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With Belle, everything was easy. We agreed on so much and liked all of the same things. She was the yin to my yang, in every way. My compliment. And even if she didn't love me in the way that I loved her, she would always be my person.
But that didn't mean I could continue not telling her how I felt.
When I finally made it home, I breathed a sigh of relief that Zach's car wasn't in the driveway. Parking quickly, I got out in the rain and ran inside.
"Belle!" I yelled out for her, ready to apologize. When I got no response, I worried that she'd locked herself in her room again, refusing to talk to me. So I walked down the hallway to her room, intent on talking to her through the locked door. But it was wide open, and Belle wasn't inside.
I searched the house, seeing no sign that Belle had come home yet. Which was weird. I wouldn't imagine that she would let Zach take her anywhere else tonight.
I called her, but her phone went straight to voicemail. Five times.
Knowing it was probably not going to work if her phone was dead, I decided to look up her location anyway. Maybe it would give me her last location before it died?
Our entire friend group had each other’s locations, but honestly, we never used them. However, I was so incredibly thankful that we did; otherwise, I would have no way of knowing where Belle was right now. When it pulled up, her location showed her on the southern part of the island, well away from home. I zoomed in, seeing that she was in a little town that would take me twenty minutes to get to. But I figured, if I left now, I could drive around the area and hope to figure out where she was. There was still the possibility that she was somewhere with Zach, but for some reason, I just knew that wasn’t the case. I knew she wouldn’t have gone home with him, especially after how he treated her tonight. She might have allowed him to speak to her that way, but I knew that she wouldn’t have let it go on much longer. And certainly not after they left.
So I got in my car and set my GPS to her last known location, which showed to be five minutes ago. Once I got close, I slowed down, watching for her familiar frame.
I drove down the street that had little shops around, but no one was out. It was still raining, so everyone must have gone indoors, the lights in the restaurants on. But then I saw someone walking in the rain with no hurry at all. I sped up to get closer and realized that it was Belle.
I pulled the car over into a parking spot and jumped out, jogging towards her. “Belle!” I yelled over the sound of the rain on the concrete. She looked up, surprise in her eyes, when they landed on me.
“What are you doing here?” She asked me, confusion in her voice.
“Apparently, coming to prevent you from getting pneumonia! What are you doing out in the rain like this?” I asked her, pulling her into my body as if it would warm her up. It wasn’t cold outside at all, but I could see her shivering from being completely soaked.
“I ended things with Zach, and he was trying to take me back to his house, and I made him pull over and let me out.” She said it all so quickly, I barely had time to process her words.
“What?”
27
Isabella
Landonlookedatmelike I had grown a second head, so I quickly explained to him everything that happened in the car, but I could barely get the words out. Not that I was upset over what happened, but because I couldn’t understand or comprehend how Landon was here right now, how he knew to come to get me.
It warmed me from the inside that he drove all the way out here just to see if I was okay. He was always so concerned about me, so considerate and thoughtful. And man, was I glad that I wouldn’t have to walk all the way home. My phone had died only two minutes after I pulled up the GPS to go home, and I thought I was going to have to follow road signs or go into a gas station and beg someone to charge my phone just to find my way back.
But that was what Landon always was to me. A hero.
So I struggled to hold the tears back that were threatening to give my emotions away. Would he even be able to tell in the rain?
“You mean to tell me that he let you get out in the pouring rain to walk home from here? Belle, do you know how far this is from our house?” I heard the immediate anger Landon had, and watched as he threw his hands up and looked over my shoulder as if Zach was right there for him to punch again. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.
“I made him, technically,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.
“No man would let a woman out in the rain to walk home.”
I nodded, grinning up at him for how upset he was. All it told me was that he truly cared about my wellbeing. And despite being in the chilly rain, I didn’t care. All I cared about was that Landon was here. He found me.
“Come on, let’s go home,” Landon said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. He pulled me down the sidewalk to his car, opened the door to his car for me and helped me in.
“Your seats,” I said, pointing out the fact that they weren’t leather and would get completely soaked.
“It’s not a problem, Belle. Just get in,” he said with a low chuckle, holding the top of my head as I ducked into the car. It was an incredibly sweet gesture that he’d made every time he helped me into the car to prevent me from hitting my head. Only now was I internalizing how precious and loving the small action was.
He closed the door behind me and ran around to the other side to get in and start the car. The cold air hit me immediately and made me shiver, but Landon quickly turned the heat in the car on. I wrapped my arms around myself as he pulled out and began driving us both home.
It was silent for a while, and I wondered what was going through his head. He’d witnessed the worst part of my relationship with Zach today, and picked me up from being across the island in the rain. It was something no one else would do for me without judging, but I knew Landon must be itching to know what happened.
