by Keelan Storm
Annie watched her sister’s shocked stare turn into an expression of pure pain. Every protective sister instinct she had came flaring out with her claws. Lisa had gone too far. It was one thing to tell people about what she saw, but to make everyone think Izzy would trap Tucker into a relationship? This girl was so screwed up, and she was done.
“Izzy, why don’t you go on to class?”
“What? No, Annie. It’s fine. Lisa’s just jealous. I know that.”
She might have known that, but Annie could tell those words still left a mark. “No, you go ahead,” she said with a determined forcefulness that had her sister knowing not to argue. She waited for Izzy to leave before she turned to the bouncy head of curls that didn’t know when to shut her mouth, even for her own good, but Lisa smirked and quickly glanced away when she started to approach.
Her vision flashed red for a second. “She knew Izzy and I were standing here?! She’s so going to wish it was Tucker yelling at her again by the time I’m through with her!” Annie fumed with each dynamic step she took, the group of people spreading back not to be caught in the impending crossfire.
“What the hell is your problem?!” she yelled.
Lisa stepped back, a little surprised at Annie’s abrupt attack, but managed to recompose herself, planting a self-assured smirk on her face and a hand on her hip.
“I don’t have a problem. I’m not the one who got myself knocked up.”
“Oh, shut up!” she spat at her. “The only reason you even give a damn about it is because you’re jealous that Tucker wants Izzy and not you!”
“Why would I be jealous? I had him first, and like I said, he’s just with her because she trapped him.”
Annie had to grip her hands onto the straps of her backpack to keep from smacking the bitch across her smug face.
She leaned forward, her face close to Lisa’s as she continued in her most demeaning tone. “You may have had sex with him first, but you never had him. Tucker never made love to you, but he does with Izzy. In fact, he regrets that he ever let anything happen with you. He refers to you as his biggest mistake, and he’d never say that about his baby.”
Lisa’s smirk wavered. “Why should I believe you? Of course you’re going to say that. You’re Izzy’s sister.”
Annie was aware of the growing crowd, gawking in anticipation, but she didn’t care. She could see in Lisa’s eyes that she believed every word she was telling her. She pressed on, her glare even more intense as she worked to drill her point into this ridiculous girl’s head.
“Yes, Izzy’s my sister, but Tucker is also one of my best friends. So I would probably have a much better idea of what he thinks and what he says than you would. Don’t you think, Lisa? I mean, he blocked your number barely a week after you screwed ‘cause you wouldn’t leave him alone.”
Lisa didn’t respond except for taking an exaggerated swallow. Her tears appeared just shy of falling, and Annie could tell that she realized her plan to humiliate Izzy was backfiring.
The bell was about to ring, and the people around them were starting to get a little nervous, but she really wanted to get under Lisa’s skin just a little more.
“I really don’t like being a bitch, but when you mess with two, no, three of the most important people in my life, I’m not going to just stand by and watch, so for you I can make an exception. You need to stop deluding yourself about Tucker, and the next time you decide to open your mouth with anything other than the truth, I’ll report you for slander so fast that those annoying curls on your head won’t even have time to quiver.”
“And just so that we have our facts straight,” Annie continued, “Tucker chose to be with Izzy, not you. Second, he chose her because they love each other and for no other reason than that. Third, Izzy did not plan to get pregnant. The baby was not a trap. Fourth, Tucker stayed with her when they found out about the baby because he loves her, and he does not feel trapped. And fifth, none of us, especially Tucker, want anything to do with you. Got it?”
Lisa gave her a frightened nod, her tears starting to fall, and Annie knew she’d made her point.
“Good,” she said, pushing past the gathered crowd, thankful that none of the teachers had shown up during the commotion.
“Hopefully, some of those people will spread that around so that the stupid rumors Lisa started earlier today won’t matter,” Annie thought as she headed to class.
The bell rang when she was only halfway down the hall. She knew that, with Mr. Girst, that meant a write up, but she didn’t care about it right now. Putting Lisa in her place made it totally worth it.
* * *
“It was just Lisa. Don’t let her get to you. She’s just trying to upset you because she’s still mad that Tucker didn’t want her. She wouldn’t know how Tucker feels about any of this,” Isabel thought to reassure herself as she left Annie to go to class.
She didn’t feel like crying for once. That was a good thing. Lisa’s words had just really shaken her. There was no way she could know how Tucker felt about the baby.
“But what if she does? What if she didn’t make it up? What if she heard it from someone else, someone who would know? Could Tucker feel trapped in a relationship with me? Did I just assume that he wants the baby just as much as I do?”
Her pace slowed as she worked through these new thoughts. “I know he loves me. He told me that before we knew about the baby, but he didn’t tell me that he thought we were meant to be together until after we took the test.”
She slowed to an almost snail like pace as the weight of her thoughts threatened to crush her. “What if he only told me that because he felt obligated to be there for our baby? Tucker doesn’t back away from responsibility, but what if he really wants out? I don’t want to trap him. But I don’t know how I’d make it through this without him…”
She hadn’t realized that she was standing still in the middle of the hall until someone whispered in her ear, “Why is it that, every time I find you alone, you seem upset?”
She shuddered as the voice sank in, and she recognized who was standing only inches away, the hallways nearly deserted.
“I’m fine. I’ve got to get to class,” she said quickly, taking a step, but she had barely put her foot down when Wesley slid in front of her, his face wearing the same appealing smile it had the last time he’d cornered her.
That smirk made her sick to her stomach. Out of all the times he’d thrown nauseating winks and smiles in her direction over the last five weeks, why did he choose this moment to bug her? Right in the middle of her heart crippling realizations.
“Hold up a minute. You don’t need to rush off,” he said, now blocking her path. She could try to turn around, but she would never make it to class on time, and school was the one thing she did on time.
“What do you want, Wesley?” she asked in defeat. She’d just have to wait for him to say what he needed to say. At least people would be around to hear her this time if something went wrong.
“Not much. I just wanted to find out if you’ve been thinking about what I said the last time we talked.”
Mentally rolling her eyes, she replied. “No, not really.”
The corners of his charming smile fell a little bit, but he kept on. “That’s too bad. I can see how upset and angry you’ve been. You shouldn’t stay with Tucker if he makes you so unhappy.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Wesley.” “Could he seriously not have heard yet, and doesn’t he know that it’s probably the other way around? That I am the one who is making Tucker unhappy?”
He frowned then and gave her a scrutinizing look, his patience obviously starting to wear. “Maybe not, but I still can’t figure out why you’d choose to stay with him when you could come back to me.”
She chose not to respond to that comment. He would just ignore or twist everything she said around anyway. He was beginning to look annoyed with her, and she started to wonder how long
his patience would hold. Maybe she should just turn around and find another route to class. At this rate, it was better to be late than work Wesley up.
Before she could decide what to do, she saw his hand rise. She flinched backward, and her hand flew to her stomach instinctively as flashbacks from the previous summer flew through her mind. She knew all too well how hard that hand could come down, and she wasn’t the only one to worry about this time. This time, there was her flutter.
She heard a lofty chuckle from where Wesley stood and realized then, with a ripple of relief, that he hadn’t been planning to hit her. He was only reaching out towards her, his fingers outstretched to grab some strands of her hair.
He looked down to where her hand pressed against the small bulge beneath the pink, cotton material and smirked.
“I guess that’s my answer,” he said a little too smugly as if she had just assured him that she would go back to him otherwise. He reached out again and ran his fingers through the silky, dark brown strands of her hair. She shuddered at the touch.
“At least I know it’s not mine,” he said before he turned and walked into a classroom on their right.
20
Communicating
Tucker watched the troubled expression on Izzy’s face as she lay tucked against his chest later that afternoon, his arm curled around her back. He knew that she was deep in thought, and he was doing his best not to disturb her, even though she hadn’t spoken a word to him since she walked into their last period calculus class. It had been a long day for both of them, harder than he’d expected for it to be.
They lay quietly on his bed like that for a good twenty minutes, and he wondered if she might fall asleep in his arms. She looked exhausted.
He brushed his fingers through the long tresses of hair that flowed across his bed, trying to help her relax so she could sleep. However, instead of calming her like he intended to, the movement seemed to cause her more stress. He watched as her forehead crumpled.
“Am I disturbing you? Do you want me to stop?” he asked her.
She sighed and nestled down deeper into his chest. He loved the way she seemed to fit so perfectly there.
“No, it feels really nice. It just got me thinking about something.”
“About what?” he asked, still running his fingers through her hair, her sweet, honeysuckle scent drifting around him.
She didn’t answer at first, but he waited patiently, and eventually, she spoke. “Tucker, do you think we should have reported Wesley last summer when he hit me?”
“Yeah, we probably should have, but I didn’t think about it at first. So much happened that night.” He paused then. “Why did me messing with your hair make you think of that?”
She hesitated for a second but answered. “Because of what happened today at school.”
“What happened?” His tone held a little urgency now. It couldn’t be good if it was about Wesley.
“He stopped me in the hallway again. He was still trying to convince me to leave you for him. As if he even had a fighting chance.”
“Oh, I’d give him a fight,” Tucker thought to himself. He wouldn’t say it out loud. Izzy wouldn’t take that well. “I’m still not seeing the connection, love.”
He felt her sigh again. “I was just wondering if we should have reported it because, for a second, I thought he was going to hit me again, but he was really just reaching for my hair.” She shuddered as she remembered how wrong it felt to have his fingers running through it, a completely different sensation than when Tucker did it.
She could feel Tucker tense beneath her, and his hand came to an abrupt stop about halfway down her back. She knew what he was thinking. He would want to hit Wesley for touching her again, even if the touch wasn’t violent.
“Please don’t,” she said softly into his chest. She didn’t need to worry about this, too.
He didn’t relax, and when he answered, she could tell his jaw was taught. “You expect me to just let it go?”
“Please?”
“I can’t when you keep ignoring everything he does. He’s not safe. We should have done something about it a long time ago.”
“What am I supposed to do? It’s way too late to report what happened back in June.”
“Maybe, but you can still tell someone about it. If you don’t want me to get into it with him, then you have to tell Ms. Lane about what’s been going on. At least, that way, the school knows something’s up.”
“Ugh, I hate that I have to go to those stupid weekly meetings now, but if talking to the counselor will keep Tucker from going after Wesley…”
“Okay. I’ll talk to her.”
He relaxed a little then and went back to stroking her hair. She settled back into her thoughts for a few minutes until something she had never considered before crossed her mind.
“You know, Tucker, in a way, we owe a lot about our relationship to Wesley.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said in repulsed disbelief. He didn’t owe crap to the jerk.
“No, really, if you think about it, who knows how long it would have been before we got together if he hadn’t snapped that night. And even if we did get together relatively soon, I doubt that our relationship would have progressed in the same way. Imagine how different things would be if we weren’t having sex, amazing sex.”
“Damn. Leave it to Izzy to make sense about why we should be glad something like that happened.” “That’s definitely something I would hate to miss out on,” he agreed. “But then again, you wouldn’t be pregnant either,” he finished in his head.
Her hand moved down to the small bump that lay next to his side, and he realized that her thoughts had most likely gone to the same place his had.
“I wonder how everyone found out,” he murmured aloud, mostly talking to himself and not expecting an answer, especially not the answer Izzy was about to give him.
“Lisa.”
“What? How would Lisa have known?”
“She saw Jet and me talking in the parking lot before school this morning.”
“What were you and Jet saying? We never discuss it in public.”
Fighting the urge to cry, she rushed through her explanation, desperate for Tucker to understand. “I didn’t mean to. It just surprised me. When I felt it move, I was just so shocked. I couldn’t help it. I pressed my hand against my stomach, and I’m sure that’s how she saw. I must have scared Jet half to death. I’ve never seen him move so fast. I had to tell him what had happened. He thought I was in pain or something.”
She paused only for a breath and continued. “Then, Annie and I overheard Lisa telling people about it in the hall, and I’m betting she ran straight over to the counselor’s office instead of going to homeroom this morning. That’s the only way Ms. Lane could have found out so fast.
“I mean, that explains how other people knew about it by the time second period hit and not when I had to sit out at practice. Lisa had time to spread it around all morning.”
She finished talking then, her revelation of how the news spread so quickly complete, and waited for Tucker to react. When he stayed quiet, she lifted her head to look up at him. His deep brown eyes were staring down at her in surprise.
“You felt it move?” he finally whispered.
She nodded excitedly. How could she forget she hadn’t told him? Too much had happened today.
“I’m sorry, Tuck. I didn’t tell you earlier because I wanted to wait until we could talk about it alone. That way, we could get excited about it. It was so amazing. I actually felt our baby move, like tiny little kicks fluttering around inside me.”
He watched her hand move lovingly to the bump where their baby was, and felt a surge of anger and jealousy charge through his body, jealousy that she was able to feel so passionately about their child and anger for himself that he didn’t. When would he be able to share those same feelings of love for their baby with Izzy?
; “Tuck, what’s the matter?”
He hadn’t wanted her to see his frustration, but he hadn’t been able to look away from where her hand was placed either.
“Should I tell her?” he questioned. Annie knew how he felt, and Jet had hinted that he knew as well. How much longer could he hide this from her anyway? But she’d already had such a hard day. Was it right to make her go through this, too? “I might as well get it over with. Better for her to have one horrible day than for me to drag her through this later.”
“Isabel, I need to tell you something.”
“What?” she asked in concern. She propped herself up on an elbow, smoothing out the crinkles on his brow with the fingertips of her other hand.
“No, don’t comfort me. I don’t deserve it,” Tucker thought, despising himself for what he needed to say. He took her hand in his to stop her and held it against his chest. “You’re going to want to hate me for this.”
“That’s ridiculous, Tuck. I could never hate you.”
“That’s why I said you were going to want to hate me for this.”
“Tucker, what is it?” she pressed. She was beginning to grow alarmed at how upset he was. Her news was supposed to be exciting. What had gone wrong?
He closed his eyes before he answered and took in a deep breath. “Isabel, I love you so much, but…”
“But? Oh, no, Lisa was right.” Her voice nearly cracked when she spoke. “Just say it, Tucker.” Better to hear him tell her flat out than wait for him to beat around the bush.
“I don’t know how to love the baby like you do. I don’t know if I can. I get so angry at myself. I should be able to feel something for my own child, but I don’t, not like you. I’m sorry, love. This isn’t how I imagined things for us to be.”
The fear of it was crushing, but knowing that it was true was almost too much to bear. The tears that evaded Isabel earlier that afternoon started to flow, and she wrapped herself tighter against the broad, tightly muscled chest of the guy that would always be the only one to have her heart.