Page 60

“I don’t want to talk about this, Diego.”

“Look, I get that. I really do but I’m not asking just to pry into your life for no reason. We have to raise a kid together and I don’t want to spend the next eighteen years fighting with you so it would help if I understood you because right now, it’s not making sense to me.”

I cross my arms over my chest and shake my head again. “I don’t see how it’s relevant.”

“Oh, come on, Izzy,” he scoffs, rolling his eyes and I turn back to the parking lot, staring at the lights of Baton Rouge past it. I can admit that he has a point but dragging these painful memories from the pit I’ve stored them in isn’t something I can handle. “That’s bullshit. This pain you’re carrying around is going to affect our child and you know it.”

In an instant, my mind flashes to my mother and the agony I watched her go through when I was a kid as a shudder runs through me.

“Did you know I lost my girlfriend five years back?” he asks and I shake my head. I knew that he had been through a lot of shit around that time and that it was what drove him to join the Devils but I never knew specifics. He nods, his face twisting with pain. “She was murdered and it… it fucked me up for a long damn time, Izzy.”

I nod. “I can imagine.”

“No, I’m not sure that you can,” he answers, the sting of agony in his voice as he looks out at the parking lot for a moment before turning back to me. “But that’s beside the point. I’ve been wrestling with that shit for years and it was tearing my life apart.”

“What changed?” I ask, my voice weak and my hands shaking as I peek up at him.

“You.” He reaches up and cups my cheek, his gaze meeting mine and I get the feeling that the move was intentional so I can see just how true his statement was. I recoil at the thought and turn away from him.

“Don’t say that.”

He sighs. “Fine. I won’t say that but it doesn’t make it any less true. When you told me you were pregnant, I knew I had to find a way to move past it so my mind would be right for you and our kid.”

The silence that stretches between us is awkward as hell this time and my mind races, looking for a way out of revealing the truth to him but I’m not coming up with anything good. Sure, I could just outright refuse to tell him why I am the way I am but it wouldn’t be fair and more than anything, I don’t want to be that cold bitch everyone accuses me of being. Especially not with him. Besides, he’s got a damn point, as much as I hate to admit it.

“You want to know what happened to me?” I ask through gritted teeth, dropping my hands to my lap, and he nods. My heart hammers against my ribs as the memories are let loose and pain spears through me. “Long story short, I thought I had found the one and I was getting the love story I had heard Lita talk about my whole life so we ran off to Vegas the day after we graduated. We were both eighteen and we were ready to commit our lives to each other. He…”

My words trail off and a shudder runs through me as I try to shove the pain back down but it’s not working. Diego laces his fingers through mine and I suck in a breath as I look over at him.

“He what, baby?”

Tears sting my eyes but that just pisses me off as I turn away from him. “He wasn’t a good guy, okay? And he hurt me more than I even knew someone could hurt another person. After that, I vowed to myself that I would never let a man cause me that kind of pain again. That’s how I went from idolizing my grandparents’ love story to the ice-cold bitch you’re saddled with for the next eighteen years.”

“Isabelle,” he growls and I know he doesn’t like it when I refer to myself like that but maybe it’s time that we both face the facts. I am who I am and it’s not going to change. Before he can say anything else, I yank my hand from his and stand as tears burn my eyes. Clenching my teeth to force the weakness back where it belongs, I rush back into the bar. Ali and Carly look up when I walk in, concern lining their faces. They shove their chairs back and I shake my head as I stalk right past them, making a beeline for the bathroom. I love those girls with my whole damn heart but I don’t want them to see me like this. I’ll apologize when I’m finished but right now, I need somewhere quiet, without an audience, so I can allow myself to fall apart before I shove all of this shit back where it belongs.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Diego

“That’s how I went from idolizing my grandparents’ love story to the ice-cold bitch you’re saddled with for the next eighteen years.”

Her words run through my mind, just like they have been for the past twenty-four hours, driving me crazy with the things she’s revealed to me and everything else that I still don’t know, everything she keeps locked away inside her. The pain in her words was so potent that it hit me like a sledgehammer as I sat next to her on that bench outside the bar, desperately trying to understand. But she is an enigma. Last night, as I laid next to her in bed while she slept, unable to shut my mind off, I thought over the snippets of information she’s given me, trying to understand what this asshole could have done to her to hurt her so badly. The problem is that I can’t go too far down that road, think about it for too long without feeling like I want to start kicking some ass in her honor. She’d hate that just as much though.

Glancing up, I watch her from the corner of the room where she and Stella are wrapping up their radio show for the evening. It’s the first time since the fire that she’s felt safe enough to come back into work and she has been in rare form tonight. Two hours ago, I couldn’t get a smile out of her to save my fucking life and I’ve been receiving the silent treatment since she left me sitting on a bench outside Moe’s last night but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her now. She looks like she’s on top of the goddamn world - firing off joke after joke all night long, each one more savage than the last, and roasting the men brave enough to call into the show with their opinion with absolutely no filter. Her laugh is loud and free, lighting up her gorgeous face, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. No one else may be able to see it but I do. I see past her little act. I see the way her eyes shift around the room like she’s scared Luca is going to jump out from behind the sound board and grab her. Not that I would let that happen though. I’ve got Henn and Maverick helping to guard the front door so there is no way in hell anyone is getting in here or laying a finger on her body.

When I look up, she glances in my direction for just a second, locking eyes with me and past the show she’s putting on for the rest of the world, there is so much pain in her gaze that my stomach twists. Something clearly rattled her last night and still does but the wall has gone up, locking her securely behind it and shutting me out completely. I fucking hate it. It’s only been a day but I miss the way she looked at me before she freaked out - the way her eyes would light up and the teasing smile that always makes my heart skip a fucking beat. As my mind drifts back to the events of last night, I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose. When we were out on the dance floor, I was riding high and when she gave me permission to kiss her in front of her friends, it felt like a breakthrough. The thing is, I fucked up. I jumped the gun and got ahead of myself, thinking that I had broken down a few of her walls but loving Izzy is a balancing act. One second, everything was perfect and the next, she was losing her ever-loving mind.

There is a part of me, the naïve dreamer that I can never seem to beat out of my system, that hopes the reason she freaked is because she felt something for me. Something deeper than she was willing to admit, even to herself, but I can’t afford to go there yet. I pushed her too hard last time and I can’t make that same mistake again. That’s the thing though - I have to push her to make any kind of progress at all but I can’t cross the line and that fucker is always moving so I never know where the limit is.

And now she’s fucking falling apart.

This isn’t the end of the road for us though. It’s a minor setback and I will find a way to fix this and get us back on track if it’s the last thing I do. My mind drifts back to the woman I loved before Izzy, the woman I lost and my chest aches as I suck in a breath. When I was with Laney, it was the happiest I’d ever been up to that point and things were so fucking easy between us. We talked about getting married, moving to the suburbs, and having lots of babies. It was my dreams coming true and then Laney and those plans were ripped away from me with a knife and a pool of blood. I’ve spent years wondering if that had been my one chance at happiness and then Izzy waltzed into my life and it all came rushing back. God, I want her. All of her, all of the time but if the fragment of a story she told me last night is any indication, I’m up against an even bigger hurdle than I realized. The pain in her voice as she laid it all out haunts me and enrages me. What the fuck could this guy have done to her to make her swear off relationships for fourteen fucking years? What could he have done to make her sound like her heart was being ripped out of her chest at the mere mention of him? I swear to God, whatever it is, I’ll find him and I’ll even the score.

The conversation we had on the day I picked her up from Storm and Ali’s place flashes through my mind and I scowl. She told me she got pregnant when she was eighteen and then last night, she said she was eighteen when they ran off to Vegas to get married so this guy had to be the father of the baby she lost. But what happened after that? I wish knowing that provided me with some answers but all I have is more questions. Hell, I don’t even really know if they went through with the wedding or if things fell apart before they could make it to the chapel.

My gaze drops to the phone in my hand and I debate asking Streak to look into Izzy’s past to find me answers to some of my questions. Gritting my teeth, I clench the phone in one hand and tug the other through my hair. I made a conscious decision when she first started staying with me to avoid reaching out to Streak, the club’s tech guy, to dig into her life because I wanted to earn her trust. In my ideal world, she’d come to me and open up, tell me all about the pain she carries around with her everyday. It seemed like the right answer at the time but now, I’m dying to fill in the gaps of her story.

Shaking my head, I look up and catch her boss, Aiden, watching her from the sound booth. His arms are crossed over his chest and there is hunger in his eyes as his gaze lingers on her tits. I clench my fist, forcing myself to take a breath as I turn back to look at her. Her dark brown hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun tonight, a few tendrils falling near her face. It shows off her neck and all I can think about is the way I wrapped my fingers around her throat yesterday in the shower, the way her eyes widened and the hint of a smile that tugged at the corner of her lips. If I were reasonable, I couldn’t blame Aiden for being attracted to Izzy but when it comes to her, I’m anything but levelheaded and I hate that the fucker wants her.