“Well, I thought you might have realized that, perhaps, I’m not the great enemy you seem to treat me as, but I guess that was hoping for too much,” Paul said, his eyes rising up to mine over the table.
“I guess so,” I said as I took my eyes back down to the mug in front of me. “So, what are you going to do now that you’re super rich, anyway?” I asked him to change the conversation. “Are you going to sort out those clothes you’re wearing?”
Paul looked down at the shabby grey hoody and ripped jeans that he was sitting in. “What’s wrong with my clothes?” he asked with a defensive look on his face.
“I think it would be easier to list the things that are right,” I said with an eye roll.
“Which are?” he pushed for an answer.
“Nothing. Nothing is right about what you’re wearing. You look like a homeless person. You look like a hobo,” I said with a smirk.
“You really know how to make a person feel good, don’t you?” Paul said, his shaking head slowly.
“You asked. What did you want me to do? Lie?”
“I never said that. I just think you’re fully aware that there are nicer ways to put things than you often do.”
“Perhaps I don’t want to be nice,” I suggested with a sly smile.
“Perhaps you’re too afraid to be,” Paul said as he reached his arms up and stretched.
I watched him for a moment. His hoody rose up his stomach a little and revealed the tight abs that he kept hidden. My eyes lingered for a moment longer than they should have before I shook myself out of it and replied to him. “What’s that meant to mean? Just because I’m not nice to you doesn’t mean that I’m afraid to be nice.”
“Whatever you say, Isabella,” Paul said as he dismissed my comments.
“Don’t pretend to know me,” I said starkly as my temper started to heat up.
“You don’t think that I know you? I’ve grown up with you, Isabella; I probably know you better than anybody else in the world.”
I laughed out loud. “You wish you did,” I said as I stood up and carried my mug out of the room and back up to my bedroom. I only got to the stairs, though, before I heard footsteps following me and I turned around to see who it was.
“Are you really just going to walk away from me every time that I say something you don’t like?” Paul asked me with a strained face that looked stressed and uncomfortable.
“Well, it’s been working well for me for years, so I don’t see any reason to change a habit of a lifetime,” I said casually.
“Isabella, you know that I’m leaving for New York soon and I don’t know when I’ll be back?” he said in such a way that I could tell there was hidden meaning there, although I had no idea what the hidden meaning could be.
“Sure, and I’m leaving for college, so I guess we’ll both get rid of each other, won’t we,” I said with a small, forced smile.
“Well, I’m glad you’re so happy about it,” Paul said, and his eyes seemed to dim under the weight of sudden pain.
I watched his expression for a moment as I tried to work out what had brought it on. It was almost as though he’d been expecting me to act sadly over the idea that he would soon be out of my life. I couldn’t understand why he would ever assume that, though. I don’t think I’d ever given him the impression that he was a welcome addition to my life.
“You should be, too,” I said after a moment’s pause.
“And why is that?” he asked me with a voice that sounded strained.
“Well, you’ve said so yourself—I’m not exactly your best friend forever, am I?”
Paul shook his head, but he didn’t reply straight away. I could see faint lines starting to pull across his forehead as his expression turned into a thought and thought alone. “You really don’t see me how I see you, do you?” he asked me after the clouds of thought had left a sprinkling of ideas on the barren land between his ears.
I glanced up at him. I couldn’t help it. There was something in his question that made my heart beat faster. I could hear pain in the slight cracking of his voice as he pulled out the words, and it seemed to match a flash in his eyes that suddenly turned the beautiful blue waters into a gray storm. “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I said, but there was no spite in my voice. I was simply confused. I couldn’t understand why Paul’s words seemed so heartfelt. I’d always thought that he’d been looking forward to my day of leaving as much as I had.
“Of course you don’t, because you only see what you want to see, don’t you, Isabella?” Paul’s voice had turned bitter quickly and I flinched under the severity of it.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” I snapped when I’d recovered from the shock of his words. “What gives you the right to talk to me like that? I mean, what were you expecting, tears of sadness and me begging you not to go?”
“Obviously I wasn’t expecting that,” Paul said, and I watched as he shifted uncomfortably on the spot.
“Then what?” I snapped at him.
He didn’t say anything, but the pain in his eyes returned and I instantly felt guilty. I wasn’t sure what was actually happening between us, but obviously I was managing to hurt him and that had never been my intention. It wasn’t that I disliked Paul. If I’d met him under any other circumstance, I would probably have liked him more than I should, but I couldn’t be his friend or his sister, because I didn’t want him or his mom in my house. It was the home that my mom had picked out for her family and I couldn’t stand the thought that his mom was living out the life that my mom should have had.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said so quietly that I had to strain to hear him. His voice sounded defeated and he avoided my gaze as he spoke.
“It clearly matters,” I said quickly, but I was only met with a shake of his head. “You can’t just say all that stuff to me and then not explain where it came from,” I insisted when it became clear that he had no intentions of furthering the conversation.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Isabella,” he said and he sounded frustrated. “I know you’ve never wanted me around as your brother and I accept that, but I thought that under your entire cold, heartless-bitch act, there was actually a nice person. You know, I’m not going to deny that I care about you, Isabella, or that I’m going to miss you when you’ve gone. I guess I’m just upset that you won’t feel the same way. I kind of thought that you did.”
I stared at him blankly. I didn’t know what to say. What did he mean by saying he cared about me? What did he mean when he said that he’d hoped I’d felt the same way? I felt unsure and I didn’t like that. I hated not knowing the answers. I hated being made to feel as though I was stupid or somehow lesser than the other person. “I don’t know what to say,” I admitted, because I knew I couldn’t just walk away from him after everything he had said.
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“When do you leave?” I asked him with a quieter voice than I usually used.
He looked at me for a moment with a sparkle of curiosity. I could feel his eyes peering into mine, as though my question had meant far more than it actually had. “I go in tomorrow,” he said in the midst of his search into my soul.
“And you don’t know when you’ll be back?”
“I know that I’ll be gone at least two months, and I know that you leave for college in four weeks,” he said with an edge that made it sound as though he was proving a point.
“Right,” I said as I tried to sort through the tumble of thoughts that all the new information had produced in my brain. “Well, that’s really soon, huh?” I said awkwardly.
“You don’t have to pretend that you care,” Paul said, and his voice had returned to the bitterness that it had carried before.
“Look, before you start to have a go at me and whatever, do you want to do something today before you leave?” I asked him before I could give myself enough time to back out.
He didn’t say anything for moment. I could tell
that he was thinking. I think that he was trying to find the lie in my voice, the cruel joke that I was surely playing, but they weren’t there to be found, because I hadn’t meant them to be. “Are you serious?” he asked me, because his internal scan of my words hadn’t been enough to prove the truth to him. I could see a glimmer of suspicion in his eyes as he delved deep into what I could have meant by the proposition.
“Sure, I mean, if you’re going tomorrow and I won’t see you before I leave, then why not? I mean, you’ve been annoying me since I was five; I can handle a few more hours, I suppose,” I said with a kind of smile that pulled at the corners of my lips, but didn’t quite set in towards the middle.
********
Chapter Five
“Where are we going?” Paul asked as I led him on foot down a small backstreet and out of the small town that we lived in.
“It’s a surprise,” I said with a smile that was becoming more real with each moment that passed.
“I really hate surprises,” Paul said, and his nose wrinkled in distaste.
“Well, when have I ever cared about what you like?” I asked him with a jokey kind of tone that actually made him laugh. I smiled at his reaction and, for a moment, our eyes met in a way they never had before. I pulled mine away quickly as the warm feeling that was starting to spread through my chest made me feel uncomfortable. “It’s not far away, anyway; we’ve got, like, another ten minutes and then we are there,” I said, so that he would stop frowning at me leading him away from the town.
“You’re not going to push me off a cliff, are you?” he asked in jest, but I could still hear the faint trace of seriousness that he’d tried to hide behind the joke.
“Do you really think I would do that?” I asked him curiously.
“Well, I know you really hate me,” Paul said with a shrug.
“I don’t hate you.”
Paul snorted. “You could have fooled me.”
“You know I don’t hate you,” I insisted because his reaction had bothered me in a way that I hadn’t expected. I’d never really cared about what Paul thought before.
“Do I? What would give you that impression? I mean, I know that I said that I hoped you felt the same way, but when you looked at me with that blank expression, I knew in that moment that it really all was just hate.”
“I don’t understand why you would think that. I never wanted you to be a part of my family. I never wanted my mom to get replaced by that cheap substitute that my father brought home, but that doesn’t mean I hate you. I mean, if things were different, we’d probably be friends.”
“Is that a compliment I heard in there somewhere? Did Isabella Longfoot just admit that she would be my friend if things were different?”
“Don’t get too big-headed,” I said as I turned quickly and almost tripped him up. I reached out to pull him up and for a moment our hands brushed together. I pulled mine back quickly and tried to ignore the strange tingling sensation that his touch had left on my skin. “Enjoy your trip?” I asked him with a smirk as he straightened himself back up.
“You’re so funny,” Paul said dryly.
“I like to think so,” I said with a grin and bright eyes.
Paul rolled his eyes at me. “Are we nearly there yet?” he asked when I stopped and turned in another direction again.
“Almost,” I said as I looked for the small path that would lead us down to the beach. I’d never shared my secret path with anybody before. It was something I’d found as a child and I’d been captured by the magic of it all. It led to a small piece of secluded beach that was cut off from the commercial beach by huge jagged rocks that went too far out into the ocean to simply swim around. I wasn’t sure who else knew about my little discovery, but I’d never personally seen anybody there, so I knew it couldn’t be a well-known spot, even for the locals.
I spotted the start of the old, half worn-out path and made my way towards it. Paul and I walked in silence along it, until it started to slope down and then, after a few moments had passed, we could both see the opening of the crystal-clear ocean and golden sandy beach.
“How long have you known about this place?” Paul asked me with wide eyes as he took in the small, secluded paradise that I’d kept hidden.
“I found it a few years ago,” I said with a causal shrug. I could feel a smile playing against my lips over his reaction to it. I’d been hoping that he’d like it since we had set off.
“And you didn’t think to share your discovery?”
“I liked having somewhere all to myself. I mean, I’ve never seen anybody down there, and it was nice to go and just have a bit of silence. I don’t mean to be constantly digging at your mom or anything, but she never shuts up and her voice goes right through me.”
Paul laughed. “I know what you mean, but at least whenever she starts talking to you, you can just walk away. Have you ever considered the fact that I’ve had to put up with her in my face all of my life?”
“I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it like that, but now that I have, I’m truly sorry for your suffering. I know it must have been a great deal to live with,” I said in a half sarcastic but truthful way.
“Thank you,” Paul said with a grin as he threw himself down onto the sand and gestured for me to copy him.
“I’m not sitting down,” I said as I stepped away from his arm that he’d been reaching out with to pull me down next to him.
“Why not?” he asked.
“I don’t want to get sand everywhere,” I said with my nose wrinkled.
“You came to a beach, but you don’t want to get sand everywhere? You know, Isabella, you make no sense sometimes, or all the time—I’m not quite sure yet.”
“I just like to look out at the ocean,” I explained. “I mean, have you seen it? It’s just that wonderful, vast open space where you can escape and never be found again. It’s calming to know that the world might be crowded, but peace can still be found.”
Paul looked at me intently for a moment. I could feel his eyes piercing into mine, as he seemed to look at me in the way that one might look at a person for the first time, not the millionth.
“What?” I asked him when his gaze became too intense for my discomfort to allow.
“I don’t know. I guess you just caught me off guard with the crazy, deep answer. I mean, I’m not saying that I’ve ever thought you were shallow or anything, but I just didn’t think you were the type to think that deeply into something as simple as the ocean,” he said as he shrugged.
“Well, I guess I’m just full of surprises today,” I said dryly but with a smile on my lips.
“I guess so,” Paul agreed. “So, why after all the years of secrecy have you shown me your little hiding spot? I mean, I love it, it’s beautiful and I’m glad you have, but why now?”
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “I guess I won’t need it for a while, so what’s the point in leaving it going to waste?”
“I guess,” Paul said, but there was something in his tone that told me he didn’t believe the reason I had given him.
“You know, I am happy for you about your app and all the money and stuff,” I said without looking at him. “I know that I got angry with you yesterday, but that wasn’t because I wasn’t happy for you. It’s good to know that you’ve found a purpose.”
“Thanks,” Paul said with a gentle smile falling over his lips. “That really does mean a lot.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said with a shrug. “What does the app do, anyway? You never got around to telling me.”
“That’s because you didn’t give me a chance to,” Paul said with a light tone that told me he wasn’t having it.
“Well, I suppose you could put it like that if you wanted me to come out looking like a jerk.”
“Well, you said it,” Paul said and then he grinned at me. “No, I’m only joking. I know why you got mad yesterday, and I totally understand. I didn’t want anybody to find out until after your graduation�
�I really didn’t.”
“I know,” I said with more certainty than I knew I felt.
“Good.” Paul’s eyes met mine and for a moment there was something unspoken said between us. I could feel an understanding being made, where we both knew that neither one nor the other had hate. “So, anyway, my app is kind of like eBay, except you pay a small membership fee rather than interest on your sales, etc. I wasn’t really expecting it to leave the town, but then word got out and overnight it’d had, like, a million downloads. It’s crazy,” Paul finished, his head shaking in disbelief.
It did sound crazy, but I had no doubts that it was true. Paul had spent nearly all of his life on computers and playing video games. It had been something that even I’d struggled to keep up with, especially considering the hours of study I was putting in every day. So, it was no surprise really that he was making his fortune from them. If there was ever going to be a fortune waiting for him, it was definitely in technology.
“You’ll have to show me how to use it sometime.”
“You’re a smart girl; you’ll figure it out,” Paul said as he dismissed what I’d said.
Neither of us spoke for a moment and the ocean’s lazy rolls were the only sound to be heard. I looked out over the small waves that were starting to claw their way up the shore and lost myself in a moment of thought, before Paul sitting up drew my attention back to him.
My eyes glanced over his face and noticed the change straight away. When we’d been talking he’d seemed so laid back and relaxed, but there were strong lines of stress etching their way into his forehead and I could tell something was troubling him without him needing to voice it.
“What’s up?” I asked him, because I couldn’t understand the sudden change to his mood.
“This,” Paul said as he gestured between the two of us.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, confused at his words and scowl.
“You spend most of your life ignoring me and then, what, you just take me to your magical little beach spot and act as though you care? I don’t get you, Isabella. I want to get you. I want to understand how your complicated little mind works, but I can’t and it’s so frustrating.”
Please Me Again: A Taboo Second Chance Romance (Sexy As Hell Book 3) Page 3