Page 144 of Finding Fate

“Can you explain something for me?”

“What?”

“Why did it make perfect sense for me not to want you anymore? I thought it was the other way around.”

“What?” This time, she was confused.

“That’s why I stayed away. Because I didn’t think you would want me, not after what I did to you, to our baby.” His voice broke on the last word. “I couldn’t even bring myself to look into those gorgeous eyes of yours because I knew what I wouldn’t see, and I was afraid of what I would.”

“What are you talking about, Tucker?”

“I couldn’t stand to see them that way, lifeless, dull. Especially when I knew it was all my fault. I thought for sure you’d look at me in disgust. You wouldn’t even have to say it. The accusation would be there. So instead, I just stayed away. I thought I was giving you what you wanted.”

Isabel pursed her lips at the new information. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Tucker thought it was his fault?

“I did feel lifeless. Everything was numb. Most of the time. But I would never want you to stay away. I’ll always want you. I thought you knew that,” she replied using his words against him. “It wasn’t your fault,” she finished.

Tucker shut his eyes. “Don’t try to make me feel better. I deserve to feel this way after what I did. I shouldn’t have fought with Wesley. I should have pulled him off of you and then gotten you out of there, but I lost my temper instead. Our fight made you fall. It’s my fault Destiny’s gone.”

Isabel pulled her face back from his neck to look up at him and freed her arm from the warmth of his skin to wipe a tear that sat, ready to fall, at the corner of his eye. “Tuck.”

He opened his eyes and looked down at her. He was confused by the combination of love, sincerity, and pain he found in her.

“I don’t blame you at all. I thought you blamed me. I didn’t fall because of you.”

“What are you talking about? Of course you did.”

“No, I didn’t,” she insisted. “It was my fault that I fell.”

“No.”

“Yes. You didn’t do anything. It was me. I stepped back. My heel missed the step. It was all me.”

“But if I hadn’t lost control, that never would have happened.”

“You were just trying to protect me. I should have never argued with Wesley. I know how he can be, what he did the last time I yelled at him, but I got mad anyway.”

“You didn’t look mad when I got there. You looked upset, and he wouldn’t take his hands off of you.”

“But I was mad before he tried to kiss me. That’s why he did it.”

“He kissed you because you were mad?”

“Apparently, it turns him on. Everything he was saying, I just got so mad and disgusted.”

Tucker took in a deep breath to steady the anger that was starting to swell in his stomach. “You should have been.”

“No. That’s what led to the fall. I lost our baby because I couldn’t control my anger.”

“No.” His tone was furious, firm, and it rang with finality. “It was not your fault. Someone who has hurt you before was hurting you again. You got upset. You stepped wrong on the stairs. End of story.”

Isabel stared back with just as much ferocity as Tucker had just uncharacteristically used with her. “Then, it goes both ways.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

She increased the forcefulness in her voice. “Yes. It does. If it’s not my fault, then it’s not yours either. You had no control over what I did with my feet. You were protecting me from someone you knew could hurt me. You got upset. End of story.”

Their stare was intense, but eventually, Tucker relaxed his gaze and gave her an agreeing nod. “Okay.”

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