Page 119 of Finding Fate

Several expressions flickered across Wesley’s handsome face: shock, pain, anger, betrayal. He looked quickly down at her stomach and then up to her furious gaze. She realized then he might have thought she’d meant her situation was planned, but didn’t know how to clarify without sounding like an idiot.

“So you deny me and then crawl into bed with your pathetic best friend?” he said in whispered disgust. “Like I said before…at least I know it’s not mine.”

He paused, and his tone turned to one of intrigue. “Yet, I still want you. I wonder what else you’d be willing to do when you’re upset. I’d wait ‘til after you popped out the brat, though,” he mused to himself.

He removed a hand from her shoulder to grip her neck, stroking her there with his thumb. She was disgusted by his words and repulsed by the unwanted caress. No one but Tucker was allowed to touch her that way.

She raised her hand from her stomach, ready to strike, but he was too fast. He caught her wrist in his hand and yanked her arm down by his side. His other hand caught the center of her back, pinning her free arm against her. He pulled her against his hard frame with such force that she would have stumbled had he not been holding onto her so tightly.

She looked up into his face, fear, panic, and anger strong in her eyes. He stared back at her with such intensity that her fear gripped her throat so tightly she couldn’t have screamed if she’d tried.

“That’s the anger that gets to me,” he rasped, his voice as intense as his gaze. She tried to respond, but his lips crushed against hers so fast she barely saw it coming.

Isabel struggled against him, her anger strengthened at her defenselessness, fueling the command of his lips against hers and bringing thoughts of her last physical encounter with him to the forefront of her mind.

The powerful memories triggered her tears, and she fought desperately to control them. She didn’t want Wesley to see how weak he made her feel. The seconds ticking by like hours, she was about to give up and let the traitorous tears flow at will when she felt his grip suddenly torn from her.

She stumbled forward towards him as he struggled to hold on, reluctant to let go. Barely managing to balance herself, she looked up just in time to see Tucker pull back his arm and strike Wesley in the nose with his tightly clenched fist.

It all seemed so repetitive, happening in slow motion as it had the time before. Even her attacker and her savior were the same, but this time, oddly enough, she could control the tears, could see it all unfold.

Tucker’s arm retracted as Wesley fell backward among the long, metal benches of the stands, his face stunned at the unexpected intrusion and blow. Tucker used his other arm to pull Isabel behind him in fierce protection.

Wesley stood back up, blood seeping rapidly from his nose, dripping down from his jaw and staining his T-shirt a deep, crimson red. The sight of the fast, oozing blood should have been enough to hold her gaze, but something about his eyes caught her attention as he lunged for Tucker. There was fury in his glare, so powerful that her escalating fear forced a small, involuntary step backward.

Somehow, things seemed to move blindingly fast and decrepitly slow at the same time. She took everything in sluggishly as if her mind couldn’t process it was actually happening, but the events unfolded too fast for her, for anyone, to have even a fighting chance of stopping it.

She felt the heel of her silver flat drop past the open edge of the step she had been standing on. Only her toes were temporarily secure on the wood, but her weight was leaning toward the heel that had missed the step. Her pompoms dropped from her hand as she grasped for the elusive railing, never finding it as she tried to find footing.

She wanted to sigh in relief when her foot met the step below, but never got the chance. Her ankle twisted on the poor landing, her body leaning too much into the stance for what the discomfited position could support. She heard the snap, but never felt the pain. Shock gripped her too tightly.

She had thought she was screaming, but the two fighting above her weren’t looking her way. Perhaps her mouth was only open in alarm.

As it happened, she watched Wesley slam into Tucker, the force knocking him hard against the steep, metal steps above, a maneuver that would have slammed her into the railing behind him if she were still there. He pounded his fist into Tucker’s jaw only once before Tucker threw him wildly from his body.

Tucker’s eyes shot to the step where Isabel had stood only seconds before and widened in horror when he saw what was happening.

The look of unadulterated terror in her fiancé’s eyes was the last thing Isabel saw before she heard a deafening crack, and everything went black.

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