Page 91 of Tamed
After Charlotte had gone, I stepped into the room she’d just left, to find Isabel standing by one of the windows, looking out. She turned as I came in, her expression unreadable. Which was odd. Isabel was usually an open book.
“She loved you,” I said, coming to a stop. “I knew she would.” Of course, Charlotte had loved her; she was her daughter’s spitting image. Both beautiful and fiery and stubborn.
“Well.” Isabel met my gaze. “At least someone does.”
I stiffened. “What does that mean?”
Her shoulders squared, green eyes glittering. “I could ask you the same thing. You told me yesterday that you couldn’t give me anything more emotionally and I’d like to know whatyoumeant by that.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets, ignoring the chill that crept through me and the memory of those words she’d whispered the day before.
I love you. I love you so much.
I’d ignored them, dismissed them. Told myself I’d misheard, that it had been the heat of the moment, nothing more. But it hadn’t been the heat of the moment.
“If it’s love you’re looking for, you won’t find it with me,” I said harshly.
Isabel looked down at her hands, clasped together in front of her. “I see.”
A taut silence fell and for the first time in my life, it was me who wanted to fill it.
“Where are you going with this, Isabel?” I demanded.
She lifted her gaze. “Here’s the thing. I’m in love with you, Caleb. I’ve been in love with you for years, and I thought I could do this with you without getting anything back. But…I’m not sure if I can.”
Even though I knew that’s what she’d been going to say, the words felt like the blow of an ax against a tree, a vibration, a shudder going all the way through me.
“It’s a crush,” I insisted, as if me telling her about her own feelings would make it true. “That’s all it is.”
“No.” Her voice was quiet and very certain. “That’s not all it is.”
Another shudder went through me.
She can’t love you and she can’t want more.
“Love?” The word tasted bitter in my mouth. “What does a fucking twenty-three-year-old know about love? Nothing, Isabel.”
I thought she might look away at that, but she didn’t. “More than a forty-two-year-old, apparently.” The words were steady, none of her usual anger or ferocity in them and for some reason that made the tension inside me even worse. “Tell me, Caleb,” she went on. “Have you ever been loved? Or have you ever loved anyone?”
You love her. You’ve always loved her.
No. It wasn’t that kind of love. Before we’d got together, I would have said she was like a niece to me, or a much younger sister, but things had gotten complicated. Sex had added a layer that hadn’t been there before and arguably shouldn’t have been there. But there was no point thinking about the ‘shouldn’ts’. It was too late for that now.
“Yes,” I snapped. “I had parents, remember? Your father’s important to me and so is Atlas. You, too.”
“But not inthatway, right?”
“Where the fuck are you going with this?” I growled, losing patience. I took a step toward her. “You want to go over my knee, little girl?”
She didn’t move. “This isn’t about you being my daddy, Caleb. This is about us and what we want from each other, and it’s more than just sex.Iwant more than just sex. For years I blamed myself for Mom’s death. Dad wouldn’t talk about her and since he held me at such a distance, I used to think he blamed me for it, too. But…” And there they were, those glittering sparks, that fiery spirit, burning in her eyes. “Charlotte told me that it wasn’t my fault. That Mom loved me and wanted me, that she would have died so that I could live a thousand times over. She’d be glad that I was here, so now I’m thinking that maybe it wasn’t fair of Dad to treat me the way he did. That I’m worth more than that. That I’m worthy of being loved, that I deserve it.”
Every word she said was that ax chopping away at me, cutting me down. Taking pieces of me away until there was nothing left. Because every word she said was true. She did deserve all those things. It wasn’t fair for Ten to have distanced her the way he had. It wasn’t fair that her mother had died. It wasn’t fair that Ten had kept her from people who would have loved her…
It wasn’t fair for me to deny her the love she wanted.
But there was no other option for me. Love opened the gates to the darkness, and I couldn’t let it get out.
“You do,” I said roughly. “You do deserve to be loved. But I meant it when I said I couldn’t give it to you. I can’t.”