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“I don’t know. Because I’m selfish,” he ground out. “Far more selfish than I would have guessed. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“But you did.” Because he’d been speaking from the heart. That much, she believed beyond a shadow of a doubt. “And it’s too late to take it back.”
“I’m not trying to!” Cursing, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry, this is not how I expected lunch to go.”
“Hint, when you kiss a girl and talk about falling in love with her, your next move is almost never going to be explaining all the reasons why that doesn’t matter because it’s not going to work out anyway.”
Like she knew. Maybe this was how all relationships went. Ember had to have gotten her all men are losers spiel from personal experience. The longhorn-uterus picture over his head blurred as she stared at it, trying not to cry in frustration.
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He just nodded, mute all of a sudden. Which tripped her temper again. “What did you expect anyway? Why even come over if you were just going to say sayonara?”
“Because I’m weak,” he said wearily with a small smile. “And making good decisions is my Achilles heel lately. I couldn’t stay away from you, which is a running theme here, by the way. If I’d been able to stop myself from seeking you out over the last few weeks, we never would have made it past that first time on the roof.”
But they had. Because they’d connected. But he seemed fine with just throwing all of that away. She crossed her arms and glared at him, giving him the full brunt of her Irish. It was just like Ember and Havana had said. The second a man came into her life, voila. Her previously unriled temper made an appearance.
“Well, guess what. I get a say in this too and I’m not sorry that’s how it happened.” She almost stamped her foot and resisted at the last minute. “I’m in love with you and you can’t make me stop. Also? If you leave, I’ll just follow you. What are you going to do about it?”
His gaze locked onto hers, spearing her through as he assessed her face, presumably to gauge how serious she was. Which she was happy to clarify.
“Deadly serious,” she informed him. “So now that we have that established, stop acting like Shrek and start trying to figure out how to make this work instead of pushing me away. Because that’s what I’m worth, buster. And so are you.”
For whatever reason, that made him laugh and the sound of it lightened her heart—and her mood. They had a shot, she could feel it. If she could just get him to agree to leave together, this could work between them.
“So that’s it then? You call me Shrek and I’m supposed to fall at your feet?”
“Pretty much.” And then she squealed as he bulleted off the couch to catch her in his embrace. She melted into it, gratified at least to have gotten him over whatever hump had caused him to stop touching her, and let herself drown in his warmth. “Are you through making me dizzy with all your back and forth then?”
“Probably not,” he admitted easily. “But it seems as if you’re largely unimpressed with my attempts to be noble, so let’s try this. I’ll stop pushing you away if you agree to give me time to do the figuring out you’re asking for. I don’t know what that looks like. But if you’re willing to stay on the boat for the discovery process, welcome aboard.”
Seventeen
The devil’s bargain Aria had talked Isaiah into could not end well. But he’d gotten so tired of being alone. Aria hadn’t been listening to him anyway. What he should have done was sneak away in the middle of the night without telling her. But that had felt cowardly.
Instead, he’d blubbered his feelings all over her—which had been totally unfair, somewhat of a running theme with him lately—only to have her refuse to accept the out he’d been trying to give her.
What was he supposed to do with that?
Heal. Immediately. Yesterday would have been better. Of course, if it was that simple, he’d have just done that already. Fixed himself and gone on his merry way.
Now he had the best reason of all to figure it out. Aria. The problem was if he left, he couldn’t do what he’d promised her he would. And sticking around meant he couldn’t easily avoid helping Caleb with his PR job. The thought put him in such a panic that he had to lie on his bed just to get enough air circulating through his brain to avoid blacking out.
Obviously falling in love was not the magic solution to his problems. Not that he’d ever held out hope in that respect. But still. It would have been a nice gesture on the part of the universe to get the prediction at least partially right.
So instead, it looked like he’d be doing hard work of the emotional variety in order to get to a place where he didn’t feel like he was ruining Aria’s life no matter what decisions he made.
She seemed pretty determined to love him regardless, which felt miraculous. This morning, he’d woken up like always, but in that split second of coming to full consciousness, he heard her voice in his head saying I love you. One day, he might get lucky enough to hear it every morning in person. But he had a lot to do before that was even a remote possibility.
All of the above was a huge motivating factor for why he’d taken over the corner booth at Ruby’s as his Welcome to Superstition Springs party command center. The morning breakfast crowd had eyed him curiously as he sat there furiously scribbling out ideas on a sheet of paper and looking up things on his phone. The screen was too small to flip back and forth between Pinterest, party planning sites and the calculator, which added to his mounting frustration.
By ten o’clock, he’d come to the realization that he needed a laptop, which had been nowhere on his radar when he’d left California. After reading a few reviews on an electronics website, he ordered one. That turned out to be the easy part.
“Hey, Ruby,” he called to her as she stood behind the counter pouring coffee for Lennie Ford. They both turned. “What’s the mailing address at the hotel?”
Ruby hooted and exchanged an amused glance with Lennie, then finally let Isaiah in on the joke. “We don’t have a postal code out here. Folks have their mail held at the post office in La Grange. We’re off the grid for the most part and like it that way.”
Lennie, a gentle old soul who ran an antiques shop that shared a wall with Voodoo Grocery, shifted in his seat to contemplate him. “What’re you having mailed?”
