I wanted that more than anything in the world, but I couldn’t give in. If I wanted to be successful, I needed to finish this job and move on.
Lifting my chin, I looked right into his eyes and shook my head. “No, Parker. It’s not one night. It’s tonight and tomorrow. I just can’t afford to lose most of the day tomorrow at this point. I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
His expression slowly hardened, the fight draining out of him as that cool indifference appeared on his face. To anyone watching us from afar, it would seem like he was looking at a stranger. One who was mildly annoying to him, at that.
“Leave,” he said quietly, the word a soft-spoken command but a command all the same. “If that’s what you want to do, then just go.”
Although that was exactly what I’d been planning on doing all along, the words struck a blow to the center of my chest all the same.Because it’s not what I want, but it is what I need.
“Good luck here,” I said, my gaze moving from one of his eyes to the other as I tried to hide the pain radiating from my heart. “If you find Colt, please tell him that I’m sorry this happened to him. He’s a good guy. He didn’t deserve it, but maybe it was for the best that it happened now. If she really thought a wedding would fix things and it didn’t, the next logical step would’ve been thinking that a child might do the trick. At least that didn’t happen. No baby will be bearing the brunt of the disappointment that its very existence wasn’t enough to set everything right in their relationship.”
A sob caught in my throat and Parker stared at me, obviously seeing what it had cost me to give him that message for Colt but not understanding why it affected me so deeply. I ducked my head, tossed my hand up in a wave, and was turning away from him before he could recover enough to ask about it.
“Isabella!” he called after me, but I was already fleeing across the lobby. I yanked the door to the stairwell open and took the steps two at a time.
I supposed it was human instinct that I wanted him to follow, but he didn’t and I wasn’t surprised. As much as I wanted to find solace in his embrace, as far as he was concerned, I wanted nothing more than to get away from him. To go back to the city and get back to work.
Parker respected my decisions too much to come chasing after me and demanding to know what that had all been about. He knew that I kept things to myself and that if he tried to manhandle me into telling him the truth, I’d only shove him away with all my might.
I’d have done it, too. A hug would’ve been a momentary comfort that I wanted but that I would’ve kicked myself over later. I knew I was being stubborn—pigheaded even—but that didn’t change the facts. It was becoming too hard to keep fighting tooth and nail against him, which was why I had to leave before I let him in.
I was breathing hard by the time I got back to our room, but I didn’t stop moving. I couldn’t stop moving. If I did, I was too scared that I would change my mind and run right back to him.I can’t let him, though. Can I? There’s a reason why his friends were so surprised to see him with someone and why the girls told me he was allergic to relationships.
Parker’s life was on one track and mine was on another, and they headed in the same direction. If I ever was to give in and try my hand at a real relationship, it would have to be with someone who loved me because of my faults and not in spite of them. It would have to be with someone who could take me as I was, broken bits and all, and who would have the patience to give me time to glue myself back together.
At the moment, I was a shoddily done patch job inside. If there was one thing I’d learned from being around all this love, these deeply rooted friendships, and the immense loyalty to one another despite the demands of everyday life, it was that I was being held together by cheap tape, spit, and a little bit of luck.
I was a patchwork quilt of advice from secondhand self-help books and my own quick fixes to stick a band-aid over years of emotional wounds that had needed stitches. I had no idea what it was like to love someone unconditionally and, moreover, to be loved unconditionally. These people had all that in spades.
They trusted, they opened up, and they loved. They loved so deeply that there were four men downstairs who were in the most awful and uncomfortable suits imaginable, and yet they’d been running around in them in the rain for hours searching for their friend. None of them had taken so much as the five minutes they’d have needed to change into outfits that were less itchy. They had no regard for their soaked discomfort, only worried about their friend and desperately trying to find him.
I wouldn’t even have done that for myself. The only person who I’d have stayed in that tight and horrible dripping-wet dress for was Parker. When the realization hit, I was already on the plane, thirty thousand feet in the air and soaring toward home.
In my heart, I suddenly knew that I’d made the wrong decision by leaving.But what’s done is done. I just hope that this is one giant mistake I’ll actually learn from.