It had been three hours since I saw Leon, and I was still thinking about what he said. Talk to Georgia. I had every intention of doing so, but she must have left the house while I was getting ready to go out. She hadn’t left a note or anything, just crept out while I wasn’t looking.
I knew I shouldn’t have let Leon get to me, especially after everything he’d done, but there was something about the way he looked, and something about how hysterical Georgia was about not going to the police that made me hold back. I tried to call her but she must have turned her phone off because it kept going to voicemail.
Until I could talk to her, I decided to keep busy by working on the silly holiday card project for college. I took my camera into the living room and began taking - hopefully – artsy shots of the Christmas tree, decorations and the handful of gifts that we’d already received. Messing with the camera settings and trying to make each photo unique kept my mind off everything. Photography was the only thing that took me to a completely different place, and stopped me thinking about my problems. Immersing myself in different angles, changing lenses, messing with the lighting and making my subjects look perfect was my favourite way to escape, and I really needed it with so much on my mind.
By the time the front door opened, I had more than one hundred shots to play around with. Voices travelled down the hallway to where I sat by the Christmas tree, and I realised very quickly that Jesse was home. His voice hit me deep in my stomach and my immediate thought was to run to him and make sure he was okay. Then I remembered I was not his favourite person. I stayed put, not quite sure what to do with myself. The clacking of crutches and footsteps on the wooden floor told me they were entering the living room but I still didn’t move. I looked down at my camera and scrolled through my work as if I hadn’t heard them.
“Did someone order a pixie?” Hunter laughed.
I must have looked a bit weird perched on the floor and I smiled. “I’m working.”
Jesse followed Hunter into the room, but stopped short when he saw me. His eyes sparkled for a second, then dimmed again, probably remembering how I’d walked out on him when he needed me most.
Even after a day of hell, he was gorgeous. The gorgeous boy who’d been mine, but now looked at me like he didn’t know me. Like he didn’t know everything about me. The sadness in his eyes stabbed at my heart.
“You’re back,” I said, completely unnecessarily.
“Yeah. I’m back.”
“How are you? I mean … your knee … is it-?”
“I’m gonna need surgery,” he said. “I won’t know whether I can keep playing soccer until it’s over.”
My guilt about siding with Georgia threatened to overwhelm me as I looked into his eyes. They were puffy, and knowing he’d been crying made my insides shrivel up.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, then got to my feet and rushed out, up to my bedroom so I wouldn’t have to see Jesse in pain any more.
After everything, the way we felt about each other, or at least the way I thought we felt about each other, it was excruciating to be in the same room with him and feel such a distance.
It’s your own fault. You should have been there for him.
I’d hoped I could do both. Be there for him, and protect Georgia from having her seedy fling with Leon revealed. It was stupid of me to think that. And it was stupid of me to have tried to protect her when she probably wouldn’t have done the same for me if it had been Elliott lying in the hospital bed.
“Isabelle.”
I held in a sigh as my mum came into my room. It had only been a matter of time.
“Hi,” I said.
“Is everything okay?”
I really don’t know why mums ask that question when the answer is so obvious. Yet again, I was forced to do something I didn’t want to do to keep Georgia’s secret safe.
“Everything’s fine,” I lied.
“Izzy.”
She didn’t need to say anything else. She just waited patiently for me to tell her what was going on. In spite of the fact that she’d spent the whole day and night at the hospital, she looked like she’d only just got ready. Her clothes were a little crumpled at the back, but her hair and make-up were flawless. She wasn’t one of those showy mothers, but she always looked good.
And she always knew when I was lying.
“I had an argument with Jesse earlier,” I told her, with a sigh.
“Well I guessed that much,” Mum replied. She shooed me across the bed so she could sit beside me. “Why were you arguing?”
“It’s nothing, Mum.”
“It’s not nothing. It made you run out of the hospital, and this is the longest you and Jesse have been apart by ch