“I couldn’t write songs anymore!” Jaxon yells through the door.
“Sucks to suck,” I shout back.
Becca raises an eyebrow from her spot in the kitchen. I shrug. It’s not my problem.
“Please open up, Izzy,” Jaxon asks, almost too quietly for me to hear.
Then, a muted knock sounds, and I swear it’s his forehead hitting the door.
“Please.”
At the dejected tone of his voice, my fire is gone, and now I’m just sad. And sad Izzy doesn’t have the willpower to say no to the man who is currently at her door begging.
“What?” I ask, pulling open the door again.
“I wrote a whole verse this morning,” he rushes to get out as he holds the door open against my shoving. His biceps flex with the movement, and the defined strength in his arms reminds me again of just how much he’s changed from the boy I once knew.
“Congratu-fucking-lations,” I say. “I don’t care. If you’re looking for someone to be your biggest fan, I would suggest looking elsewhere. Like literally anywhere else. I don’t care if you wrote the best song of your life and are about to go double platinum.”
“I haven’t written a song in over a year,” he says as he stares pleadingly into my face.
That confession stuns me, and I stop pushing the door to gawk at him. “What?”
The boy I knew wrote songs constantly, particularly in the last few years before he left. He always had a pen with him, ready to write down anything that might pop into his head. After he used his arm as paper one too many times, I started carrying a little notebook around for him.
“It’s bad, Iz—Isabel.” The raw truth in his eyes tries to pull me in, but I fight against that feeling. It’s just left over from when we were friends.
“So it seems like you’re back on track now. Good luck with life and all.”
“I’m here because apparently Wild Bluffs is the magic solution to my writing problems.”
“Okay. It’s a small town, but there’s really no need to see me…ever again really,” I say, turning to walk away, open door be damned.
“Iz—” He grabs my wrist to stop me, and his palm on my skin sends tingling sensations racing through my stomach.
From all the ciders last night, obviously.
“Isabel,” I remind him. “And let go of me.”
He doesn’t. Instead, he pulls me toward him, his face inches from mine. Fuck, is he going to kiss me?
That would be bad.
So bad.
I don’t want to be kissed by Jaxon Reid—despite the fire that seems to have caught hold along the place where our skin meets.
Instead, he says softly, “I know I hurt you. And I know I deserve every ounce of anger you want to throw my way. But I’m so fucking sorry, Iz. I don’t expect you to accept that, but I’m going to be in town for a while, and while I’m here, I’m going to do everything in my power to prove it to you.”
Chapter seven
Jaxon
“We’resogladyoucould join,” the woman at the check-in for the childcare center’s fundraiser says to me, her voice wavering between excitement and trepidation. Her excitement at my arrival and promised donation has gone down quickly since I told her I was taking Carter Mitchell’s place. My guess is it has something to do with the uncomfortable way in which she asked, “You’re going to be Izzy’s partner?”
When I’d called Carter to get some insight into winning Izzy over after my declaration this morning, he’d offered me his place at the fundraiser golf tournament at Wild Bluffs Country Club this afternoon. It’s short, just nine holes, and I’d get to be Izzy’s partner.
I’m ninety percent sure he gave me his spot because he’s nursing a slight hangover from yesterday and it’s supposed to be almost a hundred degrees out this afternoon, but I will take what I can get.
