Chapter 46
Valentine’s Day was fucked.
Bang, bang, bang.
Workmen in safety overalls and helmets were at the far corner of the room. A handful of guys in safety gear were scattered around the dusty shell of what once used to be a memorabilia store. This was Luke’s new project.
Bang, bang, bang.
The sound of a drill, filled the air.
Men shouted at one another.
“What?” Xavier shouted back.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” Luke shouted, directly into his ear. “It’s dangerous without a helmet.”
He hadn’t exactly come to admire the new work in progress. He moved closer to his friend and shouted in his ear. “I can’t hear you. Can we talk elsewhere?”
Luke nodded, then walked outside. Xavier followed. His friend took off his helmet. His face and hair flecked with dust.
Bang, bang, bang.
“Is it always so noisy?” Xavier asked.
“It’s under construction, pal. What do you expect?”
“It’s a good size,” he remarked. “And you’ve hit the jackpot with the location”.
“Yeah, I know,” Luke replied, looking pretty smug.
“You’re impossible to get a hold of these days, dude.” Xavier cast his eye all around the dusty, dirty, demolition site. “But I can see why.”
“I’ve been busy, and I’m going to be wrapped up in this for the next few months.”
Great. Just when he needed someone to talk to, his friend was out of bounds. “Do you want to go and get a beer or something?” He needed to offload the shitstorm that was his life now.
“I could do with a couple of beers,” said Luke, swiping his hands through his hair. “But I can’t today. There’s just too much going on.” He peered closer. “Why? What brings you here?”
“She found out.” His lungs squeezed each time he thought of it. “Izzy found out about the bet.”
“She what?” Luke squinted in confusion. The banging continued in the distance, the shouting, the drilling. It didn’t seem like the right place to get the kind of advice he was after.
“She found out. She knows, and she hates me for it.”
“How the hell did she find out?”
“I have no fucking idea.” Xavier let out a heavy breath. “Wasn’t you, was it?” he asked, his eyes on Luke’s face.
His friend looked at him in disbelief. “You’re really asking me?” He shook his head. “I never said anything. You know I wouldn’t, right?”
He had never doubted Luke’s loyalty, but given that it had only been the two of them, and that Izzy wasn’t telepathic, he was stumped.
“I don’t know how the fuck she found out, then.”
Luke looked confused. “You didn’t seem to be getting anywhere pursuing her, and I thought you’d forgotten about it.”
“I wasn’t getting anywhere, and I did forget about it.” Only, between then and now, he’d fallen for her, and the bet had hung over him like a dagger the entire time, something he’d needed to take care of, but had never found the right moment to do so. And now, the dagger had fallen.
“So, what’s the problem?”
“Things changed.”
“Things changed?”
“I like her.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I meant to tell her, but she found out.”
Luke's face was a mixture of many things, confusion, surprise, shock and disbelief. “Why did you need to tell her? I wasn’t going to tell her. She’d never have known.”
“She knows now. It’s all blown up.”
“I’ve never known you to not like pretty and sexy, and Izzy seems to be the perfect combination. What made her warm towards you?”
“Stuff,” he said, “Maybe she saw my better side.” Or maybe, he’d finally met someone he could the drop the façade with.
“You must have done your best to charm her?” Luke suggested, with a grin, that told him his friend knew all about him.
“I didn’t play her,” he answered, remembering all the times he had tried to hold back. “And what we had wasn’t based on trying to get her into bed.” A sad smile touched his lips. With Izzy it hadn’t been about sex, because they hadn’t gone that far, it wasn’t about lust, and getting dirty—even though he’d loved doing the things he’d done to her.
“Why are you smiling?” Luke asked, looking confused. “Is this still a game to you?”
“No. No.” Fuck, no. That’s exactly why he was in this serious shit. He was starting to fall for this girl, and for once it wasn’t because of the number of orgasms they’d shared.
He loved her for her heart, and mind, and soul. For her fighting spirit and all the things she believed in. For the things she’d made him see. “I’m crazy about that girl.”
“How crazy, exactly?”
“The kind of crazy I’ve never been.”
Luke whistled. “Shit.”
“You see my problem? She found out, about everything. About the bet, about the money, and that it was you and me who talked about it.”
“She knows I’m implicated?” Luke didn’t seem to like that.
His friend’s apparent unease gnawed at him. “Tell me you don’t have any designs on her?” Because it jolted him, pricked him like a thorn, that it could have been Luke who told Izzy. His newfound suspicion burrowed a hole in his gut, especially when he thought back to all the conversations he’d had with Luke, lately, about who he was seeing.
“You idiot,” Luke growled. “I’m not interested in your girl.” Xavier looked at him as if he didn’t quite believe him. He’d seen them laughing and talking a couple of times, especially early on, when he’d been trying to win Kay over with those cheesy magic tricks.
“You sure?”
“Calm your shit,” Luke said, looking annoyed. “I’m not interested in your girl.
Xavier’s jaw loosened. “Okay.”
“The bet wasn’t my idea, pal.” Luke reminded him.
He knew. “It was my fucking stupid idea. So now, tell me. How do I get out of this mess?”
“You’ve tried to explain to her?”
“Yes, I’ve tried. I’ve texted and emailed and left long messages on her phone. She won’t talk to me.”
Luke covered his face with his hand. “I can see why. You were an idiot. It was a crazy thing to do.”
“Who’s side are you on?”
“On yours, you idiot. I’m just trying to think it through.”
“I was drunk. I thought I had something to prove, and I believed she was acting all not interested, and that it was going to be easy to make her see.”
“Make her see how awesome you were?”
He cringed inside, and hated his friend for stating the obvious. “I hate hearing you describe me like that.”
“Luke?” One of the builders called him over.
Luke put his hand up and spread out five fingers, before turning to him again. “I can’t talk. My men need me. But, look. Here’s the thing, pal. You have to give her time. You have to stop pestering her. You’re going to have to wait for her to come to you, but it depends.”
Xavier looked up. “On what?”
“If she was really into you.”
“She was.”
She had been. He was certain of it. Izzy Laronde wasn’t the type of girl to give any guy—no matter how interested he was in her—the time of day.
He should know.
It was what had made him place the bet in the first place. But once he got to know her, once they started to click, once he started to fall for her, she had started to feel something for him. She wasn’t the type of girl to let a guy like him into her deepest and innermost places, but she had.
Something had changed between them.
“Then you have to give her time to find her way back.”
One of his guys came up to him again. “We need you to take a look at this wall now.”
“I’m coming.” Luke turned to him. “Sorry. I need to go. Now’s not a good time.”
“I appreciate it.”
“We’ll get together, sometime.”
“Yeah. You call me. I’m not as busy as you.”
He walked back to his car and climbed in, pinching the bridge of his nose hard. He’d gotten himself into this mess, and he was going to get himself out of it.
It all depended on what stage of hating him Izzy was at.
Time, Luke had said.
Give her time.
Knowing how long it had taken him to get her to trust him, he was prepared for the long haul, because he understood how much he’d hurt her. With all he knew about her and her family, and the things she had been through, what he had done must have crushed her to pieces. The thought killed him, and he decided to do what it took to win her back.
His phone rang, just then, and his heart leapt, as it did each time, in case it was Izzy.
Fuck.
It was Tobias.
“Why the fuck has Matthias left me a message congratulating me on the twins? How the hell would he know?”
His first reaction was denial, quickly followed by anger. “I don’t know. Why the fuck are you asking me?”
Tobias was pissed. More than pissed. He hadn’t shouted. He hadn’t expressed rage. He sounded normal, and that was how Xavier knew, his brother was more than pissed.
“I told you the news was a secret. It was meant to stay within the family.”
“I haven’t told anyone.”
“The fuck you haven’t.”
“I haven’t.”
Tobias hung up.
Xavier punched the steering wheel. Then again, a second time.
He didn’t need Tobias’s shit right now.