By the Book (Meant to Be #2)(53)
What she’d wanted when she’d made this deal with herself three weeks ago was to know, one way or another, what she should do. And now she knew.
She wasn’t going to stop fighting for her dreams, not yet.
Izzy gave herself a pep talk as she drove up the hill to the house. She would go inside, pack, and text Priya from the Uber on her way to the hotel. She wouldn’t even have to see Beau. And when she got back to New York, she’d take another look at her résumé and start applying for new jobs right away.
But Beau was sitting on the front steps when she drove up.
He stood up when he saw her, but she ignored him. She steeled herself as she turned off the car. All she had to do was get through this one encounter, and then she could get out of here and never have to see him again. She could do this.
He watched her as she walked toward him. She dangled the keys from her finger, and when she got close enough, she tossed them to him.
“I didn’t steal it,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be gone soon.”
He caught the keys but shook his head. “Izzy, I wasn’t—”
“Don’t call me that,” she said. Suddenly, she couldn’t hear her nickname on his lips anymore.
He stopped. Swallowed. “Isabelle. I’m sorry. For what I said in the library.”
Sure he was.
“Great, thanks. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go pack.”
He moved to the side so he wasn’t in between her and the front door, but he kept talking as he followed her inside.
“I know you don’t believe me. I don’t blame you. What I said to you—that was awful, why would you believe me? I figured you’d want to leave now. But please know that I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean any of it, that I’m so sorry for every word of it. You’ve done more for me in the past month than almost anyone in my life has, and you were right, of course you were right about everything you said about my writing, about me, about all of it. I learned that from my dad, to hit below the belt. That sounds like I’m blaming him, and I guess I am, but this is all my fault. I am so sorry. For everything.”
Her steps slowed as she walked down the hall toward the stairs. She hadn’t expected a real apology. She’d thought, if he apologized at all, it would be one of those sorry-if-you-were-offended kind of apologies. Or like one of those apologies toddlers gave when forced to do so, just to get it over with, the single word Sorry like he’d left on her tray that first night, so everything could go back to normal, be the same as before.
She knew she could never be the same as before.
She put her hand on the banister, ready to go upstairs.
He started talking again. “I want to explain, but I’m sure you don’t want to hear it. You were right, I’ve been writing around all the hard stuff.” She stopped walking. “For weeks, that’s all I’ve been doing. It wasn’t even that I didn’t want to share it with you. I didn’t want to put it on paper, to face it, to make myself deal with it. I tried to ignore that, to pretend I could keep just going on as I was, that eventually it would just, poof, by magic, show up in the book and I would keep not having to deal with it. But then you called me on it, and you were right, and the thought of having to write about all of that terrified me. And so I said those horrible things to you, things I never should have said. And I’m so sorry.”
She turned around. “You hurt me,” she said. “I trusted you, and you hurt me.”
He didn’t look away from her. “I know,” he said. “I don’t expect you to forgive me.” He set the keys that she’d thrown to—at—him down on the table by the front door. “Take the car, go wherever you need to. Just let Michaela know where it is, someone will come get it whenever you don’t need it anymore. I won’t…” He swallowed. “If you were worried about this, I will only say great things to Marta about you and the work you did with me—great things that are all true. You’re really good at this, I hope you know that. You struck a nerve, only because what you said was totally true, and you were right. I wish I’d…I don’t know, talked to you, told you everything, asked you for advice on how to write about it. But instead, I just…” He shook his head. “Anyway. That’s all I wanted to say.” He started to walk away, then stopped. “Wait, no. I wanted to say one more thing. Thank you. For trying so hard with me. You didn’t have to do that. It made a real difference to me, and I didn’t say that enough. Or…ever, probably. Thank you.”
He turned and walked toward the back of the house. After a moment, Izzy went upstairs. She sat on the bed and pulled her knees up to her chest.
She thought about what Beau said in the hallway. When she’d seen him sitting there waiting for her, she’d assumed he was either waiting to kick her out of the house or that he’d try to laugh it off, brush it aside, try to convince her to stay there. But instead he’d apologized, really apologized, for everything he’d said. And he hadn’t tried to convince her of anything, other than how sorry he was, and how grateful he was to her.
She should pack. She should pull her suitcase out from under the bed right now, roll up the clothes that were in the dresser drawers and piled on the chair, stuff all her toiletries into plastic bags, shake all the sand out of this cardigan so she could wear it on the plane, text Priya.