She set her jaw, my happy, kind, friendly sister who was so carb-deprived angry that she looked like she was plotting my death. “Easy for you to say, you work out for a living.” Then she glanced around the table. “Oh my gosh, half the people here work out for a living. This is bullshit,” she grumbled, spearing a piece of asparagus.
She wasn’t wrong.
Logan held up his hand. “Don’t include me in that. Coaches don’t have to be in shape.”
“You sure expect your players to be, though,” Noah grumbled between bites of his own pasta.
Logan exhaled happily. “Great conditioning today, wasn’t it, Griffin?”
Noah gave him a long look.
“Speaking of people working out for a living,” I said, “where’s Bauer?”
Claire sighed. “He’s up in Vancouver for some training thing that he couldn’t miss.”
I held my fist out across the table. “Hey, now I’m not the only single one at the family dinner.”
She bumped my fist. Our nephew, Logan and Paige’s ten-year-old son Emmett, scoffed. “I’m single too. Thanks a lot.”
Claire fist-bumped him, and I reached across to do the same.
Paige grinned over the rim of her wineglass. “This is the closest we’ve had to the whole zoo at one table in like … a year.”
“Is that why it’s so loud?” Logan asked.
“Yes,” Claire and I answered.
From the kitchen, Lia walked toward the table, balancing two plates in her hands. Behind her was her boyfriend, Jude, carrying a sound asleep Gabriel. He glanced around the table. “Anyone want a sleeping baby?”
Paige, Molly, and I all raised our hands.
Jude cast a skeptical look at all three of us, then lifted his chin at Molly. “You’re up, then.”
“Rude,” Paige muttered.
I frowned. “You’re just picking her because she’s got that look in her eye like she’ll cut you.”
Noah choked on his food. Molly sat back down in her chair, Gabriel tucked into the crook of her arm, with a beatific smile on her face. “I can’t wait until you get engaged someday, Iz, and we’ll see how you act when you’re a couple of months away from your wedding, and you don’t want bread making you puffy because you ordered your dress just a little bit too small on accident.”
Isabel Ward Hennessy. Isabel Hennessy. Isabel and Aiden 4-ever.
If I pinched my eyes closed, I could see the purple-inked doodles in my head. That damn diary might not be in the metal box, but it was probably still up in my old bedroom, and oh, my gosh, I wanted to go find it and burn it.
I may never send this letter, but would you come to my junior prom with me? I have a light purple dress that my brother bought I bought for myself. And I love daisies, if you’d want to get me a corsage made of those. Only if you want.
Shutting off my brain would’ve been lovely because my face immediately went flame hot. After that, Aiden’s face was what popped into my head like an asshole. And my older sister noticed immediately. “What’s that face?”
“Nothing.” I shoved another bite of pasta in my mouth. “Involuntary physical reaction at the idea of giving up carbs.”
She rolled her eyes.
I could feel the weight of Paige’s gaze on the side of my face, which was why I ignored her.
At some point, I’d always known that the right person would wedge their foot in the proverbial door before I could slam it shut.
But it would have to be a big foot. No pun intended. The thought of big feet and big hands and big … arms had me shoving food in my mouth again. It was just hard to imagine how everyone else seemed to have such an easy time letting that happen, opening up, and just being normal.
But because it was me, of course it wasn’t that easy.
The first guy to flip all the right switches was part fantasy, part forbidden reality, and all fricken perfect from what I could see.
“How’s the new boss, Iz?” Logan asked.
That delicious pasta turned to ash in my mouth because there was no way he could’ve been following my thoughts. It was my turn to glare now.
“What?” he asked. “Are we not talking about that?”
Paige stifled a laugh.
He sighed. “You’re supposed to tell me when I’m not allowed to ask things,” he said to his wife.
Molly laughed. “Iz is just touchy because she had such a raging crush on him when he first started to fight.”
“I did not,” I protested, but it was a weak one at best. I wouldn’t have believed me either.
Lia laughed. “You used to cut his picture out of Sports Illustrated and tape it up on the back of your door. You told us after he was at the gym the first time.”
Hands shaking as I gripped my plate, I stood from the table. I’d rather face a firing squad than that topic. “You know, I think I’m done eating.”
Paige smacked Lia. “Should we remind you of who you used to tape up on your wall?”
Her laughter faded. We all remembered the Bieber-with-the-long-hair phase Lia and Claire went through. It lasted a solid two years.
“My eardrums are still recovering from that block of time,” Logan muttered.
Jude hummed. “Kate Winslet for me. I met her at a dinner a few years ago, and I about passed out when she shook my hand.”
“See?” I gestured to Jude. “It’s not just me.”
Molly snuck a piece of bread from Noah’s plate, pointing a finger at me when she was done chewing. “He’s your boss, though. Your ability to separate your past feelings is vital if you’re going to keep professional boundaries.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“What?”
Noah gave her a look. “You’re one to talk. Do I need to remind you of how our past caught up with us on the job?”
Molly’s cheeks turned pink. “No.”
I gave him a smile. “Thank you, Noah. You’re my favorite almost-brother-in-law.”
“I’m your only almost-brother-in-law.”
Jude held up his hand. “Hello, sitting right here.”
My brother gave him a level look. “Is there a ring on Lia’s finger we don’t see?”
Wisely, Jude didn’t argue. He just slid his arm around my younger sister, who beamed in his direction.
Setting my plate down on the kitchen island, I tried to ignore the way Paige was looking at me from the table. She wasn’t even trying to hide it, and when Logan whispered something in her ear, she smiled, but her eyes stayed trained on me.
She saw too much. From the day she showed up in our lives, she had this uncanny ability to see through me like I was made of plastic wrap. I hated it. And I needed it.
My sisters, for whatever reason, and though they loved me eternally, never had the same talent. They saw the same thing that everyone else did. Isabel, the intimidating sister. Isabel, the one you didn’t mess with. Isabel, the one who’d fight the world if someone messed with her family.
But every once in a while, I wondered at how they couldn’t see what was underneath all of that.
Sometimes I felt like everything truly good I could offer someone was lined in metal and locked under the surface. Even I wasn’t sure how to pry the lid off. Aiden, all of this, it made me realize just how long I’d gone being content with that.
As I cleared my plate, Paige quietly stood and joined me in the kitchen. Nudging me with her shoulder, she leaned in to whisper, “Talk to me.”
“About what?”
She sighed. “Are we gonna play that game where you act like there’s nothing wrong? Just let me know if we are, and I’ll put on my stubborn pants.”
I took her plate and rinsed it off, setting it in the dishwasher next to mine. “I just don’t know what they want me to say. Yes, teenage Isabel had a … thing for him. I can’t change it, and it doesn’t mean anything now.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
“So why do you look like you want to teleport out of here when they ask you about him?”
I closed the dishwasher and leaned against the counter. With a shrug, I gave her a helpless look. “Because I do. And I just … ugh. All of this makes me feel so …” I shuddered.
Paige studied me, nodding slowly as I spoke. “He makes you feel off-balance and out of control, which you would hate. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you get like this over a man.”
With a groan, I covered my face with my hands. “Can we stop talking about it?”
She laughed. “Okay, okay. I’m done.”
Logan joined us. “Sorry, Iz, I didn’t know that was a forbidden topic.”
What an interesting choice of words. Aiden was certainly that.
Something I wanted but couldn’t have. For all I knew, he still hadn’t grieved his wife. Who, by all accounts, had been beautiful and kind. His high school sweetheart, from the article I read one day when I’d felt a little maudlin. He was starting over, taking care of his daughter, and more than likely, he’d remain as he was. An active participant in all my best fantasies until I’d get over it one day. Hopefully.
“It’s fine.” I sighed.
He glanced at Paige. “Did you ask her about Emmett?”
“What about Emmett?” I asked.
“Paige wants to come to the away game in Tampa,” my brother said. Paige gave him a look that had him grinning.
“Can you not, with the eye contact?” I asked.
Paige laughed. “Would you be able to stay with Emmett for a couple of days? He’s got a school thing that Friday he can’t miss.”
“Sure. When’s the game?”
As I scrolled through my phone calendar, he named the mid-September date. “Molly going to the game too?”
Paige shook her head. “She doesn’t want to use any time off that close to the wedding. I think she’ll be gone for work, anyway.”
Because we’d already teased her relentlessly about it when she first started her planning, I raised my voice when I replied. “Yeah, what kind of bride plans an October wedding in a family of athletes?”
Molly raised her voice right back. “I knew it was a bye week, okay? You try to book the venue of your dreams when half the people in your family play in some sort of professional sport.”
Paige laughed.
She wasn’t wrong. Juggling the schedules of my sisters and their significant others was a nightmare.
“Lia will be gone at an away game with Jude, and Claire is going to be up in Vancouver with Bauer while he trains.”
I waved off Paige’s explanations. “It’s fine. Plenty of time to request the weekend off.”
“New guy won’t mind?” she asked.
My gaze stayed locked onto my phone. “I can’t see why he would.”
Emmett ran into the kitchen and dumped his plate into the sink with a crash. Paige rolled her eyes.
“Am I staying with you when they leave, Iz?”
“I think we’ll stay here if that’s okay.”
He nodded. “Totally. Your apartment is so boring.”
“It is not. I just don’t require seventy-plus inches of my wall space dedicated to television viewing like some people I know.” I gave Logan a look.
“Yeah,” Emmett said, “that’s why it’s sucks. You’ve lived there for two years, and you watch on your dinky laptop.”
Paige nudged him out of the kitchen. “Go do your homework before she changes her mind, you little punk.”
“And quit saying sucks,” Logan called after his retreating back.
“If that’s the worst he says at the age of ten, he’s doing better than we were,” I reminded him.
He rubbed his temples. “I listen to cursing athletes all day at work, and sometimes, I think the worst language I’ve heard came from the four of you as you were growing up.”
“That’s why you love us.”
“And that love is why I am going prematurely gray.” He sighed.
Paige patted his stomach. “My sexy silver fox,” she purred, leaning up for a kiss.
I could handle PDA from about two percent of the population, but when he grabbed her ass, I shuddered.
“And on that note,” I said, walking from the kitchen with a hand covering my eyes. “Bye, everyone,” I said, with a wave to the group at the table.
“You’re leaving already?” Molly asked with a pout. It did not escape my notice that Noah had slowly ripped off pieces of his bread to the point where she’d eaten his whole slice. No wonder she was nicer now.
“I’m beat,” I told her. “And I have to teach three classes tomorrow with Kelly gone.”
“I’m going to come work out with you,” Molly said after blowing me a kiss.
“’K. Just shoot me a text so it goes in the schedule. I don’t want anyone else booking me for a time that works for you.”
Lia made a pouting face. “Aw, I was hoping we could go through boxes after dinner and find all your I heart Aiden paraphernalia.”
The look I gave her had Lia cackling, but honestly, if she wanted a guarantee that I’d hightail it out of there, she’d just done it.
Because somewhere just up the stairs, she could find it if she looked hard enough. The metal box, with that damn letter, was in the spare room, no doubt underneath a pile of books and papers that Paige refused to organize. For a moment, I glanced up the stairs and thought about smuggling it out.
Maybe destroying the letter, seeing the ridiculous level to which I’d obsessed over him, would purge him from my system, and I could get back to normal. It sounded so good.
And so terrible.
I said the rest of my goodbyes and got an extra tight squeeze from Paige. But before I left the house, I paused, and without trying to overthink it, I took the stairs two at a time, striding straight for the spare room. It was a mess, but in the large bookshelf toward the back of the room, surrounded by spare furniture, clothes that needed to be donated, piles of toys, and all the random shit we’d accumulated over the years, I saw the black metal edge of the lockbox.
Holding my breath, I curled my hand around it and slid it out from underneath the pile of books that had hidden most of it. It was heavier than I remembered, and when I clutched it to my chest, I wished I could call Nan and tell her about Aiden. She wasn’t related to me since Logan and I didn’t share a mom, but in all the ways that mattered, she’d taken us under her wing after my dad—her ex-husband—died.
She’d want to know all about what I’d kept in the box in the years since she gave it to me. And why I wanted to hide this one thing away from everyone else.
With the box in my possession, I breathed out a sigh of relief and skipped lightly down the steps, sneaking out the front door before anyone even realized I’d gone up there.
The night air was warm and fragrant as I walked out to my car. The box went into the passenger seat, and for a moment, I studied it like I wasn’t sure what it was or how it got there.
My thumb traced the heavy circle of gold where the key, taped to the bottom of the box in a sandwich bag, would slide into place. With my luck, the thing had rusted shut, and I’d go the rest of my life knowing my teenage self could never fully get rid of the evidence of my crush on Aiden Hennessy.
Maybe I’d burn the whole damn box in that case.
Just as the thought crossed my mind and I realized how freaking crazy it made me sound, my phone started buzzing. When I pulled it out, I didn’t recognize the number on the screen, but it looked familiar enough that I answered.
“Hello?”
“I’m looking for Isabel Ward,” an unfamiliar male voice said.
“Can I ask who’s calling?”
He paused. “Yeah, this is Carl from Punch Fitness. Is this Isabel?”
I pursed my lips for a second. Punch was one of our biggest competitors. We’d never had a bad relationship with them, per se; we just ran a different style of gym. And not once, in all my years of working for Amy, had the owner ever reached out to me.
“It is. How can I help you, Carl?
”
“I don’t really know how to say this any other way than bluntly, but I heard about your shift in ownership, and I’m wondering if you’re looking for a change.”
My head reared back. “You want to hire me?”
He laughed at my incredulous tone. “Yeah.”
“You don’t even know me,” I pointed out.
“I don’t, but I’m aware of your reputation. You seem like someone who doesn’t tolerate bullshit, and I like that. So I won’t beat around the bush. We’ve had enough overlap in members in the past five years that I’ve heard about you. And everything I’ve heard is good, even if it’s bad.”
If I kept up the way I was acting, all he’d know about me was that I tripped over air, fell off bags, and fantasized about my boss.
“Thanks,” I said dryly.
“I mean, if people have a problem with how you run things, it’s probably because they pissed you off, and you held them accountable. That’s how I do things too.”
I ran a hand down my face and could not ignore the way my heart was racing in my chest. This was not something I expected.
Surprises, much like change, did not sit well with me.
The thought of leaving my job, that building, and my co-workers caused actual pain. I’d bleed out immediately if I even tried to dislodge it. The metal box creaked and groaned in protest at the idea of uprooting all the things that made me me, how much of it was rooted in the building where I worked. Change took on a different form, something I couldn’t have imagined when Aiden showed his face. So I answered as honestly as I could without leading this guy on.
“I wasn’t looking to leave Wilson’s.”
“But it’s not Wilson’s anymore, is it?”
Exhaling slowly, I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel. “It’s not. But it’s still the place that I love. And right now, I have no intention of leaving.”
He hummed. “Well, if you change your mind, you’ve got my number.”
With the call disconnected and my brain spinning at an uncomfortable speed about what it all meant, I set my phone back into my purse and started up my car.
Chapter Eight
Isabel
The next day, everything at work looked different.
Forbidden: A Ward Sisters Sisters Novel Page 7