What I’m having a harder time believing is her portrayal of Isla. As a teenager, by Macie’s account, she had been wild. Reckless. A pathological liar. Antisocial and flaky. She’d run away from home multiple times. Had been verbally argumentative towards her mother. Macie had been at her wits end.
I tried to see that whenever I went to visit. I never did. Macie insisted she always stayed on her best behavior when people were around, just to make Macie look bad.
Isla wasn’t... isn’t my problem.
She hadn’t been then and she sure as hell isn’t now. During her teenage years, I had my own life to live. I was neck deep in school, trying to prepare for the bar. As an adult, I began to see it.
While she wasn’t out of control, I was very aware of her vanishing into the night. Usually on the final day of her visit, she’d be gone before anyone even woke up. Her consistent change of address, phone number, location had been another hint. Macie joked once that she was trying to hit every state in the US. But all I saw was someone incapable of staying put, setting in roots, building a foundation. She was unreliable. Someone who couldn’t be trusted to make a commitment.
I stand by my original theory. Even as I watch her with Dom and see how perfect they are together, how perfect she would be with us, I’m not ready to lay my heart down for her to stomp on as she’s bolting for the door.
Isla’s shriek pulls me from my thoughts, and I watch Dom wrestle her across the hood of the truck. He plants her face first against the cold metal. Her feet are kicked wide and he cuffs both wrists at her back with one of his hands. All humor vanishes as he — like I do — realizes the position he’s gotten her in. The plump globes of her ass are perfectly level with his crotch.
Isla must have realized it, too. She’s not fighting. She’s barely moving. Her every labored pant fans across the surface of Jacob’s truck.
Dom releases her quickly and steps back.
I don’t know who’s more disappointed. I think it’s me. But Isla straightens, unsteady hands tugging down the hem of her coat. All humor is gone, but Dom still turns her to him and brushes her cheek where it had been pressed into the grime. And even that is so profound. So intimate when her face is tipped to his and he’s making gentle sweeps with his thumb.
“Nicolas?”
I clear my throat and turn to face Tom Mitchell, Pine Meadows’ owner. He offers me a lopsided smile and hands me my receipt for the bundled tree he has wheeled over. I take it and stuff it into my pocket. I offer him a thanks before turningmy attention back to the two murmuring to each other in hushed whispers.
It dawns on me that I should be annoyed. I should at the very least feel some shred of jealousy. Dom is my boyfriend. Man or woman, I know I would not like him being touched by someone else, never mind the public display of affection he’s showing the tiny brunette held to his chest with one arm.
But I move towards them, unbothered. Even when Dom brushes a kiss to the tip of her nose and she smiles up at him.
“Let’s load the tree,” I tell him instead.
Chapter Thirteen
?Isla?
I feel my phone pinging in my pocket.
The silent demands for immediate attention knot in my gut the longer I pretend to ignore the rapid pulses.
Outside the window, the wild terrain sprawls far over into the horizon. Rigid hills rise and fall with the settling evening. The cabin itself is a sprawling structure of logs piled together and held in place by the sheer grace of God. Walker’s great, great, a few dozen more greats, grandfather built it with his own hands back when it was man against nature. Over the years, it’s been touched up, modernized, but the core structure remains.
Mom hates it.
The endless expansion of yellow grass and horizon makes her feel exposed. It doesn’t help that there are only two bedrooms. The water comes out a little brown from the well, and there is always a faint hint of mold, copper and rust that never seems to fade no matter how long she leaves the windows and doors open — which she learned the hard way to stop doing if she didn’t want to share her bed with all manner of critters.
I’ve always been indifferent. The cabin is nice enough. Cozy for the most part, when the fire is snapping in the hearth.
Dom pulls the wheel, backing us up against the front porch steps. He kills the engine and huffs.
“Well, we made it.”
It seems smaller.
Maybe it’s because I haven’t been here since I was sixteen, but I’m not wholly certain we’re going to be able to fit everyone inside. Hell, I don’t even think Nicolas and Dominic will fit.
But Nicolas has pulled open my door, and I have no choice but to slide down.
“Why don’t you head inside and open some windows?” he instructs gently, pressing the keys into my palm.
I give a nod and move to do as I’m told.
