Chapter 48
He’d waited weeks, and if he wasn’t careful the coming weeks would stretch into months, and he couldn’t sit around doing nothing.
He was going to have it out with her, especially since he knew exactly where she was going to be and with whom—courtesy of Savannah. He’d been surprised when his sister-in-law had called him earlier, telling him that it had been admirable, him taking the hit about the twins’ news leaking out. That in itself had surprised him but he had been even more amazed to learn that Izzy had been the one who had told her.
“Leave it with me,” Savannah had said, “I’ll make sure that Tobias knows he owes you an apology.” And right after that she’d let slip exactly how Jacob was spending the day, from the movie he was going to watch, to the new burger place he liked to go to.
It might be his only chance to get a hold of Izzy and try to apologize. He wasn’t going to give up until she’d heard his side of the story. And, even as bad as it looked, she should give him a chance to explain.
Of course, knowing the right people at the burger place had its advantages, and a bodyguard walking in with a woman and a young child, were easy enough to notice.
He was at NYB about five minutes after Izzy and Jacob arrived there.
“Well, look who it isn’t?” he said, trying to look surprised as he walked past their table.
“Xavier!” Jacob lifted his hand and got ready for Xavier’s high-five. “You missed the movie!”
“Was it any good?” he asked.
“It was awesome!”
“I obviously need to see it.”
“You should have come with us,” Jacob cried.
“I didn’t know you were going.” His attention moved over to Izzy and he could see that his sudden appearance had left her shell-shocked. “Hey,” he said softly.
“Hi.”
“We’re having burgers,” Jacob informed him. “Can you have lunch with us?”
Xavier waited to see the reaction on Izzy’s face. Stone cold. She looked uncomfortable. Perhaps this hadn’t been as great an idea as he’d initially thought. Not that he had exactly decided on his plan of attack. He had simply seen it as his one opportunity to get to Izzy, and having Jacob be there seemed like a plus.
“I’m not sure, kid. I don’t think it’s a good idea. I don’t think Izzy wants me to.”
She scowled at him, understandably so, given that he’d made her out to be the bad cop.
“Don’t you have other plans?” she asked. “Surely you didn’t walk in here for no reason?”
“I come here for lunch sometimes.” It was true, he occasionally did.
Her face seemed to harden, as she surveyed the menu.
“Izzy, can we talk?” He sat down next to her, and noted that she moved away.
“About what?” she replied, as sharply as she dared.
Out of the corner of his eye he could feel Jacob staring at him. He’d been counting on this, on having Jacob there, so that it would be difficult for her to walk away. So that she might be forced to stay put and hear him out.
“About things.”
“I think we’re done with all of that. Do you know what you’re having, Jacob?” She smiled as she said it, but the tone of her voice didn’t match her bright smile.
“I’m not sure,” Jacob replied, looking slightly uneasy, as he started to look through the menu.
“Izzy, please.” He was begging. It was something he never did, but he could, for her. He would beg until she listened.
She let out a breath and turned to him in irritation. “We’ve got nothing to say to one another,” she hissed, keeping her voice low. He could see her jaw tighten, could imagine her grounding down on those molars, getting into another one of her pissy moods.
“But I’ve got a lot to say to you.”
“I’m not interested. I’m really not.”
“I know you hate me,” he whispered the words quietly, and peeked at Jacob who seemed to be hiding behind a huge menu. “I would hate me too, but at least give me the chance to explain, because you might hate me less, and I’ll take that over you hating me so much you can’t bear to look at me.”
She ground out a sigh. “It’s not wise to have this conversation here. Some ears pick up everything” she said, cryptically.
She was right. He looked over at Jacob, and at the large menu covering his face, and knew of the boy’s superpower to absorb information like a sponge.
“They do some excellent salad here, Jacob,” he said, hoping to convince the boy. “Over there by the salad bar. Why don’t you go and get some, dude?”
“I hate salad.” Jacob made a face.
“But it’s too good for you. Even Iron Man likes salad.”
“No he doesn’t!” Jacob protested. He rubbed his hand over his face, stole a glance at Izzy hoping she might help, but she didn’t even look at him. She obviously wasn’t going to make this easy.
“If you have some salad, maybe Izzy will let you have ice-cream later. You can make your own, remember, like last time?”
“Izzy always lets me have ice-cream, and I don’t even have to have salad to get it.”
“Don’t you want to set a good example to your brothers?”
“That’s low,” he heard Izzy say.
“Don‘t you want to be a role model for them?”
Jacob looked thoughtful. “Okaaaaay,” he said, slowly. “I’ll try the salad.”
“Great move.” Izzy got up to go with him, but he grabbed her arm. “The bodyguard’s going. Let the kid try it alone. I can see him from here.”
Izzy pried her arm away from him, but didn’t sit back. “This is you all over. You’re despicable. You’ve proved that you’re a manipulative asshole who thinks he can treat people like dirt. You made a 7 year old go and do something, not because you care about him but because you want to speak to me.”
“I care about Jacob, and I care about you. I’m in love with you Izzy. I didn’t expect to fall for you, but I have.” He’d said it, not out of desperation, or as a way to manipulate her, but because he was speaking the truth. He was falling for her.
The fact that her skin seemed to turn pink, gave him hope. She stayed silent, but at least he’d managed to get a reaction out of her—even if it was hate, right now.
He could work with that.
He would show her that he had changed, and that he wasn’t the same loser who had made the bet. The very thing that had cost him her.
“You wouldn’t know the meaning of the word,” she said, sitting back stiffly. She grabbed a menu and held it up so that it half-covered her face.
“You stood up for me,” he said, remembering “You told Savannah about Jacob spilling the news about the twins. Why did you do that?” It had to be because she cared about him.
“I hate lies, and mistruths, and deception.”
He swallowed. “Thank you for doing that.”
“There’s nothing you can say to me now that will ever change the way I think about you.” She turned to him with her dark, angry eyes. “I had an idea you were a jerk, way before the wedding, and I can see now that my initial impression of you was the right one.”
He clasped his hands together. “I can be stupid, and I made a grave error of judgement, and I know you won’t believe me, but I forgot all about that stupid bet soon after I started to get to know you. And I’ll tell you when that was,” he said, seeing that he had her attention now, “It was a couple of times after we started hanging out. That’s all it took, Izzy. A couple of times.”
“You’re a liar. You even took me to your friend’s bar and paraded me.”
“I didn’t parade you.”
“You made me think you were taking me out to celebrate getting that investment.”
“I was.”
“I don’t believe you, and I don’t trust you, and I never will. Children don’t lie. They tell things as they hear them, and they tell them in the context in which they hear them. They tell it like it is. You placed a bet with your friend for a stupid amount of money, and you placed it over what?” She leaned towards him, baring her teeth. “Did you collect?”
“Collect?”
“Your money. Your ten thousand dollars. Did you get it?” Her lips pressed together tightly. “What did you bet on? Was it to take me out a couple times and get to first base? Or second? Was it to get me into bed?”
He didn’t know what to say, hadn’t thought that she would ask him. How foolish and unprepared he’d been, to think she would quietly listen to all he had to say without asking him any hard questions.
“Was that it?” she asked, her voice lifting as if she had made that connection. She blinked fast a couple of times, her face a mirage of disappointment, her eyes seeing right through him. “I thought you might have changed, might have become the kind of man a girl like me could be with. How wrong could I have been? Under all that bling, behind that Ferrari, and your businesses, and your super-trendy apartment, you’re nothing but a loser.”
Her words were like heat-seeking missiles, shooting straight into his core. “You’re right. What you see is a façade, most of the time. You stripped that away, and you made me see not just myself differently, but other people, and other things. You shamed me and made me hold a mirror up to my face and see the real me. I’m not proud of my actions, but I swear to you, I forgot about the bet. All I wanted was to get to know you.”
“You’re so full of horseshit you can’t even smell it.”
His brows furrowed together, as she unleashed her anger. “Do you really hate me that much?”
“Do you not feel the hate?” she blazed back, her face contorting in anger. “What must I do? How can I spell it out to you in a way that you will understand?”
He fell silent, unnerved by her venomous words.
Then she asked, “It wasn’t real, was it? Any of it.”
“It was real—almost all of it. Every kiss, every touch, every word.”
“You liar.”
“It’s true. I tried to tell you. I tried to confess so many times, but I didn’t know how to. Each time I tried to say something, I chickened out.”
He had no way of convincing her, and he had nothing more to say, except, “Why do you think I never let us go any further? Why do you think I always left and never stayed over? I’d told myself that I had to come clean before we went away, but I couldn’t, and I regret the way it happened, how you found out because I didn’t have the balls to tell you myself first.”
She looked at him in disbelief, but she was listening. He moved as close to her as he dared. “Why do you think I never let you do anything for me?” he asked, lowering his voice. “Do you think I never wanted to make love to you? Do you have any idea how many times I had to walk away with aching blue balls, because I couldn’t let myself go further until I had told you?”
Her eyes widened, those dark, dark irises suddenly shiny. Her lips parted, slightly.
“If I was such a jerk, if the bet mattered, ask yourself why I didn’t fuck you and leave?”
She let out a short, sharp breath, then swallowed, hardness creeping into her face once more. “Because this was a game to you, and you were taking your time playing it,” she hissed, taking him by complete surprise. “You’re the type of guy people like me hate, and you’re no better than Shoemoney.
He couldn’t believe his ears. “I’m nothing like Shoemoney.” He wasn’t. She had told him he wasn’t. She’d said it before.
“I made a mistake, Izzy. I was drunk, and I made a stupid bet with Luke, and I will live to regret it, but in some ways I don’t, because that stupid bet is what led me to you. I don’t think you would have even noticed me if we’d met any other way.”
She laughed. “You’re so pathetic. Anyone else would have admitted their mistake and left it at that. You, you have to go one step further and justify it, like you did just now. Like Shoemoney did, because his wife was away and he was lonely.” She shook her head, as if the idea that she had ever gotten together with him was too much to bear.
Fuck.
There was no salvaging anything from this. “Please give me a chance, and I will make you see.”
“You have no regard for people, or their feelings. You treat women like objects, and the only difference between you and Shoemoney is that he hides behind his wife and family, and you hide behind the Stone family name. People only talk to you and give you the time of day because you are Tobias Stone’s brother.”
It was like a whip to his face. Sharp enough to draw blood.
“I’m not perfect, I’m not my brother, and I never will be. I’m me, and I make mistakes, and I’ve been an asshole, and an idiot for more times than I care to remember, but you make me want to reach for the stars. You make me want to be someone else, someone better.”
“People like you ruin other people’s lives over silly games. My life is better because you’re not in it.”
That hurt.
He couldn’t change her mind, or make her see, and the truth of it was, if someone had done to him what he’d done to her, neither would he.
“I got salad,” said Jacob, returning to the table.
Xavier forced himself to smile, even as the echoes of Izzy’s words whirled around his head. “That’s good, kid. That’s really good. Hey,” he stood up. “I have to be someplace else.” He didn’t even look at Izzy.
“Aww,” said Jacob, looking and sounding disappointed. “Why can’t you stay here?”
“I’ve got plans. Sorry. But you guys have fun, okay?”
He high-fived Jacob and left.