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“Look, maybe you should head over there anyway, just suss it out. You’ve always had a way of making her talk. Maybe she’ll open up to you.”
Ha. If only he knew that opening up to me is how all this bullshit started in the first place. If he knew, sending me over there would be the last thing he’d ever do.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, man. She clearly doesn’t want to see me. Why don’t you head over there tomorrow instead?”
Austin shakes his head as a man from his construction crew calls out to him. He lets out a heavy sigh and gets to his feet, and as he walks away, he glances back over his shoulder. “You know how she gets when she sits and stews on shit. She needs to talk it out, and clearly talking to me ain’t gonna happen. So you’re up. Besides, I’ve got these guys here all week. I won’t get a chance to get over there ’til the weekend, and I can’t stand the thought of her being all broken up about something for that long. Just go figure it out, and if it’s something that can be fixed, then fix it.”
Shit.
Austin disappears into the back as I ball my hands into tight fists.
This isn’t going to go down well. I’m the last person she wants to see right now, but there’s no denying that the thought of her spending her night broken on her couch tears me apart.
All of this is my fault. I broke her, and it’s my responsibility to put her back together. If there’s even the slightest chance that she could forgive me and we could somehow move past this with minimum destruction, then I need to try.
And with that, I get up from the old table and storm right back out the door, determined to stand at her door for as long as it takes.
16
ASPEN
When you’ve been so deeply in love with someone for most of your life, it’s statistically inevitable that at some point, that person will cause you pain. So naturally, over the past twelve years, I’ve cried many tears over Izaac Banks. Sometimes I cried over his actions or comments to push me away, and sometimes my tears were caused by the heartache of never being able to have what I’ve always wanted.
The past two weeks have been different than before. They’re gut-wrenching.
I’ve never experienced a betrayal like it, and honestly, there are still so many pieces of the puzzle I don’t understand. I have so many questions left unanswered, but all it comes down to is that when I walked into that dark room, he knew exactly who I was, and without saying a word, he touched my body. He put his fingers inside of me as his lips worked across my skin, and given the chance, he would have fucked me.
All I’ve done over the past two weeks is try to process everything, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the day of my mother’s birthday lunch, when Izaac stood behind me in the pool, that was the moment he figured it out, and that was the moment he should have come clean. Sure, it would have been an awkward conversation, but neither of us knew, neither of us were at fault. It was a coincidence, nothing more and nothing less. We would have easily gotten past it, and at some point, maybe we would have even laughed about it.
But he made sure that could never happen.
He betrayed my trust. He knew I was walking in there to be with someone . . . anyone who wasn’t him, and when he knowingly touched me, he stole that away from me. And now the one person I’ve always loved and wanted knows exactly how I taste. He knows how I sound when I come, how it feels when my walls stretch around him, and while that should be something that’s celebrated, it leaves me feeling dirty.
Growing up, I always hoped that Izaac would be the man to take my virginity, and now . . . I guess the joke is on me. It’s a cruel world we live in because I got exactly what I wanted, only it’s nothing like I wanted at all.
I’ve pictured it a million times over the years, how I would give myself to him, how he would touch me, kiss me, and make me come alive. It would have been the perfect moment, but only after he accepted that I was the woman for him. It was supposed to be filled with magic and love. He was supposed to be my everything, and when I finally realized that was never going to happen, I gave myself to a complete stranger.
Only it wasn’t, and now it’s tainted by betrayal.
How could something I wanted so badly become something so horrible? Don’t get me wrong, my first time was incredible. Sex with Izaac is clearly unbelievable, and he knows exactly how to give a woman exactly what she needs, and that piercing . . . my god! But if I knew I had the chance to be with him, to really give him my virginity, I would have done it differently, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have done it in a dark club, believing he was anyone else.
I feel robbed. Betrayed. Defeated and broken.
My heart has never ached like this. All of me hurts.
How could he do this to me? How could he knowingly put his hands on me? What did he expect was going to come from this? That I would continue to visit him at Vixen and unknowingly become his dirty little secret?
The whole week following Mom’s birthday, he flirted with me. He danced with me at Pulse, we took shots together, and then that night . . . I thought things were finally starting to change between us, that he’d finally realized I was no longer just Austin’s little sister, that I was someone worth pursuing. Instead, he was just remembering how good it felt to be inside of me.
That call the night before, all the flirty texts, I thought they meant something, but now all of it’s tainted. How am I supposed to get past that? Izaac Banks is far from the man I thought he was, and now I feel as though I’m grieving this idea I’ve always had of him.
I want to hate him. I want to scream at him and make him hurt the way that I do, but one thing is for sure, we can never go back. This changes everything, and sooner or later, Austin is going to notice that something is going on. When he finally puts the pieces together, his relationship with Izaac will forever be altered, and despite how badly I want to pulverize Izaac and make him pay for my pain and embarrassment, how could I possibly punish Austin like that?
A knock sounds at my door, and my head whips toward it.
I sure as fuck would remember if I buzzed someone into my building.
Getting up from the couch, I scold Nathan on level three for being such an asshole as I make my way to the door. I had high hopes for Nathan. He was supposed to be the good neighbor who never bothered me, but I’m starting to reconsider.
