Authors: Erin Nicholas
“It’s your own fault that you’re hard to say no to.”
He gave her a smile. He worked on that. He wanted to be the life of the party, the one everyone wanted around. Now it was coming back to bite him in the ass.
“I don’t want to lose you,” she said softly.
“I don’t want you to lose me either.”
“But you can’t promise that I won’t.”
He felt the heaviness return to his chest. “It might be good for me to hear no once in a while. To pull my head out of my ass and stop acting like I’m twenty-one.”
She smiled again, but it was sad this time. “I don’t know if I can say no to you, Shane.”
“I can’t be the only one thinking about what’s best for you, Iz.”
“I hate that saying no to you might be what’s best for me.”
They sat looking at each other until the waitress interrupted with their bill.
They walked to the car quietly and got in. When he’d started the engine he said, “I think I’m still leaving tomorrow.”
She nodded. “I knew you were going to say that.”
He shifted into drive and pulled out onto the street. “I’m going to fill up here before we leave. Then we’ll head to Rapid City.”
She didn’t reply.
Because really, what was there to say?
This vacation officially sucked.
And that was saying a lot, considering how much sex had been involved.
Isabelle couldn’t remember feeling so many emotions in the span of one day in her life.
It was exhausting.
The sky was getting darker. In the side rearview mirror, she watched Shane fill the gas tank. Maybe saying no to him was what she should do, but her need to make him happy made that difficult. She wasn’t the only one who was weak to resist Shane’s charming, fun-loving ways. He made people happy and they responded to his wide come-on-you-know-you-want-to grins, going along with things that no one else could talk them into. Her brother had a tattoo he hadn’t planned on getting, Ryan had invested in a brewery he’d never even seen, and Cody had adopted a dog he didn’t have room for.
I can’t be the only one thinking about what’s best for you.
Remembering those words made her heart ache. He was trying. He really was.
As he finished with the gas and headed into the store to pay, she sighed deeply. She’d underestimated him.
She’d broken things off because she hadn’t believed that there was an option. She’d thought she had to choose to be right beside him as his fun, sexy girlfriend who was up for anything any time, or to be nothing in his life. She hadn’t realized that there was the possibility for compromise. Shane was just so…
Shane
. He was a force to be reckoned with, for sure. He lived his life big and loud and he loved it. How could she have believed that he was willing to give any of that up?
There was more to him than she’d expected, more than she’d seen.
Which didn’t say much for her. Or their relationship.
Maybe if it had been more than six months, maybe if they’d spent more time talking than they had partying, maybe if they’d kept their clothes on even fifty percent of the time they were alone together, she would have seen that there was a depth there.
And maybe if they’d been more real together, it wouldn’t have lasted even six months.
She blew out a breath and swiped the tear from her cheek. Then her eyes focused on the book on the dashboard.
Living and Loving with Fibromyalgia
.
Fuck.
She didn’t
want
to live with fibromyalgia. The brochures the rheumatologist had given her had depressed and scared her enough. She sure as hell didn’t want a big old book about it.
But that wasn’t making it go away.
Fuck.
With a huge knot of dread in her gut, she pulled the book into her lap and opened to the table of contents.
There was an entire chapter on the importance of reducing stress. Which stressed her out. There was also a chapter on diet that she was pretty sure didn’t include cupcakes. Which sucked. But there was a long chapter on massage and positive touch. And then there was the one on sex.
There was nothing saying that she couldn’t skip ahead. She wasn’t quite ready to face the truth about the cupcakes, but the sex chapter might have some good suggestions—and pictures. Her repertoire included several not-fibro-friendly things like having to hold herself up against slippery shower stalls. She could use some new ideas.
She was engrossed in the information—and yes, pictures—on the fifth page of the sex chapter when someone knocked on the window beside her. She jumped and turned, then quickly slammed the book shut as she looked into the smiling face of the eight-year-old girl outside.
Isabelle rolled the window down. “Um, hi.”
“Hi. Would you buy a candy bar from me? I’m raising money to go to summer camp. The bars are a dollar apiece, which my grandma says is kinda high for candy, but my sister says they’re pretty good and she knows ’cause she eats lots of chocolate.”
Isabelle smiled at the unique sales pitch. Not that she needed it. Chocolate sounded like a hell of an idea frankly and she hadn’t read the diet chapter yet, so she could still pretend that it was fine.
“You bet. I’ll take one.” Over the girl’s shoulder she saw Shane step out onto the sidewalk and her heart thumped. She loved him so much and he was leaving tomorrow. “You know what? Make that two.” She handed two dollar bills over. Then she pulled one back. She had to
try
to do the right thing. “No, just one.”
The girl dug out a chocolate bar from the sack she carried and traded Isabelle for the money.
“Thank you, ma’am,” the girl said.
“Thank
you
.”
Shane was chatting with another guy on the sidewalk. The guy was laughing at whatever Shane had said—because of course he was—and Shane’s grin made something deep in Isabelle’s belly clench.
She tore off the wrapper of one of the bars as the girl headed for the red pickup that was parked in front of the convenience store. She needed some chocolate before Shane got back into the car.
She took a huge bite. The girl’s sister was right—it was good chocolate. Chewing, she tore more of the wrapper back, but as she lifted the bar for another bite something fell onto her lap and she looked down. The silver glinted in the sunlight as Isabelle tried to swallow.
It was the dragon pendant.
How the hell had that happened?
Her phone chimed with a text. She opened it with a frown.
Open the candy bar. Finish the game. The drop-off site is close.
She looked down at the candy bar. They had thought she might not eat the chocolate right away? Ha.
Her phone chimed again.
The pendant has to be at the site by midnight.
Yeah, yeah, she was Cinderella. She got it.
The next text included directions to the drop-off site and instructions to find a man in a bowler hat.
Seriously?
A bowler hat? She grinned and looked up as the red pickup backed out of the parking spot, made a huge turn and then came back toward where she was parked. The little girl was sitting in the passenger side and she gave Isabelle a thumb’s up as they rolled past.
Isabelle didn’t know if the little girl belonged to someone with Big Time or if they’d just recruited her and her parent to help with the game. It had been creative either way.
Yeah. She’d take the pendant to the drop-off and finish the game. Why not? She didn’t want to abandon the whole thing just because it had gotten a little confusing. Something from this trip needed to turn out the way she’d intended it.
Emma had set this up to prove to Isabelle and Shane—and Emma herself—that Isabelle could still be adventurous. Maybe it was time for her to be adventurous by herself. Lord knew that she couldn’t be a sidekick when it came to facing the fibro. She was front and center for that.
She nodded at the little girl. The girl grinned and waved. As the pickup passed her window, Isabelle saw that Shane was headed her way.
She swallowed the chocolate and started to put the rest of the bar away, then thought better of it and shoved the rest of the candy into her mouth as she tucked the pendant into the glove compartment. She didn’t want Shane to see any of the above. He’d disapproved of the gummy bears, so she knew he would frown about the chocolate.
He’d
really
frown—or worse—about the pendant.
She swallowed and wiped her mouth as Shane opened the car door and slid in.
He was leaving tomorrow. She’d just wait until he left and take the pendant to the drop-off site. It was a game and it was fun and she would finish it after he was gone.
“Ready to go?” he asked, setting two bottles of water into the cup holders in the middle console.
“Yep.”
“You okay?” He started the car, but looked over at her.
“Yep.” She stared straight ahead, not wanting to look guilty and not sure she could hide it.
“What are you…”
She glanced at him to see why he’d trailed off.
He was looking at the book in her lap. He cleared his throat. “You’re reading it?”
She looked at the book, then back to him. “Yeah.”
His gaze found hers. “I was under the impression that you didn’t want to know the info in there.”
“I don’t.” She took a deep breath. “It’s denial, Shane. Pure and simple. The longer I
don’t
learn about fibro, the longer I can put off making the changes I don’t want to make.”
His jaw tightened, but he nodded. “Okay.” He shifted into drive and pulled out onto the street.
“I don’t need a book to tell me the things I shouldn’t do,” she said, quietly, determined to let him in. Up until now she’d been reluctant to tell him much, worried it might scare him off. But he was leaving tomorrow anyway. “I know that caffeine bothers my stomach and that I need about nine hours of sleep at night and that the tops of my shoulders and the sides of my hips are the most tender and that I’m sensitive to bright light and that my tolerance for crowds and a lot of noise is about two hours. I’ve learned all of that through trial and error.”
Shane’s hands gripped the steering wheel tighter, but he didn’t say anything.
“And I hate all of that.” She shifted in her seat, staring out the windshield instead of looking at him. “I hate that my body is betraying me. I hate that I have to make adjustments and have special considerations for everything. I want to go and do and have fun and not worry. And I hate that my mind gets foggy sometimes and I have to carry sticky notes with me everywhere I go so I don’t forget something someone told me on one of my sales calls or—” She cut her rant off before admitting to Shane that she didn’t always remember the details of being with
him
.
“Or?” He looked over at her. “Dammit, Iz, or what?”
She could hear the frustration in his voice and felt the waves of it in the air between them. It matched her own. She felt like she was a dog on a leash. She had some room to move, and she could see the great big wide world out there that she wanted to explore and enjoy, but there was a limit to how far she could go. If she ran at it hard and fast, the leash would pull tight and snap her back. And it would hurt. She knew because that had been her strategy for the last several months—pretend the leash wasn’t there, pretend that if she ran hard enough she could break away from it. She couldn’t, of course, and the trying was painful, but she’d kept at it. And Shane was just at the edge of her leash. She could reach him now, but if he moved even a foot in a new direction, she wouldn’t be able to go with him.
She looked at Shane. It was going to hurt no matter what. “My bedside table drawer is full of notes. About us.”
He glanced over, clearly surprised. “It is?”
Fortunately he had to focus on the road again instead of staring at her.
“Not big stuff. I remember that. But little details get lost sometimes. So I write down things I want to remember. Like if you say something amazing to me, or the way something you did made me feel, things I want to be sure to tell you or do with you.”
He swallowed hard. “That’s…nice.”
“I do it because my memory is horrible,” she said. “The fibro makes me foggy. I get this fuzzy-headed feeling when I’m too tired or been too over-stimulated or…I don’t know. For lots of reasons probably. But anyway, when that happens, it’s hard to concentrate, hard to keep track of details. It’s a problem with work, of course. And it was keeping me from remembering the little things about being with you.”
“Iz—”
His voice was gravelly so she plunged ahead, wanting to say the rest before he said anything too sweet. Or told her that it was creepy that she wrote down the things he said to her.
“But I realize,” she continued, “that maybe this book, or other books, or whatever, could help me. It won’t take the fibro away—” She had to stop and swallow. God, it was hard to admit that she had a chronic condition. It wasn’t going to kill her, but it was going to be with her forever. That idea made her incredibly tired and pissed off. “It won’t take it away,” she said again, her voice firm. “But there are probably ideas in here about how to make it better, or easier, to live with it. I’m willing to read and try some things.”