Page 143 of Finding Fate

She attempted a glare since her mouth wouldn’t form the correct expressions. “Don’t worry. You can tell them all I resisted. Tell them all I kicked you where it hurts with my boot for all I care. I wouldn’t want you to get torn up over me.”

Tucker breathed out heavily through his nose and gave her a pointed look. “I wasn’t finished.”

“What then?” She didn’t want to hear any more reasons for why he felt obligated to bring her home. It was bad enough just seeing him without listening to any of that.

“Four,” he continued, “I’ve screwed up enough as it is these past weeks, so I’m not going anywhere until I’ve made things right.”

“What do you mean?” she asked as a body jerking shiver ran up her spine. She couldn’t have heard that right.

At seeing her tremor, he yanked off his jack and pulled back the blanket to help her put it on. It swallowed her, falling well down her thighs, but he knew it wouldn’t help with her pajama bottoms soaked beneath it.

“Take these off,” he instructed, though she stubbornly shook her head. “Izzy, you’re freezing. I need to get you warm,” he insisted. After a long suited glare, she complied, standing to slip the wet silk off, and he pulled her back into his lap before she could protest, sliding his arms in the jacket to place them under the silk top, doing everything he could think of to warm her frozen skin.

She shuddered at the warmth of his hands on her back. “Tucker, please…” her voice nearly broke. She couldn’t take this if he was just going to detach himself from her again.

He felt her resistance, but he continued anyway. If what Annie said was true, then she’d want to hear it. “I should never have pulled away from you. I’m sorry. You needed me, and I wasn’t there.”

“Really?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I want to.”

“So do.”

“I’m not sure if I can.”

“Why?”

“Because everything else made perfect sense,” she explained. “I understood why you didn’t want to be around me, why you didn’t want me anymore.”

“You thought I didn’t want you anymore?”

She heard the surprise in his voice and felt her resolve starting to weaken. She nodded against his shoulder.

He groaned as he shivered. “No, Izzy. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I want you, I want us, more than anything. I always will. I thought you knew that.”

She didn’t respond. His words seemed too good to be true, but surprisingly, hesitantly, she took the blanket and wrapped it around them both, clutching the ends together between them with the fingers of her casted arm.

“Isabel.”

She looked up and had to catch her breath at the love and sincerity she found waiting for her in those wonderful, brown eyes.

“I love you. So much. I always will. No matter what.”

At those words, she nestled in closer to him. Her broken arm tucked between them, she pressed her cast-free hand beneath the thick material of his shirt where his skin stayed toasty warm and buried her icy cheek into the warmth of his neck. He tensed at the initial contact of cold on his body, but relaxed as his body heat began to flow to her.

She breathed in and had to sigh at the intoxicating, unnamable smell that entered her lungs, her heart and brain going a little fuzzy at his scent. She never thought she’d get the chance to smell him like this again. It was wonderful, even in her despair.

“You really mean it,” she whispered in relief.

“Of course I do.” “Why wouldn’t I?” he wondered, mystified.

Lightning flashed again, and Isabel stiffened in Tucker’s arms as the thunder crashed around them.

“Isabel?”

“Yeah?”

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