A Lot Like Perfect

Good, now he could breathe.

Except his lungs wouldn’t quite expand like he’d have expected. Actually, he hadn’t thought much about his breathing lately, at least not when he’d been around Aria. She kept him so occupied with everything else that his lungs were the last thing on his mind.

“That woman is going to be the death of me.” Marchande’s expression was nothing short of black as the man picked up a paint brush from the pan in front of him.

“Which one?”

“Cassidy, of course.” He said her name as if spitting out poison. “Why would I have a problem with Aria?”

“I would hope that you wouldn’t,” Isaiah muttered. “Given that she’s been interested in you for so long.”

“Yeah, she told me. She’s a nice lady. Too bad it’s not going to work out for us.” Marchande shrugged, oblivious to the way Isaiah’s pulse had just shot back into the stratosphere. “But that leaves the field open for you, right? I’d get on that if I were you. She’s not going wait around forever for you to pull your head out of your rear end.”

Isaiah tried to talk and swallow at the same time and choked on it. The subsequent coughing fit brought tears to his eyes. But that didn’t stop his brain from picking up the information that Marchande had oh so casually dropped and running with it.

Aria and Marchande aren’t an item. How? Why? What was with all the hand kissing in the stairwell then?

“You okay?” Marchande whacked him on the back a couple of times and then went back to painting nonchalantly. “You thought your feelings for her were a big secret or something?”

“Not a secret,” Isaiah wheezed, desperately trying to wrap his thoughts around something that resembled cohesive. “Because it’s not a thing.”

“Please. Anyone can see that you have it bad for her. I told her that too.”

The paint brush fell from Isaiah’s suddenly nerveless fingers. “You did what?”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t make it sound like you were a blubbering idiot or anything.”

Tristan stroked his brush over the side of the barn with maddening care, falling silent as he worked on fixing the mess Isaiah had made with the paint. As metaphors went, that one was a doozy.

“What did you say?” he demanded. “What did she say?”

“What, are we in third grade? Faut que tu te bouges. Point barre.”

“Stop being a jerk,” Isaiah ground out. “This is not the time or place for your cryptic French crap.”

Marchande just laughed. “Step it up, mon ami. Talk to her. If it’s meant to be, it’ll all fall into place.”

Easy for him to say. He’d never failed with a woman in his life. Isaiah, on the other hand, had few relationships in his rearview mirror, and those had all been surface level type things that he’d invested zero emotional energy into since his sole focus over the last decade had been keeping his team both alive and motivated to waltz into dangerous situations.

But it didn’t matter what his experience with women was, because there was nothing with Aria to fall into place. Could not be. The talk Isaiah needed to have with her looked a lot more like damage control than anything. She could not continue to have the impression that there was the remotest possibility that something of a romantic nature could work between them.

No matter how badly he wanted to tell her the exact opposite.

But the stark truth that Tristan had just unwittingly uncovered couldn’t be denied. There was nothing left to hide behind—Isaiah had been falling for Aria this whole time.

So far, it had been easy to ignore since he’d been under the mistaken assumption that it couldn’t go anywhere. She’d been destined for someone else, after all. Yet he had Tristan to thank for surfacing the real reason he couldn’t lay it on the line and admit to his growing feelings—she deserved so much more than a broken SEAL who had no place in this little town she called home.

“I will talk to her,” Isaiah mumbled, mostly to put an end to this conversation that never should have happened.

Marchande needed to learn how to keep his big fat mouth shut, especially when it came to other people’s love lives. But whatever. If nothing else, all of Isaiah’s problems could be put to rest in one shot. All he had to do was leave, which he’d known was coming the moment Hardy had dropped the idea of Isaiah organizing a shindig for the town. This new revelation pushed the timeframe up to immediately, which meant Hardy needed to hear how Isaiah was fresh out of glue. And then he owed it to Aria to tell her personally that he’d be taking off.

His imminent departure spurred him to get as much done on the barn-turned-schoolhouse as possible. Plus it gave him the added benefit of avoiding that scene with Aria for as long as possible. By the end of the day, the entire exterior of the barn had been painted and he and Marchande knocked out the rest of the exterior weatherproofing. Funny how he’d managed to motivate himself well enough to complete a task that had been lingering for some time.

Aria and Cassidy had made good progress too, and the ladies called it quits nearly at the same time as Isaiah and Marchande finished up. The four of them met up in the clearing near the new schoolhouse door but apparently Cassidy and Tristan hadn’t figured out how to play nice with each other. Both of them quickly took their leave, Cassidy heading toward her house and Tristan heading toward town, presumably to go to Ruby’s or the hotel.

In the awkward silence, Isaiah and Aria stared at each other. The sun had crept toward the horizon, but it wasn’t late enough for sunset, so her hair remained its typical muted red.

“I need to tell you something,” he said before he lost his nerve. He’d have rather hashed this out with Hardy first but Aria was here now. Better to rip off the Band-Aid as soon as possible. “You asked me a while back when I might move on to my next adventure and I think it’s time.”