A friend.
That was probably an insult, but anything else would no doubt send her raging.
“You forgot your card, remember?” I cocked my head, giving her an out.
“Maxon, please, just don’t—”
I set my hand on hers to let her know it was no big deal.
The least I could do.
But that was a mistake, too, because at the contact, a fire consumed me whole.
Fucking flames and heat and need.
Everything coming alive in an instant.
I jerked my hand away, feeling like I’d been sucked into a vortex. Tossed thirteen years back in time.
Izzy froze beneath it, drawing in a shattered breath, and the cashier had swiped my card and handed it back to me before she’d regrouped and had the chance to argue.
The girl was clearly as shaken as me.
He handed her the receipt. She grabbed it and the bag.
She barely slowed to toss a whispered, “Thank you,” over her shoulder before she was bee-lining for the double-sliding doors.
I wanted to shout out for her, beg her to wait. To give me five freaking minutes.
But Ian was relying on me. Couldn’t bail on that.
As hard as it was, I forced myself to stand there and pay for the diapers, my attention flying toward the door about fifteen times during the transaction, and I let loose just as many silent curses when she disappeared out of it.
As soon as the little prick handed me the receipt, I grabbed the box and darted after her, jumping between two old ladies pushing carts, leisurely doing their shopping in the early afternoon, dodged a few stockers hauling in boxes, and basically took the store like it was my own personal obstacle course.
I almost laughed.
My entire life had been nothing but a long string of hurdles. No finish line in sight.
Except for Izzy.
She’d been my beginning. The girl had breathed her beauty and grace and goodness into my being. Made me think I could be something better. Saw me in a way I’d never seen myself.
In the same way, she’d been my ending.
My collision.
The breaking point of who I’d been and who I’d come to be.
By the time I made it out the door, eyes hunting the parking lot, an old, beater of a car rumbled to life toward the far end of the lot. It jerked out of the spot, engine sputtering and a cloud of exhaust billowing into the air as it lurched into drive.
I struggled to peer into the distance.
To get a read on the license.
But she was gone before I could make sense of her return.
Disappearing in a haze of smoke and dust.
Just like she had then.
Two
Izzy
If you could be anything when you grow up, what would you want to be?
It was a question I would venture to say most every parent had asked their children, at least I knew it was a topic my parents had loved to visit.
Maybe they’d just always been hoping for a different answer.
Most kids typically responded with things like a doctor or a teacher or maybe even a rock star.
That answer had always come so easily to me.
I’d wanted to be Maxon Chamber’s wife.
Pathetic, right?
But that’s what happened when a four-year-old girl fell in love with the troubled boy-next-door. The boy who made her heart swell and hurt at the same time.
She became infatuated. She believed they were destined. That together, they made each other better. That they could overcome anything if they stayed by the other’s side.
It’s what I’d done.
I’d followed him around for years, nothing but a pest, nipping at his heels like a puppy, praying one day that boy would notice. I’d made up whimsical stories about him, somehow tricked him into a fake wedding in the meadow under the trees, and I couldn’t imagine a different outcome than that one I’d believed in as if it’d been prewritten.
Maybe it hurt all the more when I realized believing those things only made me a fool. Chasing after something that was never really there. When I realized that destiny was nothing but a fake, half-witted dream.
Only thing certain?
I’d never forgotten his face or those eyes or the heart I’d prayed would find something better, even when I’d come to accept that heart could never belong to me.
On top of that?
I’d never imagined in a million years that at thirty, I’d be standing in a dentist’s office, getting ready to beg for a job.
Praying no one would notice the tears that had been streaking down my cheeks. Praying even harder that the world might actually right itself, considering I’d never in all my life felt so off-kilter.
I had to pull this off.
I needed this job.
God, I needed this job.
That declined credit card was proof of that.
Panic still thunderin’ so hard I could feel it in my veins, I approached the reception desk. “Hi, I’m Isabel Lane. I have an appointment for an interview at 1:30.”