And I’d forgotten it completely.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sunny
When I unfurled from the blankets on the sofa, I heard the water turning off upstairs. Mr.Tumnus yowled at my feet.
“I guess your new favorite person hasn’t fed you yet, huh?”
After getting breakfast for my feline son, I headed upstairs for a shower. I still felt a little on edge from yesterday, and the panic from the ring dilemma was there on the outskirts of my memory, threatening to return.
When I walked past Isaac’s room, I noticed the door was cracked, so I knocked before stepping inside.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, head hanging, his blond hair dark and damp.
“Hey,” I said. “I just wanted to thank you for your help yesterday at the jeweler.”
His gaze met mine, piercing eyes glassy and ringed in red. Like someone too numb to actually cry.
“Isaac.” I rushed to his side and sat down next to him. “What happened? Is everything okay?”
His brow creased with pain and discomfort, like he was experiencing a fresh loss, and then he closed his eyes.
“I forgot,” he said, putting his face in his hands. “I forgot that yesterday was...”
Oh no. “The anniversary of Brooklyn’s death,” I finished for him. I still remembered when it hit the news and how shocking it was. The only previous reports were that she was taking some time off touring to deal with a health issue and suddenly it was December22 and she had died of pancreatic cancer. The date always stuck out to me, because I knew what it felt like to revisit grief during the holidays, when everyone else was riding the highs of the season.
Growing up, we’d celebrate Hanukkah (thanks to my dad’s side) and Christmas, and after our parents’ deaths, Charlie and I coasted through the holidays with minimal engagement. In fact, it wasn’t until meeting Bee and sometimes going home with her for the holidays and then Teddy joining forces with the Hope Channel that I’d really started to even create my own holiday traditions. Which mostly included visiting my favorite strippers at the North Pole, sometimes wearing matching pajamas at Bee’s house, and now, for the first time since I was a teenager, getting a live Christmas tree thanks to Isaac.
“I think she would have been proud of how you spent your day yesterday, though,” I told him. “Buying a Christmas tree and rescuing a damsel in distress.”
He lifted his head. He was biting down on his lips so hard they might bleed, but when he spoke, there was a lifelessness to his voice that crawled under my skin. “I’m not proud.”
Dread was a palpable thing, slithering between my ribs now.
“Isaac, don’t.”
His lips were a little ruddy from the biting, but the rest of his face was pale, blanched. Only his eyes were the same, that deep,wonderful blue, but it didn’t matter. Not when they looked at me like I was an intruder. Like I was unwanted.
“Do you really think a tree that’s going to end up in the trash and an overpriced ring are worth forgetting the love of my life?” The words were cruel, but his tone wasn’t. And that was almostworse, that turned it into something I couldn’t understand at all, because it meant that he wasn’t saying this to hurt me.
He was saying it because he believed it.
“Do you think any of this is worth forgetting the love of my life?”
The feeling of his words crawling under my skin intensified. “Any ofwhat, Isaac?” I asked. “The life you have here? Having a life in general? Say what you mean.”
“You,” he said flatly. “Us. This whole fucking distraction.”
And there it was. The thing I’d known since the beginning, the thing I’d been waiting for.
The car crash.
I stood up to put distance between us. This wasn’t going to work. I couldn’t live here with him anymore. I couldn’t be near him, couldn’t think about him, couldn’t stay here to be a walking bruise when I’d known—God, how I’dknown—that this was exactly what would happen. That this was exactly how it would end.
Me heartbroken, and him still so in love with his own heartbreak that an end was all he’d ever be.
And I felt so stupid because I’d seen it coming, had done such a fabulous job protecting myself for years, and now here I was like a fool, standing in the shadow of his grief.
