Page 78 of Finding Fate

20

Communicating

Tucker watched the troubled expression on Izzy’s face as she lay tucked against his chest later that afternoon, his arm curled around her back. He knew that she was deep in thought, and he was doing his best not to disturb her, even though she hadn’t spoken a word to him since she walked into their last period calculus class. It had been a long day for both of them, harder than he’d expected for it to be.

They lay quietly on his bed like that for a good twenty minutes, and he wondered if she might fall asleep in his arms. She looked exhausted.

He brushed his fingers through the long tresses of hair that flowed across his bed, trying to help her relax so she could sleep. However, instead of calming her like he intended to, the movement seemed to cause her more stress. He watched as her forehead crumpled.

“Am I disturbing you? Do you want me to stop?” he asked her.

She sighed and nestled down deeper into his chest. He loved the way she seemed to fit so perfectly there.

“No, it feels really nice. It just got me thinking about something.”

“About what?” he asked, still running his fingers through her hair, her sweet, honeysuckle scent drifting around him.

She didn’t answer at first, but he waited patiently, and eventually, she spoke. “Tucker, do you think we should have reported Wesley last summer when he hit me?”

“Yeah, we probably should have, but I didn’t think about it at first. So much happened that night.” He paused then. “Why did me messing with your hair make you think of that?”

She hesitated for a second but answered. “Because of what happened today at school.”

“What happened?” His tone held a little urgency now. It couldn’t be good if it was about Wesley.

“He stopped me in the hallway again. He was still trying to convince me to leave you for him. As if he even had a fighting chance.”

“Oh, I’d give him a fight,”Tucker thought to himself. He wouldn’t say it out loud. Izzy wouldn’t take that well. “I’m still not seeing the connection, love.”

He felt her sigh again. “I was just wondering if we should have reported it because, for a second, I thought he was going to hit me again, but he was really just reaching for my hair.” She shuddered as she remembered how wrong it felt to have his fingers running through it, a completely different sensation than when Tucker did it.

She could feel Tucker tense beneath her, and his hand came to an abrupt stop about halfway down her back. She knew what he was thinking. He would want to hit Wesley for touching her again, even if the touch wasn’t violent.

“Please don’t,” she said softly into his chest. She didn’t need to worry about this, too.

He didn’t relax, and when he answered, she could tell his jaw was taught. “You expect me to just let it go?”

“Please?”

“I can’t when you keep ignoring everything he does. He’s not safe. We should have done something about it a long time ago.”

“What am I supposed to do? It’s way too late to report what happened back in June.”

“Maybe, but you can still tell someone about it. If you don’t want me to get into it with him, then you have to tell Ms. Lane about what’s been going on. At least, that way, the school knows something’s up.”

“Ugh, I hate that I have to go to those stupid weekly meetings now, but if talking to the counselor will keep Tucker from going after Wesley…”

“Okay. I’ll talk to her.”

He relaxed a little then and went back to stroking her hair. She settled back into her thoughts for a few minutes until something she had never considered before crossed her mind.

“You know, Tucker, in a way, we owe a lot about our relationship to Wesley.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said in repulsed disbelief. He didn’t owe crap to the jerk.

“No, really, if you think about it, who knows how long it would have been before we got together if he hadn’t snapped that night. And even if we did get together relatively soon, I doubt that our relationship would have progressed in the same way. Imagine how different things would be if we weren’t having sex, amazing sex.”

“Damn. Leave it to Izzy to make sense about why we should be glad something like that happened.”“That’s definitely something I would hate to miss out on,” he agreed. “But then again, you wouldn’t be pregnant either,” he finished in his head.

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