to figure out what the fuck to do.
The fact she thinks my feelings for her aren’t real is worse than losing her. I’ve called her so many times, and now she’s turned off her phone. My old self would track her down, bust the door down and force her to listen to me, but I’m not sure that would help at this point. Even if she did believe me, I wasn’t completely upfront with her. And after my holding back about the sex tape and about prom night, this would be the third time she’s had to find something out that I was hiding. I wouldn’t believe me either.
“What am I gonna do?” My hands are in my hair while I pace endlessly from one end of the oversized couch to the other.
“Jesus, look at him. Remind me never to fall in love,” Asher says.
Ryker elbows him in the ribs. “Don’t be a dick.”
Ford sighs. “Have you tried calling her?”
I stare over at him, incredulous. “Of course I did. That’s the first thing I did. She turned her phone off.”
“Maybe you just need to give her some time. Then she’ll hear you out,” Lincoln says. He’s tapping away on his laptop where it rests on his lap. I swear he probably takes that fucking thing to bed.
“How am I supposed do that? I’m fucking dying here.”
“He’s right,” Ford says. “She’s been through a lot lately. Give her some time and she’ll hear you out. She’s not an unreasonable woman, and she loves you.”
I hate the fact Ford is always talking about Isla like he knows her so damn well. Like he knows her better than me. I step up to him and grip him by the collar. “You don’t know shit about Isla, so stop talking about her like you do.”
He pushes my shoulders, but I don’t let go. “You wanna go, Stone?”
The gleam in his eyes says he’d love nothing more than for me to start something so that he has an excuse to rage on me. I won’t give him the satisfaction. I push him away and stalk to the elevator.
“I need to be alone.”
Maybe some booze would be a good idea. It’s not like Isla is going to talk to me tonight anyway.
I wake to the shrill sound of my phone ringing. It feels like a sledgehammer in my head, and I groan and roll over, which only spurs a round of nausea to run from my stomach to my throat.
Maybe I overdid it drowning my sorrows last night.
Last night.
Shit.
What a fuck-up.
I still don’t know how I’m going to get Isla to speak to me.
The phone rings again, and I remember what it was that woke me up. I reach out and blindly find the receiver, pulling it to my ear. “Hello?” My voice cracks.
“I have Isla down here to see you. She wants to know if it’s okay if she comes up,” Margaret says.
I sit up in bed so fast my head swims, making me dizzy.
“Isla’s here?” The hope fills my tone. Margaret is probably wondering what the hell is going on. Why didn’t Isla just come up on her own? She has her own black card.
“She is. Can I send her up?” There isn’t a chipperness to Margaret’s tone, which sets off an alarm for me.
“Of course, yeah. Send her up.”
“Will do.” Margaret hangs up and I set the phone down.
It takes my sluggish brain a few seconds to remember that I probably look and smell like hell and that Isla will be here in a minute.
I race to the bathroom, ignoring the bile in my throat, and down a swig of mouthwash. I don’t have time to brush my teeth. My hair is haphazard but that’s okay. At least I changed into athletic pants when I got home last night and I’m not wearing a crinkled, slept-in suit. There’s nothing more pitiful than that.
I’m just spitting the mouthwash out when the ding of the elevator sounds in the distance, so I hurry out of my bedroom and down the hall into the main living area.
Isla stands there looking pretty much how I feel. She has bags under eyes and her skin is sallow. Her hair hangs limp around her face rather than looking like shiny mahogany. But more than anything, the look in her eyes is what devastates me. She looks dead inside, devoid of emotion, which is nothing like the woman I love. And the fact that she’s looking at me that way