Love, Exes, and Ohs (Cactus Creek #4)(52)

“And I’ve waited for you for over nine,” she cried out.

His hands fell away from her face, torment darkening his hazel eyes to a dark pool of despair. “Tell me how I can fix this.”

“I don’t know that you can. It’s all tangled together, wrapped up in a messy bundle.”

“Do you believe me that I would’ve found you if I could’ve?”

“No.”

He jerked back as if he’d been slapped. “You think that low of me?”

“Of course not. I know exactly how great you are, which is exactly why this hurts so much worse. I left you a note. I wasn’t too drunk to remember that, Isaac. I asked you to call me in that note.”

“I remember the note, but babe, you didn’t sign it.”

What? She could’ve sworn she had.

“And how could I have called you? You didn’t leave your number on the note either.”

“Because I’d already given you my number the night before.”

Pure confusion looked back at her and for the first time in nine years, she wasn’t sure. She ran through the old, hazy memories again.

“Did you give it to me or did you type it into my phone?”

“I gave it to you.”

“Xoey, I was so drunk I probably couldn’t have remembered my own number that night.”

No. This wasn’t her fault. “You recited it back to me.”

He looked off into space, as if he were trying to see that memory. “I didn’t have a lot of numbers in my phone. Mostly business contacts and the guys. I would’ve noticed if a woman’s number was in there. Did I punch in your name or did you?”

“Isaac, we’re just splitting hairs now.”

“Please. You have memories of that night that I don’t. Please share them with me.”

“You typed it in. So yes, there’s a possibility you could’ve input my name wrong. Hell, you could’ve even deleted it by accident. We’ll never know.”

“I don’t remember any of this.” He looked back at her with dismay. Shoving his hand into his hair in frustration, he cursed under his breath. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t been so friggin’ drunk that night—?

“Why were you?” she interrupted, needing to know. “I remember the month we met, and it wasn’t the anniversary of your brother’s death, or his birthday. So why were you so drunk?”

“Because I’d been riding the end of a tailspin since Cody’s death.” He frowned sadly. “Did I mention that I’m the one who got him interested in bikes in the first place? That I’m the one who taught him how to ride, and I’m the one who’d decided we should go out riding that day.” A bitter grunt escaped him. “That was all me, but yet, I was the one who lived. He suffered and then he died, right before my eyes. And that was. All. Because. Of Me.”

“No, Isaac, it was an accident.”

“Which he wouldn’t have gotten into if not for me.” His pain-drenched eyes fell down to the ground. “That’s when I started drinking, and being a tool, basically—a lot like those friends you met at the house. But unlike them, I did it because I hated myself, hated life and all of existence in general. I did it to be numb on the weekends, just so I would forget that I was essentially a robot during the week. You actually helped me turn all that around. ”

He turned his eyes back to her and shook his head with what looked like no small amount of regret. “After our one night, I realized that I’d hit rock bottom. Because I’d finally found a girl who I liked, who made me not want to be numb, and drunk. A girl who was special…and I couldn’t remember her name, couldn’t find her. We had a connection, and I blew it.”

A connection.

So he’d felt it too. She took comfort in that, at least. “So that’s when you started training and working in MMA.”

“Well, sort of. I’d been unemployed for a while first, trying to find myself. I quit my job as an investment banker a week after our night together, and moved out of my buddies’ house a week after that.”

She nodded in understanding. “And that’s why they told me you didn’t live with them or work with them. And the name part we already covered.” Sighing, she tilted her head and tried to assess if she saw her memories through different lenses now. “So you didn’t lie to me that night.”

“Of course not. Baby, I’m sorry those *s made you feel like that. Their admiration of effed up player practices was never one I shared with them.”

Wondering why she was torturing herself, she went ahead and asked the question that had been burning in her mind since the moment she figured out who he was. “Would you have wanted the baby if you’d known about him back then? Would you have raised him with me?”

“Yes.” His forehead fell to hers. “No force on earth could’ve kept me from you, or from our son.”

Words she’d wanted to hear for nine long years hit her with a sharp pleasure-pain that felt almost too much to bear.

“He was a good baby,” she whispered. “He used to do cartwheels in my tummy every morning, but he never kicked at night. He always let me sleep. I never had nausea or weird food cravings. And he grew just like the books said; I kept every ultrasound—in one of them, he was even sucking his thumb.”