I fucking told you.
“Nick…”
Not waiting for either of them to explain, I snap on my heel and march back in the opposite direction. I ignore Macie and Dad running out of the dining room to see what all the commotion is about. I don’t stop until I’m out in the backyard, icy cold cutting at my cheeks and tugging on my clothes. The bite barely registers as I stalk around the covered pool to the guesthouse on the other side.
I knew it.
I knew she would run.
Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but eventually, she would fucking leave.
It doesn’t matter that I hate myself for the prediction, hate myself for not believing in her more, but statistics never lie. My math is never wrong. Loving her will never change the fact that she doesn’t know how to stay.
At least now Dom sees it. Maybe now he will understand why we can’t keep her. It’s eating me up alive, consuming thetiny, stupid flare of hope I almost let myself wish into existence. But I should have known. This raw agony in my chest is my own fault.
I hear the guesthouse door open and shut with the softest click. I don’t turn away from my stance facing the fridge. I have no idea why I’m here or why I’m staring at the gleaming chrome, but my own distorted reflection stares back.
“Baby…”
“I told you,” I grind through a jaw I can’t unclench. “I fucking told you.”
“Let me explain.”
I turn to face the man I plan to spend the rest of my life with. I take in his soft, pleading expression. The palms extended like I’m some wild horse he’s trying to calm.
“There is nothing you can say that will change my mind on this,” I tell him firmly and with all the jagged remains of what’s left of my heart. “I don’t want her, Dom. I don’t want her in our lives. I don’t want her with our baby. It’s done. It’s over.”
His hands drop to his sides. His shoulders slip into one of defeat that only further grinds the remaining pieces to dust, but I don’t care. I never should have let him talk me into this in the first place.
“If that’s what you want,” he murmurs after the longest heartbeat in history.
“It’s what I want,” I tell myself, and him.
Chapter Nine
?Isla?
I’m a useless fuck up.
Chapter Ten
?Isla?
I understand Mom’s disappointment.
Hurrying out to find me fully dressed with my bag in hand can’t have looked good. My “itchy feet”, as Grandma Lee calls it, is an infamous joke within the family.
Grandma says I’m restless, searching for something. It happens to everyone my age.
Mom says I’m unreliable. A dramatic embarrassment, desperate for attention.
I used to think both can be right. Maybe I am trying to find something. Maybe that something is attention.
But then Nicolas threw it in my face.
Irresponsible and unreliable. Not fit to be a mother.
And maybe he’s right, too.
