Chapter Seventeen
“Sometimes Pearl is upset about things I can’t feel. But I love her and so I help her. Even when it hurts. That’s all I know about love.”
Scout
They overslept the following morning and Parker wasn’t sure what time it was when Isa’s phone started ringing. At first, she ignored it and they’d fallen back asleep, but later it rang again and again, echoing from her purse downstairs.
“I should get that,” she groaned, lazily running a finger over his chest.
“Or you could ignore it.”
She giggled, sliding her leg over his, only to growl as the phone rang once more. “No one ever calls me.”
That wasn’t true. Bishop called her, just not recently. Parker hoped this wasn’t the return of a bad habit.
She slid from the bed and he laughed as she pranced naked to his closet and came out in an old cable knit sweater that reached her knees.
Folding his arms behind his head, he admired her long legs, thinking the only thing that would make her a prettier picture would be his ring on her finger. “Aren’t you sexy.”
“Let me just see who it is. If it’s nothing, I’ll be right back.”
“Take your time.”
She left and he stretched, the satisfied man inside of him purring happily until his stomach growled, demanding sustenance. Climbing out of bed, he found a pair of jeans and slid them on. As he took the stairs he collected her shoes, which had fallen off on their way to bed last night.
He kept quiet in case she was on the phone with someone important. She sat on a chair in the den, her back to him, as he crossed the room. His hand lovingly brushed over her shoulders and she stiffened.
Frowning, he turned and looked at her face. She drew the phone away from her ear, her hands shaking as she pressed a button.
“Who was it?”
Her brow pinched as she focused on the phone and tried to dial with unsteady fingers. “My brother. He called six times. Something’s wrong.” Flustered, she pressed a button on her phone. “Jesus Christ. I can’t even dial!”
“Shhh… Don’t get yourself worked up until you know what he wants. It’s probably nothing.” He took her phone and pressed Lucian’s name. “Here. It’s ringing.”
She held the device to her ear and stood. “Lucian—” She paced then stilled. “I’m standing. What is it? Is Evelyn okay? The baby?”
Parker’s brow shot up. There was a baby?
Why the hell didn’t anyone say anything last night? Now it made sense why Scout kept ordering water while the rest of them had cocktails and wine. And her waist had felt thicker when he’d hugged her.
His stomach tightened, as he understood something was clearly wrong. Shit. This wasn’t good.
He watched Isadora for any sign of assurance that everyone was safe and nothing had happened to Scout. But as the color fled from her face he felt the blood rushing from his.
“Wh—what?” she choked. Her lips quivered. “I heard you, I just—”
Her lithe body shook fiercely, her fingers white knuckling the phone. Pink shot through the whites of her eyes in an instant and Parker’s concern multiplied.
A tear fell, her teeth chattering as if she were suddenly freezing.
A sharp sense of nausea gripped his stomach as he braced for the worst possible scenario. It can’t be Scout. Her father? Would she have this sort of response? God, what if something happened to Scout? No.
He wasn’t breathing so well. Seeing her so upset and not knowing the cause threw his heart into a rapid tremor.
Was it something with Lucian? Or maybe Toni? Whatever it was it was bad. Fear rocked him to his core, his mind certain it was Scout. Life was never fair. Fuck! Fuck!
All the wasted time over the past two years flashed through his mind in an instant. They were so stupid to let her marriage come between their friendship. He couldn’t handle anything happening to her—to any of them. Fuck!
Isadora’s face was white as snow, no expression aside from pure anguish. Whatever it was, he might not be able to fix it.
“Th—thanks for calling me,” she wheezed, zero inflection in her voice.
Her hand lowered as the call ended. She stared at him, through him.
“Isa?” He waited, not breathing. He’d never seen her so distraught. “Please talk to me. What happened?”
Her gaze focused, barely, and she shook her head, her jaw trembling.
His voice strained as he asked one of the hardest questions of his life. “Did something happen to Scout?”
She shook her head slowly and sucked in a jagged breath. “Evelyn’s … fine.”
Thank God. But something happened to someone.
Her lips tightened as her eyes glazed with another sheet of tears. “It’s Sawyer,” she rasped.
Parker stilled, his first assumption that this was a family situation shattered. “Bishop?”
Her arms banded around her stomach as she stumbled to a chair, dropping into it and letting the phone fall to the floor. She doubled over and moaned as if in agony.
Panicked, he crouched in front of her, worried whatever happened was more than she could handle. Her brother had no idea how much the man meant to Isadora, he couldn’t possibly have known not to embellish whatever the situation was.
“Is he hurt? Was there an accident?”
She gasped and rocked. “He’s… Oh, God.” She wheezed out a sob. “He’s…” A sound came from her as if wrung from the deepest depth of her soul. It was wrought with despair and so broken it managed to jar a part of his heart loose. “He died,” she gasped.
Parker rocked back in shock. “What?”
It was unbearable seeing her like this, and horrifying to be on the opposite end of her pain. For as much as he resented Bishop, he’d never wished for this outcome.
He was fucking dead? How?
She choked on a moan as she sucked in a deep breath, her fingers flying to her mouth. “I’m going to be sick.”
He snapped out of his daze and flew into action. Rubbing a hand over her back, he tried to soothe her as best he could. “Shh… Breathe, Isa. Deep breaths.”
She gasped, hyperventilating, and bolted out of the chair, but didn’t make it far. She pivoted, muttered a few whispered words and paced.
Her head shook as she mumbled another incoherent sentence. He didn’t know what to do and wanted to call Lucian and blame him for carelessly hurting her, but even he knew this wasn’t her brother’s fault.
Guilt filled him as he thought about how Bishop looked the other week when he’d confronted him. He hadn’t thrown a punch like a man meant to leave this world anytime soon. As a matter of fact, his strength and force had shocked Parker.
“I don’t understand. Was there an accident?”
“I don’t know. I need to call Lucian back.” She searched for her phone, not seeing it right in front of her.
“Here,” he said, picking it up off the floor and handing it to her.
She dropped it. “Goddamn it!”
Falling to her knees, she gasped and he pulled her to him, taking the phone and holding her tight. “Let me.”
She rocked and lost the battle against her sobs. Pressing her face into her palms she leaned into his lap and moaned. The heat of her tears scalded through the denim of his jeans.
He ran his left hand over her back and dialed her brother. “Shh. I’m calling Lucian. We’ll find out what happened.”
The phone rang for a split second. “Isa?”
“Lucian, it’s Parker.”
There was a long pause. “What are you doing with my sister’s phone?”
“Look, your sister’s upset. She asked me to call. Tell me what happened to Sawyer Bishop.”
His long sigh echoed over the dead air. “I figured she’d be upset. She always liked Slade’s dad.”
It was strange hearing Lucian refer to Bishop as only Slade’s father. He really was clueless about his sister’s private life.
“Apparently, he’d been sick for a while. We’re still trying to figure out what’s factual and what’s hearsay, but Sawyer’s always been an extremely private man. Even Slade didn’t know he was sick. Vivian Sheffield, a friend of ours, was Sawyer’s GP for a few years, but she’s only giving us minimal information, something about the right to privacy.”
There was another long silence and he realized that was all the information he was going to get. “Thank you.”
“I’m sure she’ll be fine once she gets over the shock. It was a surprise to all of us. Christ, he’s younger than our dad. Tell her if she needs me, to call.”
“I will.” He ended the call. “Isa?” he said softly.
She lay in a crumpled mess of limbs on the floor, her teary eyes staring at nothing. He suspected Lucian’s deep voice carried and she’d heard everything.
She looked so broken, so shattered. He was afraid to move her or touch her in any way, but he couldn’t leave her like that. “Let’s get you off the floor.”
Talking her through each step seemed to be the only way to shove his own shock aside. He swept her into his arms and carried her upstairs to his bed. “I’ll take you to bed.”
She made no comment when he adjusted the covers over her and hardly seemed to breathe as he asked, “Do you want me to stay?”
He couldn’t bear to leave her, but she seemed to be fighting back her sorrow and he wanted her to get it out. “It’s okay to cry here.”
A jagged sob hiccupped out of her and she gave into her tears, letting them fall unchecked. She looked so small and fragile, so crushed.
He couldn’t leave her to bear such pain alone, even if everything that man represented in her life had threatened his one chance at happiness. Nothing would ever erase the fact that she loved him first. The threat was over now, but maybe this was worse.
Curling next to her, he gently folded his body around hers. This was something personal he was apart from, but she was too upset to be alone. He wouldn’t leave her.
There was nothing comparable to the growing sense of powerlessness that took over with each passing minute. A thousand questions raced through his head. But his greatest worry resounded like a gong cracking against his skull.
Did she have regrets?
Painfully, he knew the answer was yes. Maybe this was why Bishop had pushed so hard to get her back. Maybe he knew his time was limited and couldn’t bear the thought of her suffering or the thought that she might always have a lingering sense of unfinished business where he was concerned.
He should have told her. If he knew he was sick he could have prepared her for this—but then she might have gone back to him.
Parker folded his arms around her, protectively pulling her closer. Her grief gutted him, but he stingily couldn’t regret the way things played out. He didn’t want the man to die, but he couldn’t imagine a life without her, especially not for someone else’s sake.
The horrible truth was, she could have had closure had she chosen differently, but she chose him and now her heartache might never end. Parker wasn’t sure how guilty he should feel about that. This morning she was happy, but moments like that now played like tarnished memories in his mind.
A while later, when she’d fallen asleep, he slipped out of bed quietly to find something to eat. She probably didn’t have an appetite, but she needed to eat. He returned to the bedroom only to find her staring into space.
“I brought you soup. It’s after one o’clock and you haven’t eaten anything since dinner last night. I think you should try to get something in your stomach.”
“I don’t want to eat. I can’t.”
He placed the bowl on the nightstand and sat beside her. “Isa … I’m so sorry.”
Her shoulders trembled as tears returned to her eyes, sliding slowly into her hair. He swore he’d never brush away the tears she shed for another man, but he couldn’t bear to see them fall.
His thumb gently caught a lingering drop and wiped it away only to have another take its place. “I wish I could take this pain from you,” he whispered, kissing her cheek.
He silently caught every tear, each one gouging a needle sharp hole in his heart. There were no words, none for him to offer in comfort and none for her to make sense of this news. Just palpable sadness that inflicted every inch of the room, distorting the feelings that were there yesterday.
Last night had been incredible. He’d never been so certain everything was exactly as it was meant to be. This changed everything. It clouded their reality with doubt, stole part of their happiness, and replaced it with sorrow. He didn’t know how to help her and he might never be able to when it came to love for another man.
She didn’t move from his bed all day. Everything he brought her sat untouched. By nighttime, he was truly worried she was having some sort of episode and he might need to tell someone.
He considered calling her sister but hesitated. He’d wait until morning, not wanting to do anything that would upset her more than she already was.
He awoke to the click of his front door and bolted out of bed. “Isa?”
Looking out the window, he saw a yellow cab pulling away. His jaw locked as his worry mounted. Maybe she just needed time to process and wanted to grieve privately.
Fuck that.
He knew the agony of losing a loved one—had gone through it personally. Had it not been for Scout, the death of his mother would have swallowed him whole. Alone was no way to grieve.
She needed people near her, people close to her to help her through the shock. But even her family, the closest people in her life, wouldn’t understand why Sawyer Bishop’s death affected her so deeply.
Only he understood and that meant it was his duty to be her rock. No matter how much it cost him, he would not let her face this alone.