Chapter 44
The following weekend she was back to babysitting Jacob.
But she would never get used to having a bodyguard following her every move. It was eerie, like having a nameless, speechless shadow on her back. She was always relieved when she went home and returned to her own life, without the grandeur that was so evident in Savannah’s new life. There was at least a type of freedom which she had never before realized—the freedom to live happily in her cramped little student digs in a neighborhood which turned unsavory under the cover of darkness.
This was better than to live a life shadowed by men who never spoke but would lay down their life for you.
“Do you want another hotdog?” she asked Jacob.
He considered it. Then shook his head. “No, thanks.”
“Are you sure?” They’d been ice-skating for over an hour and she was cold and hungry. And she wanted to go home and finish off the big case study that the tutor had dropped on her class two days ago. It had put a halt on Xavier’s Valentine’s Day ideas. She had already warned him she couldn’t come over tomorrow, and on matters of principle, she didn’t agree with the jacked up prices at restaurants during Valentine’s Day. So they’d agreed to catch a film, then have takeout at his place.
“My mom gets really hungry.”
“She’s having a baby, Jacob. It’s to be expected.”
“And,” he put his fingers to his lips and glanced over at the bodyguard who was standing away from them. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Are you sure you want to tell me, if it’s a secret?” She was going to pretend she didn’t know.
“I trust you, and Mommy and Tobias trust you, too. They like you lots.”
“That’s nice to know.”
“That’s why mommy only lets you be the one to look after me. You and Rosalee. But Rosalee is always busy these days, and we don’t get to see her much ‘cos Diego’s got a new baby sister now.” He made a distasteful face. “Who wants a sister?”
“Sisters can be nice!”
“But brothers are better.”
She cocked her head, as if debating. “I don’t know. I think it’s nice to have a brother or a sister. It’s nice to have someone else to play with.” And Jacob, she knew, was so ready for a playmate.
“Mommy isn’t fat.” He looked at her as if it was impossible to keep the news to himself.
“She’s not,” agreed Izzy, “And that’s not a nice word to use, to describe anyone.”
“But I didn’t say she was fat.”
Izzy bit her lip. “No, you didn’t.”
“It’s the baby that’s making her fat. I mean, big. And it’s not one baby.” He held his hand in front of his mouth, secret-spy style. “She’s having two babies.” He gazed at Izzy, as if waiting for her reaction.
“Two babies?” She whispered, looking over her shoulder to see where the bodyguard was.
“That’s why she’s so fat.”
“Jacob! We don’t use that word. It’s rude.”
“But she is!”
“I don’t think I’m supposed to know about the babies, Jacob. Isn’t this supposed to be a secret?”
“But I’m so excited, I wanted to tell you. I know you won’t tell.”
She wanted to hug him so tightly for being a kid, for thinking everyone else had his same sense of wonderment and honesty. “Thank you for telling me, Jacob. But you mustn’t tell anyone else. Okay?”
“Okay.” He bit his lip. “Can I tell you one more thing?”
She could see he was finding it difficult. “Do you need to?”
“It’s boys. I’m going to have two brothers.”
Her smile spread from ear to ear, not because this was news to her, but because Jacob was so overcome by emotion, his eyes glistened. He held up two little fingers. “Two brothers! We can play piggie in the middle.”
“But you have friends to play with, don’t you?” she asked, getting concerned.
“I’ve got lots of friends, but Lenny’s my bestest friend, but we don’t see each other when I get home from school, and that’s the best time to play. So now I can play with my brothers when I come home.”
She understood. “That’s the best news, Jacob. But, for your own good you mustn’t tell anyone else. Understood?”
He nodded.
“Can I tell you one more secret? It isn’t techlickly a secret.”
“Technically,” she corrected him. “Why isn’t it a secret?”
“Because you already know.”
She tried to hide her smile. “Me?”
“His friend said you were a lucky girl.”
“Which friend?”
“The one at the wedding.”
She frowned. “At the wedding?” Who, and what was he talking about?
“The one who was always at the bar, at Mommy’s wedding.”
She had to think for a while. “Do you mean Luke?”
Jacob nodded.
“Luke was talking about me?” Surely not.
“I heard your name.”
“My name?” There had to be some mistake. Jacob seemed to be doing a whole heap of eavesdropping lately.
“They said ‘Izzy’ and his friend called Xavier the Spud Stone.”
“The what?” She shook her head as if the words were scratching her brain, as if what Jacob was telling her was crazy, and couldn’t possibly make any sense. “The Spud Stone?”
And then she remembered.
Xavier-The-Stud-Stone.
She’d heard that name mentioned on the island, but couldn’t remember when. It was Xavier’s nickname.
“And Xavier won the bet and he’s going to be rich.”
“The bet?” The news was like a pick axe through her heart.
“Luke said ten thousand dollars was a lot of money. I’ve been saving up my birthday and Christmas money, and I’ve got one hundred and twenty three dollars in my money box, and that’s a lot!” Jacob declared proudly.
It couldn’t be. Her mind started to wander towards there—to what Xavier was like when she had first met him.
No.
No. He wouldn’t do this to her.
Maybe Jacob had heard wrong, and or had misunderstood whatever snippets of conversation he had heard. “That’s a lot of money, Jacob. It sounds like some sort of business deal to me.” She still hoped this was the case. “Maybe you didn’t hear properly.”
“I was in the room when they were talking, because I was looking for Iron Man behind the couch.”
“So they didn’t see you?”
“Nope.”
And they had no idea he had overheard.
A ten thousand dollar bet? On her? And it had been Xavier’s doing?
The three questions thudded through her like poison-tipped spears, one after the other.
“Xavier’s rich!” Jacob declared, happily, unaware of the tsunami of emotions he had unleashed on her unknowingly. “Are you happy I told you?”
She nodded her head weakly, and found herself sinking in the silence that followed, trying to sift through the debris of emotions. “You mustn’t mention this to anyone, Jacob. Okay?” She bent down to his level, and placed her hands on his shoulders. “I mean it, Jacob. Don’t tell anyone.” She was breaking inside, but still aware enough to make sure he wouldn’t tell anyone else.
His expression tightened. “I wanted to tell you.”
“This is our secret. And you mustn’t mention it to anyone, not even Xavier.”
She told Jacob that it was time to go home. He wanted to play in the park for longer, but she didn’t want to skate, or be here, or talk, or be around anyone.
Everything she had been looking forward to, making plans about their weekend getaway, looking forward to seeing him again—all of that happiness had been stripped away.
He’d screwed her over for a bet.
What a fool she’d been. She’d fallen for his charm, fallen for his lies, and look where it had gotten her. If only she had trusted her gut.
~ ~ ~
She had given him some dates for when they could go away.
A long weekend at the family home in the Hamptons. He would make sure that nobody would be there, and it would be all theirs. He knew she was wondering why he was taking his sweet time.
For Izzy he’d do anything. And he wanted to prove to her that he wasn’t the player she had expected him to be.
For now, there was work to be done. He’d sent her an urgent email earlier, asking for the figures back on the spreadsheets he’d sent over a few days ago. Now he needed them back sooner than he had anticipated, and, because he knew she had no tests this week, he chased her up for it, but she hadn’t replied to his email.
So he called her, but her phone went to voicemail.
After a second morning of not being able to contact her, he turned up at her apartment.
It was Cara who answered the door.
Something about the dirty look she flung at him, warned him that something wasn’t right.
“Is Izzy okay? I can’t get a hold of her.”
“She’s not here.”
“Has she gone home?” he asked. Because something odd was going on. “I’ve emailed her and called her and I can’t get through to her.”
“She’s gone home.”
“Something happen to her dad?”
“Her dad?”
He could see Izzy’s familiar knapsack lying on the floor. “She’s here, isn’t she?” he tried to walk through, but Cara stuck her foot in the way. “I need to see her.”
“She doesn’t want to see you.”
What the fuck? “What? Why?”
“She said so.”
What the hell was going on? “I need to see her. Please,” he begged. “I don’t even know what’s wrong.”
“You slime ball.”
Okay. So something definitely was wrong.
“Let me through, otherwise I’m not moving, and you’re going to have to stare at my face all day long.”
Cara moved out of the way and he could have sworn he heard her mutter a “good luck” as he knocked on Izzy’s door.
She didn’t answer.
“Izzy,” he raised his voice, and knocked. “What’s going on?” He knocked again, tried the door handle, but she had bolted the door from inside. “We need to talk. Let me in.”
“Go to hell.” At least he knew she was in there.
“I will. I promise I’ll leave, but you have to tell me what’s wrong first. I don’t have a goddamn clue.”
Before he had time to knock again, the door flung open, and Izzy’s angry eyes burned into his.
“What’s wrong?” she cried, the rage rising in her voice. “What’s wrong is that bet you placed on me. That’s what’s wrong.”
She knew about the bet? How the fuck had she found out?
“You placed a bet on me?” The horrified look on her face hit him like a sledgehammer. “You don’t deny it, then?”
His face fell, and with it, his insides. “I can explain,” he said, desperate for her to hear him out. He should have told her. He should have come clean sooner. It just looked bad, real bad, and no matter what his intentions were now, they had been indecent before. “Let me explain, Izzy.”
“I don’t want to hear it. I already know everything I need to know.”
His head was spinning in a thousand different directions. “I know it looks bad, but I can explain.”
“You don’t need to,” she screamed. “It’s easy enough to understand. You placed a bet on getting me to go out with you, and you bet $10k to do that? What kind of an asshole are you? I thought Shoemoney was bad, but you’re evil on another scale altogether.”
“It’s not how it sounds.”
“You nasty piece of shit!” she screamed, the words emphasizing her rage more succinctly than her shriek could have. “Is that all I was to you, another pussy?”
He swallowed, knowing now exactly what she thought of him. Knowing he’d gone into the wasteland where he could never come back from. “Please let me in, Izzy. Please give me a chance.”
“I don’t ever want to see you again!” The whites of her eyes protruded, giving her a hysterical appearance. The devastation he had wreaked on her was written all over her face.
“You should do the decent thing and leave,” Cara told him. “You’ve done enough damage.”
“He didn’t deny it,” Izzy said to her friend. “You said to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I tried to, but he did it. He really did it.”
Cara turned on him like an angry twin, giving him a look that could make his insides shrivel. Izzy slammed the door in his face, and he was left standing with an angry best friend to deal with .
“I need to explain,” he muttered, more to himself than to anyone.
“You should go. She’s hurting, and you being here isn’t helping.”
“It’s not how it seems,” he insisted, trying to find a way to explain. It wasn’t going to be easy, but he was a different man now.
“I thought you were different,” Cara said, pure malice dripping from her voice. “And so did she.”
“The bet was off. I didn’t even think about it.”
Cara laughed cruelly. “The bet was off? The bet was off? You realize you just admitted you placed the bet in the first place, asshole?”
He scrubbed his stubble. No amount of pleading his case was going to make them listen.
“You animal!” Cara sneered. “How could you sink so low and play around with her feelings like that?”
“It was never meant to be like that.” Only, it had been. Back then on the island in his drunken state. Hell. There was no way he could absolve himself from this, because the facts were clear cut.
He had made the bet, and had, in the beginning, intended to pursue it. He’d used her, and it didn’t matter how long ago it was, or how much he had changed, the fact was he’d been a morally reprehensible shitbag and Izzy deserved better.
It didn’t matter how crazy he was about her, or that he hadn’t been able to sleep or let himself get close to her until he told her, the fact was, the truth was out there now and he couldn’t retell it.
“Get out,” Cara ordered, as he raised his fist to bang on the door again. He contemplated trying to talk to Izzy again, but knew that the wound would be too raw. He would have to try again another time.
“I’m not giving up.”
“Asshole,” muttered Cara, following him to the door.