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I pulled out a chair and sat down across from her. It was like she was trying to torture me, because I was seated on the side that faced the pool. She got to look up at the Alexander house.
There was a pretty glass pitcher on a tray in the center of the table. There were two tall glasses filled with ice on the tray beside the pitcher.
I eyed the pitcher shrewdly. It looked dangerous and like a potential setup. If she’d found out what I had done to her bodyguard wannabe boyfriends, I wouldn’t put it past her to dish it right back at me.
I definitely wouldn’t be drinking the water until after I saw her suck some down, and even then it could still be a bit sketchy.
I didn’t speak first, I waited her out. At this point, I didn’t care whose fault it was, I was just ready to put it behind me so I could move on. Being so upset with her and hurt by her and holding onto that hurt by allowing it to turn into anger was incredibly exhausting. I was over it and, what was more, the potential of it messing with my relationship with Rain was really starting to fuck with my head. My head was already fucked up enough that it needed no more things fucking with it.
She didn’t make eye contact with me as she picked up the pitcher and filled both glasses with water. She sat the pitcher back on the tray and placed a glass in front of each of us.
Ariel playing the dutiful hostess and acting like a civilized adult was very new to me. Is this what marriage did to a person? Yikes.
“If you break his heart, I’ll kill you.”
Okay, well, for a starting point, it wasn’t exactly the best, but it definitely could have been a whole lot worse.
“The same goes for Romero as well. He means a great deal to me, and he’s been hurt enough in his life. They both have.”
Alright, now she was starting to piss me off.
“What makes you think I’m going to hurt them?” I gritted out through clenched teeth. I would never intentionally hurt either of them, and I had wrongly assumed she knew me better than that.
With Ariel, the hits just kept coming. What was she going to insult me with next?
She sighed heavily as she sat back in her chair and picked up her glass of water. She sipped from it and placed it back down. Hmm, not enough for me to pick my glass up and chug some water myself. Bummer, I was kind of thirsty.
“It’s not even about you really at this point, Isobel. It’s me. I thought I’d be okay, and I thought I could handle it when the time came, but I was definitely wrong. I’m not ready to let him go, and I don’t ever want to lose him.”
The pain in her voice struck me right in the gut.
My words came out strained. “I’m not going to take Rain away from you, Ariel. It’s insane that you’d even think that anyone could take that man away from you. And Romero loves you as if you were his own flesh and blood daughter. He’s not going anywhere where you’re concerned. Neither of them are.”
It was absolutely nuts to me that she could even think these things. Those men would do anything for her, and Rain had recently proved this when he killed for her.
Hell, everyone she met practically fell in love with her, so I didn’t understand how she could feel so threatened by me when I had the exact opposite effect on people.
“What if he chooses you over me?” she whispered brokenly.
My breath caught in my throat, and in that moment, I thought that just maybe I might hate Ariel Kimber.
How dare she even put something like that out into the universe? And why would she even be thinking about her father choosing between her and his future girlfriend? That was completely fucked up and made me want to reach across the table so I could wrap my fingers around her slender neck and choke her ass out.
“Why would Rain ever have to choose between you and me?” I asked in a careful voice that hid the rage boiling to life inside me. “He would never need to choose unless you tried to make him. I would hope you loved him enough that you would never be cruel enough to even suggest such a terrible thing to him.”
And I didn’t feel that way, because I knew in my heart of hearts that he would pick her over me instead of the other way around. She was his beloved, long-lost daughter. How could he not pick her? No, my issue was knowing that having to pick would kill something inside of Rain, and after everything he’d been through, who knew what in the hell that would leave him with when it was all said and done.
Did she even love him at all if she was capable of doing such a thing to her dad? I thought that if she could eventhinkabout doing something so terrible to him, then maybe she had no idea what love really was, because you didn’t do those kinds of things to the people you loved.
Ariel picked up her glass, drained it dry of water, and quickly refilled it. Well, I guessed that answered one question for me.
I hesitantly picked up the glass and held it under my nose. It smelled like normal water, but that didn’t really mean jack shit. Still, because I could be a real moron sometimes and this conversation had made me thirsty, I carefully sipped some of the water.
What I really wanted to do was pull a joint out of my bag and light up. I wasn’t so sure she’d enjoy that, so I refrained. I didn’t want to make this any more difficult for us than it already was, because this shit was already difficult enough as it was.
“I don’t know, Isobel. Anything could happen, and that’s something you and I both know very well, better than most others actually. What if something terrible happens and he’s forced to make a choice that will break his heart either way?”
Jesus Christ, she was running on what-ifs here. They had no business in being a part of how you lived your life, and that was something she and I should have known better because of the things we’d gone through that she’d so sweetly brought up.
