lips before returning her focus to me. “Is there any particular reason?”
She stares at me, wordlessly begging for me to deny Cormack’s claims, to acknowledge his statement has no bearing on the crazy, foolish, imprudent man I was when I was with her in the plane, but the guilt is too much. It’s crushing and unforgiving, and it finally has me knowledgeable of Cormack’s plan of attack. He’s throwing me a life jacket on the very day I always feel as if I am drowning, and I’m foolishly going to accept it.
“It’s a personal preference.” With my throat harsh from the number of whiskeys I’ve downed in a short period, my voice comes out husky and despondent. “No brunette I’ve ever fucked has maintained my interests once we leave the bedroom.”
Hating the lie that just spilled from my lips, I dump my napkin onto the table before standing to my feet. My quick getaway is hindered by the waitress for the second time tonight. This time, she hasn’t arrived with the bill. A large chocolate cake is balancing on her hands, and the lit candles on top dance in the breeze of her breaths when she breaks into a familiar rendition of ‘Happy Birthday.’
With my heart in my throat, I stray my eyes in the direction the waitress and several of her counterparts are peering. A curse word seeps from my lips when the waitress places down the cake in front of Isabelle. Suspicions force me back into my seat more than guilt. If today is Isabelle’s birthday, she was born on the very same day as Ophelia—down to the wire.
That can’t be a coincidence. There’s something more at play here. Doing everything in her power to stifle the tension hanging thickly in the air, Harlow locks her eyes with Isabelle before breaking out her biggest smile to date. “Make a wish,” she instructs as if every bad thing can be reversed by blowing out a set of candles. If that were the case, I would have done it years ago.
After drifting her eyes between Cormack, Harlow, and me, Isabelle’s eyelashes touch her cheeks before she blows out her candles with one big breath. Then, even quicker than that, her lips land on mine.
