Finding Fate

by Keelan Storm

  “I don’t know where we were, but I was on my way to meet my friends,” she said, moving her foot to step past the solid, forceful mass in front of her. “Yes,” she thought in triumph. Her tone was firm.

  Wesley reached out and grabbed the railing, blocking her from proceeding down the stairs. “Don’t be like that. I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” he said as he stepped up next to her, his voice calm in his familiar persuasive tone. She would have found it alluring if she didn’t know how he could be.

  “About what, Wesley?” she asked, still forcing her words to sound confident, though nervous butterflies swarmed her middle, causing Destiny to move wildly about. Her hand moved to her stomach in an attempt to calm her unborn child.

  “About us, of course,” he replied, ignoring the movement.

  “Not again,” she thought as she groaned in frustration. “Wesley, I don’t understand you. You date girls all the time. Why do you keep bugging me? You know I’m pregnant. I’m with Tucker. It should be the end of it.”

  He groaned, a frown appearing on his attractive face. “Don’t say that.”

  She stared at him, curiously. He sounded as though he was almost begging. “Why not?” she asked, a little less forceful now, wanting him to explain. Maybe if she understood, she could find a way to end this headache.

  “Because I want you,” he admitted, sounding like it actually pained him to say it.

  “We’ve been through this before, Wesley. You just wanted to get some. You didn’t actually want me.”

  He shook his head, fervently. “No, I mean, yes, it started out that way, but it’s not like that anymore.”

  “What changed?” she asked, humoring him. The conversation seemed to be safe enough, and Tucker would be here soon. Wouldn’t he? Perhaps he was further away than she remembered.

  “I don’t know,” he sighed and shook his head more slowly. “The best I can say is that there’s something about you. You’re shy and stubborn and full of fire when you’re angry. You can turn any guy’s head without even trying, and when you dance? Fuck,” he scraped a hand over his jaw. “I’ve never put so much effort into one girl before. It threw me off when you turned me down that night. I only got so pissed ‘cause you made me want you so much. I hadn’t realized what you meant to me yet.”

  “Newsflash, Wesley. If you want someone, you don’t smack them around!” she snapped, heat claiming her cheeks. He was so full of bull.

  He grabbed her shoulders, his strong fingers gripping her tightly, but not actually causing pain. “Don’t you think I regret that?!” His face was pained, his voice filled with ferocity. Not at Isabel, but at himself. Even with that recognition, his severity still caused her to cringe.

  “I guess you’ll just have to live with that regret,” she spat at him. “I’m with Tucker. I love Tucker. I’m having his baby, Wesley. I-don’t-want-you.” She said the last sentence slowly, drawing the words out, trying to get through to him.

  “But you want Tucker?” he scoffed in angered disbelief. “You need a real man. Not someone who didn’t have the balls to take advantage of all the game he could have had. Girls would have fucking lined up to fuck him before I moved here, but from what I’ve heard, his real game had barely even started.”

  “You think that’s what a real man is? He may not be perfect, but he saved me. From you. And we knew exactly what we were doing after he kicked you out that night!”

  Several expressions flickered across Wesley’s handsome face: shock, pain, anger, betrayal. He looked quickly down at her stomach and then up to her furious gaze. She realized then he might have thought she’d meant her situation was planned, but didn’t know how to clarify without sounding like an idiot.

  “So you deny me and then crawl into bed with your pathetic best friend?” he said in whispered disgust. “Like I said before…at least I know it’s not mine.”

  He paused, and his tone turned to one of intrigue. “Yet, I still want you. I wonder what else you’d be willing to do when you’re upset. I’d wait ‘til after you popped out the brat, though,” he mused to himself.

  He removed a hand from her shoulder to grip her neck, stroking her there with his thumb. She was disgusted by his words and repulsed by the unwanted caress. No one but Tucker was allowed to touch her that way.

  She raised her hand from her stomach, ready to strike, but he was too fast. He caught her wrist in his hand and yanked her arm down by his side. His other hand caught the center of her back, pinning her free arm against her. He pulled her against his hard frame with such force that she would have stumbled had he not been holding onto her so tightly.

  She looked up into his face, fear, panic, and anger strong in her eyes. He stared back at her with such intensity that her fear gripped her throat so tightly she couldn’t have screamed if she’d tried.

  “That’s the anger that gets to me,” he rasped, his voice as intense as his gaze. She tried to respond, but his lips crushed against hers so fast she barely saw it coming.

  Isabel struggled against him, her anger strengthened at her defenselessness, fueling the command of his lips against hers and bringing thoughts of her last physical encounter with him to the forefront of her mind.

  The powerful memories triggered her tears, and she fought desperately to control them. She didn’t want Wesley to see how weak he made her feel. The seconds ticking by like hours, she was about to give up and let the traitorous tears flow at will when she felt his grip suddenly torn from her.

  She stumbled forward towards him as he struggled to hold on, reluctant to let go. Barely managing to balance herself, she looked up just in time to see Tucker pull back his arm and strike Wesley in the nose with his tightly clenched fist.

  It all seemed so repetitive, happening in slow motion as it had the time before. Even her attacker and her savior were the same, but this time, oddly enough, she could control the tears, could see it all unfold.

  Tucker’s arm retracted as Wesley fell backward among the long, metal benches of the stands, his face stunned at the unexpected intrusion and blow. Tucker used his other arm to pull Isabel behind him in fierce protection.

  Wesley stood back up, blood seeping rapidly from his nose, dripping down from his jaw and staining his T-shirt a deep, crimson red. The sight of the fast, oozing blood should have been enough to hold her gaze, but something about his eyes caught her attention as he lunged for Tucker. There was fury in his glare, so powerful that her escalating fear forced a small, involuntary step backward.

  Somehow, things seemed to move blindingly fast and decrepitly slow at the same time. She took everything in sluggishly as if her mind couldn’t process it was actually happening, but the events unfolded too fast for her, for anyone, to have even a fighting chance of stopping it.

  She felt the heel of her silver flat drop past the open edge of the step she had been standing on. Only her toes were temporarily secure on the wood, but her weight was leaning toward the heel that had missed the step. Her pompoms dropped from her hand as she grasped for the elusive railing, never finding it as she tried to find footing.

  She wanted to sigh in relief when her foot met the step below, but never got the chance. Her ankle twisted on the poor landing, her body leaning too much into the stance for what the discomfited position could support. She heard the snap, but never felt the pain. Shock gripped her too tightly.

  She had thought she was screaming, but the two fighting above her weren’t looking her way. Perhaps her mouth was only open in alarm.

  As it happened, she watched Wesley slam into Tucker, the force knocking him hard against the steep, metal steps above, a maneuver that would have slammed her into the railing behind him if she were still there. He pounded his fist into Tucker’s jaw only once before Tucker threw him wildly from his body.

  Tucker’s eyes shot to the step where Isabel had stood only seconds before and widened in horror when he saw what was happening.

  The look of unadulterate
d terror in her fiancé’s eyes was the last thing Isabel saw before she heard a deafening crack, and everything went black.

  29

  Pressure

  Tucker heard Izzy scream as Wesley tackled him. His fury flourished. Wesley had already assaulted her once, harassed and frightened her more times than he was willing to count. How dare this ass put Izzy through anything else, frightening her yet again.

  He landed against the stairs then, hard, Wesley atop him. A sharp pain stabbed in his back as the edge of a step jabbed into him.

  Before Tucker could recover from the initial pierce of pain, Wesley punched him hard in the jaw, knocking his head back against a step. His eyes flashed red with rage. He grabbed onto his foe and flung him violently from his body.

  He leaned forward, his eyes searching the step where Izzy would be, wanting to make sure she was okay. He didn’t think he had hit her when Wesley lunged, but something in the back of his mind told him he should have.

  When he saw the empty step, the scream that still echoed violently in his ears suddenly sounded much more ominous. His eyes found hers a mere split second later, and he felt fear rush through him when he saw what was happening.

  He wanted to reach out to her, to save her from the steep, detrimental fall, but he was too far away. He froze as that thought registered, his body temporarily paralyzed in shock. All he could do was watch in horror as she fell.

  Tucker held Izzy’s fearful, shocked eyes with his for the few hour-long seconds before her head slammed into the corner of a metal bench several rows down. Her eyes shut instantly, her body going limp, and Tucker felt his heart cripple in undulating terror as Izzy tumbled down the rest of the stairs, unconscious.

  She laid at the bottom of the stands, motionless, her body turned at unnatural angles. He jumped up, finally able to move, and leapt down the stairs, skipping two to three steps at a time. He had to reach her. She had to be okay. He couldn’t take it if she wasn’t.

  “Isabel!” he cried at the top of his lungs.

  “Tucker, no! Hector, stop him!” Jet yelled out as they raced over after hearing the screams. Someone had to stop him before he reached Izzy. They couldn’t move her, and there was no doubt in his mind that Tucker would if he reached her before the rest of them.

  Jet knew blocking his friend would be hard, but Hector was faster and much further ahead. He was busy chasing down Annie, who was screaming her sister’s name at the top of her lungs, determined to reach her twin. They had to stop them, Emma staying close on their heels as they all raced toward their seriously injured friend.

  Hector sped up and leapt over Izzy, force and surprise on his side as he knocked his massive friend back only moments before the distraught man could reach his girl. Tucker fought wildly against his friend, punching, kicking, and shoving as hard as he could to break free. But Hector held his ground, taking the blows freely as he pinned the panicked guy against the stairs.

  “Get off!” Tucker shouted in frustration. He just wanted to reach Izzy. She needed him. He had to tell her she’d be okay. She had to be. There was no other option for his mind to consider.

  “Stop it, man!” Hector yelled back. “You can’t move her! You could make her worse!”

  He stopped thrashing then, and his body went limp beneath Hector’s in defeat as the truth of the words sank in. He couldn’t touch her, not if he wanted her to be okay.

  Jet was still chasing Annie, though she remained several feet out of arm’s length. He knew he’d never catch her at this rate. She was an incredibly fast runner, and somehow the dress and heels weren’t slowing her down. He yelled for her to stop, knowing she wouldn’t listen, and racked his brain, hastily searching for a way to get her to at least slow so he could grab her. Nothing came to him.

  He was becoming desperate. He couldn’t let Annie move her sister. If she made her worse, she would never forgive herself. Jet was just about to leap forward, attempt to catch his frantic girlfriend by the legs if nothing else, anything to get her to pause when the thin heel of her shoe caught in a crack between the slats, and she collapsed only a few short feet from her limp twin.

  He pounced on her, seeing that she was already attempting to make her way over those last few feet. He wrapped his arms around her torso, pinning her arms to her sides and sat back, pulling her into his lap.

  She screamed for him to let go and struggled against his grip, but he held on tight, ignoring the screams and curses she threw at him. “Sweetheart, you have to calm down. You’re not helping her like this. None of us can help her like this,” he said into her ear with earnest.

  When he felt Annie’s thrashing start to subside, he took a second’s pause to tell Emma to call 911 and then returned to whispering in Annie’s ear. She still wasn’t calm enough to let go.

  Hector unpinned Tucker from the ground, ready to tackle again if he broke their agreement. He could go to Izzy but not move her.

  Tucker crawled down to her side, his breath catching in his chest when he was finally able to see her up close. She looked horrible, pale, and broken. Even her face seemed to be twisted in pain though she wasn’t anywhere close to consciousness.

  And the blood on the stairs? Where was it all coming from?

  He reached out and felt Hector’s hand pull against his shoulder. He yanked it away. “I won’t move her!”

  He wanted so badly to comfort her. To pull her into his arms and hold her. Soothe the pain he knew she had to be feeling. But he couldn’t. Instead, he placed his hand on top of hers and reached up with his other hand to stroke the hair back from her face.

  “I’m right here, Isabel,” he whispered into her ear. “You’ll be alright.” He wanted to believe the words so badly, but he heard his voice crack through the whispers.

  When his fingers ran through her hair, he felt the sticky wetness and pulled them back to see the red that covered his hand. His mind dulled in a new panic.

  He heard Hector groan from behind him, and Emma’s gasp from his side. He wondered somewhere in the back of his mind where Annie and Jet were, but mostly he could only stare at his bloody hand in shock. He had watched her head smack into the bench. Was it just cut and bleeding or worse?

  Before his brain let him react, he heard an urgent, concerned voice from a few steps above. “You need to put pressure on it.”

  He looked up at the sound of that voice and was momentarily taken aback by the number of people that had gathered around, but ignored them. They weren’t important.

  “Why the hell are you still here?!” he snapped at Wesley. His tone was furious, but he could still hear the vulnerability in his words that threatened to break at any moment. “Get the hell away from her!”

  “You have to stop the bleeding,” Wesley insisted, his tone more forceful.

  “Don’t you,” he started to yell when he heard Jet’s normally easy tenor voice boom out from behind him.

  “Dude, stop it! He’s right. You’ve got to stop the bleeding!”

  “I’ll take care of him, man. You take care of Izzy,” Hector said with decisiveness and headed up the stairs.

  Refocusing, Tucker saw the blood that was pooling around his girl. They were right. This was more important. He had to forget about Wesley. Izzy needed him.

  He pulled off his jacket in haste, laying it across her and yanked the unbuttoned shirt from his back, leaving only the light cotton T-shirt to block the cold from his own body. He wadded up the shirt in his hands and pressed it against the spot on Izzy’s head where the sticky, wetness seemed the most concentrated.

  He kept his eyes on her beautiful, pained face and noticed how ashen she looked. Her skin was always pale, but the lack of color he saw in her features now was unnatural. He increased the pressure of his shirt against her head. She had lost so much blood.

  He lowered his head to her ear and started whispering to her again. He wanted her to know that he was with her. That he was there for her.

  “How c
ould I have let this happen?!” he thought to himself in anguish. “Why did I have to fight Wesley?!”

  It made him sick to his stomach to realize that this was just as much his fault as the snake that had been taunting them. He could have just pulled him off and then taken Izzy away. He could have gone with her in the first place.

  His tears started to fall then, and he whispered with distressed and fervent passion, “I’m so sorry, Isabel. I love you. I’m so sorry.”

  Annie sobbed in Jet’s arms. She could see Izzy from where they sat, and it pained her to her very core to see her sister lying there like that. Something was very wrong. She could feel it.

  “Please, Jet,” she sobbed. “Let me go.”

  “You can’t move her, sweetheart.”

  “I know,” she stressed. “I just need to be with her. Please,” she begged. It wasn’t fair. Tucker got to be with her. “I’ll be good,” she insisted. “Please!”

  Jet heard the need in her voice and knew he had to let her go. He loosened his grip, and Annie scrambled from his arms to Izzy’s side.

  She was good as she promised. She lay against the stairs and held her sister’s hand. The tears flowed silently down her cheeks. She hated this, feeling so helpless. Izzy was hurt, and she couldn’t do a damn thing to help her.

  And where were the people that could help her? Hadn’t they been like this for hours now? Bentonville wasn’t big at all. The ambulance should be here.

  “Why isn’t the ambulance here yet?” she said through the tears to whoever would answer.

  “They’ll be here soon, sweetheart,” Jet answered from next to her. He understood how she felt. It seemed like forever, but logic told him it had only been a few minutes. Wanting to do something, he removed his own jacket and added it to Tucker’s to cover his friend.

  Sure enough, he was soon able to hear the sirens faintly from the road. The crowd surrounding them murmured the relief they all felt.