Page 47 of Love JD

She bristled. “Excuse me?”

My brows lifted as I gave her a pointed look. “If we're talking about logic, I'd think that was obvious. Don’t leave this house without me. It's not safe if reporters are climbing walls and taking risks."

For the first time, Isla looked at me with true indignation. Her cheeks had already warmed with matching spots of pink from my rejection. Now they were bright red. "It might seem logical to you, but it doesn't to me. No one is going to hurt me in public."

"I don't agree," I scowled.

"You're not in charge," she challenged.

I shrugged. “You agreed to let me kidnap you.”

“Clearly my bad,” she muttered, stalking away from me.

“I’m making lunch,” I called after her.

“Enjoy it!” she shot back, and then her door slammed.

I scrubbed my face. I couldn’t blame her for feeling salty after I’d embarrassed the hell out of her. Twice now. It would be a wonder if she left my house feeling anything but pure loathing for me. I cleaned up the first aid wrappers, chucked the bird feeder in the trash, and put my tools away. Then I wandered out into the back yard and picked up the broken camera. It had been pretty well decimated. Whatever Isla meant by “fished the camera,” it had included a good bit of force. The lens and screen had cracked so badly they were missing chunks, and little pieces of black plastic littered the base of my maple tree.

I cleaned it all up and brought the camera back into the house with me. The SD card would be intact, most likely. I set them on my kitchen table, which unlike the rest of my furniture from my old apartment, had been made to match the house. I’d commissioned a farmhouse-style table because the glass one I’d had before didn’t seem to fit. I removed the SD card and slipped it in my pocket to make sure I wiped anything they'd gotten of my house before Isla had gone Zorro on them with the rake.

I got to work pulling ingredients from the fridge for lunch and stewed over the fact that every corner of my life had been filled with unsolvable problems. It was the damn wedding. I was allergic to them, but instead of making me break into hives, it had covered my life in problems that made my brain itch.

A knock at the door sounded, and I looked up from cutting romaine. I kept the knife in my hand, fully intending to shed blood if that was someone with a camera.

“It’s mine!” Isla shouted from her room. She fast-walked down the hallway in her socks, her linen romper switched out for a faded theme park T-shirt and sweats that looked like they were owned by a heavyweight boxer before she'd gotten a hold of them. She’d rolled them up so many times, she looked like she was wearing a fucking hula hoop.

I frowned at her and pointed with my knife as she swooped by. “Did you get your entire wardrobe from the men’s section of a thrift store?”

“Yes!” she called out before answering the door. I heard her thank someone, and then grocery bags rustled.

I set my knife down and joined her in the foyer, swatting her hands away from the bags and picking them all up to bring them to the kitchen island. I glanced at her as she followed me, her brows squished together with annoyance. “What?” I asked.

“I can do it,” she responded testily.

“I know you can, but I want to,” I volleyed back.

She sighed with forced patience. Like the words had been pried out of a rusty floorboard, she grated out, "Thank you."

I paused at the edge of the kitchen, my gaze roving over her in concern. "Isla, listen, I didn't mean--"

"Thank you," she repeated, reaching over to fish through one of the plastic bags. She plucked out a package of sesame sticks and held them up between us. "This is my lunch. Don't worry about making anything." Then she turned, and the curls at the end of her long hair swayed as she hurried back to her room.

"Okay. Never mind," I muttered to myself. I deposited the bags on the counter and leaned my hip against it. I hooked a finger over the edge of a bag and peeked inside. She had the weirdest taste in food. Some of it was kimchi ramen—okay, a lot of it was kimchi ramen—interspersed with dried fruit, junk food snacks, pepperoni, coffee, enough creamer to fund a local dairy, and kettle corn. I realized most of it was high in salt and required no effort to make. For someone living with Isla’s condition all on her own, those were likely survival necessities.

And they pissed me off. I couldn’t even really put a name to the rage, but it made me want to chuck it all out the window. Staring at all the prepackaged food, I realized it was because this was what she’d had to do to keep herself fed. No one made her meals when she was too sick to get off the couch or too dizzy to stand at the counter. She knew her limitations, and as much as she likely didn’t want to admit it, they kept her from doing things that most of us took for granted.

Sighing, I put everything non-perishable in a plastic basket on the counter so she could find it easily. Then I finished making our salads, and with a wooden bowl in hand I went to her door and knocked on it softly. She didn’t answer. I knocked again more firmly. “Isla.”

“Come in,” she replied tersely.

I opened the door, cocking an eyebrow. “You mad at me?”

“No,” she replied with all the softness of forty-grit sandpaper. She sat at her desk, her digital pen gliding smoothly over her tablet and a book open beneath her. She had dedication, I had to give her that.

“Do you like salad?”

“I like everything,” she replied tartly. Her gaze swung to me finally. And then, like it had to be dragged from her mouth with a team of Clydesdales, she added, “Thank you.”

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