Page 63 of Finding Fate

“What?”

“How do you feel about the baby?”

“Very conflicted,” he admitted grudgingly, swiping a hand back through his hair. “I want this baby because it’s mine and Izzy’s. It’s a part of us. I already knew my future was hers. I knew it the night we made the baby. But I’m worried because I didn’t fall in love with it like Izzy did. You should have seen the way she reacted when we heard the heartbeat. I didn’t feel like that. I didn’t feel anything.”

Annie pursed her lips and gave him a meaningful look, “You need to talk to her.”

“It will hurt her.”

“She should know.”

“So now you want me to hurt her?”

“No, I want you to tell her before she figures it out on her own. We both know that would be worse.”

“Give me some time, Annie. It’s still early. Maybe things will change.” He hoped they’d change.

She stared at him for a few long moments. “Okay, but if they don’t, I won’t keep it from her forever.”

“Deal,” he agreed, knowing she was right.

* * *

“That was a really fun pep rally,” Izzy commented cheerfully as she climbed into Tucker’s Chevy.

“You looked great dancing out there.”

“Thanks,” she replied, shoving her red and black pompoms inside her dance team bag at her feet, “I was having trouble with this one move during practice today, but I nailed it at the pep rally, thank goodness.”

“Maybe it’s because you were upset after lunch.”

She looked up from messing with her bag, confused. “I wasn’t upset at practice. Why would I have been upset?”

“Because of what Hector said. By the way, Izzy love, you still look amazing.”

“Thanks…I got past the whole Hector thing pretty quickly, though,” she said, shoving aside her growing annoyance at the nickname again. It wasn’t Tucker’s fault this baby was making her go crazy.

“Really? How?”

“Oh, that’s right. I didn’t get a chance to tell you yet!”

“So tell me,” he encouraged as he started his truck to head home, curious if she’d discovered some trick he could use to handle her mood swings.

“You’re not going to believe this. I was going to head back over to y’all, but Wesley was waiting for me in the hall when I left the restroom.”

“What?” he nearly growled, his hands gripping the wheel tighter than necessary as he pulled onto the main stretch of road.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “It was really uncomfortable. I felt…” she paused in search of the right word, “powerless, I guess, around him after what happened, and then it was like he was purposely waiting for me when the halls were empty. I didn’t know what he could possibly want.”

“What did he want?” Tucker asked, tension straining throughout his tone.

“He was trying to pass off what he did as no big deal. He was like ‘my patience was a little short’,” she mocked using quotations with her fingers, “and he wanted me to leave you to go back to him. Can you believe that? It was absurd. I was so relieved when I finally made it outside.”

Tucker wrestled with the anger that only seemed to flare through him when something involved Wesley, his hands clenching and unclenching the wheel as his jaw set. That douchebag had hurt Izzy in more ways than one, and today he had the nerve to approach her? The thought of her alone in the hall with him…he wanted to pound the guy’s face in.

“Tucker, you need to slow down before you get a ticket,” Isabel scolded. “You shouldn’t get so worked up about this. He didn’t do anything to hurt me. I think he just wanted to mess with my head because he saw that I was upset.”

His foot eased off the pedal just a smidge to appease her. “I can’t help it, Izzy. The thought of him near you makes me so angry! I think I’ll have a talk with him tonight at the game…”

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