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“Why? I’m going to be back. It’s a few weeks on and a few weeks off. I’ll come right back here. I’ll be with you. And Leo.”
His hold on me is insistent. Too bad it’s useless when I’ve already made up my mind.
“You keep the rings,” Rex says and tries to shove them back in my hand. When I don’t close my hand around them, he tries to squeeze my fingers into a ball. “Come on, Isabella.”
“Why would I keep them?”
“A promise. They’re a promise. I’m coming back and when I do, we’ll be together.”
The coil has nowhere else to go. I snap. “You’ll always be coming back, Rex! You’ll have to go on tour, you’ll have to record an album, you’ll have to go and go and go and it will never be enough for me.”
Rex’s lower lip trembles. “You really won’t let me even try to make it work?”
He’s not allowed to break down. Not when I’m so close to my own. “I won’t hurt Leo by making him think that he’ll have a life like all the other kids have.”
“You already have! He calls me ‘Papa’ and thinks we’re together. You can’t just erase that because it doesn’t suit you, Isabella!”
“You’ll always be his father,” I say. “I can’t change that.”
Rex scoffs, anger cramping his face. “Are you saying you wish you could?”
“Of course not, I just –”
“You didn’t give me a chance to show up for you five years ago,” Rex steamrolls me. “And now that I have my chance, you’re going to take it away?”
“You took it away by lying to me!”
Rex tightens his hands into fists. “I didn’t lie, I just –”
“Didn’t tell the whole truth, whatever, that’s still lying.”
“God why are you so stubborn?!”
“Because we both know I’m right!”
“About what?!”
“That this is wrong!” I shout, too loud for the small space.
My ears ring as the truth of what I’ve said hangs in the air.
Rex is visibly wounded, having withdrawn all the way against the driver’s side door. Yes, I’d like to hold him. Apologize. Take him into my arms, take back everything I’ve said.
It’s just not possible.
I grab my bag off the floor and place it in my lap, ready to go. “I’m not going to keep you from Leo. Okay? If you want to see him, you’re always welcome.”
This isn’t enough of a consolation to alleviate the pain on Rex’s face. But he speaks: “You can’t tell me all this is wrong when I ended up in your town, in your hospital, under your care. You can’t tell me that doesn’t mean something, Isabella.”
He looks so young again. Twenty-six and unsure. Nowhere near the jaded rockstar who ended up in my ER. “Not everything happens for a reason, Rex. Not everything is meant to be.”
Rex stares at me. For the first time ever, his eyes harden and become jade. Impenetrable, cold stone.
I take that as my cue. I sling my bag over my shoulder and get out of the car. I’m only a few steps away when I hear the engine of the car come to life and the wheels speed down the road.
An unceremonious goodbye.
Nothing like the first time we said goodbye.
