I felt like I was home.
And just like that, the worries that had plagued me disappeared. It was too late to turn back, so I was just going to listen to Blake.
Don’t be scared, Iz. Just take a deep breath and let yourself fall.
Really, what else could I do, now that I was falling in love with him?
Chapter Twenty-Six
Blake
I sat down on a kitchen stool and opened Outlook.
The clock on the microwave said two fifteen, but I was still wide awake because my guilty conscience wouldn’t let me sleep. Izzy, on the other hand, was totally out, looking adorable with her face buried in my pillow and my shirt on her back.
The sight of her there, sound asleep under my blanket, made me want so many fucking things.
But I couldn’t have them. Not yet.
I took a deep breath and opened the email attachment, ready to accept whatever I found. I’d come up with a plan as I lay there with my face buried in her vanilla hair, and now it was time to formulate the strategy and hope she’d be able to forgive me later.
My eyes quickly moved over the chart—shit, shit, shit—and disappointment knotted in my gut. Her name was backunderneath mine; she was back on my team. I’d suspected it, but seeing it felt like a punch.
I paced around the kitchen as I texted,Is there any way we can meet up tomorrow? It’s important. Your office, Scooter’s, your house—wherever.
I knew Brad wouldn’t respond in the middle of the night, but that man had bothered me after hours so many times that I didn’t even feel bad for texting him this late.
My phone buzzed.Holy shit—that was fast. I opened the message.
Brad:Is everything okay?
I sighed and responded,It’s fine, I just need to talk to you ASAP.
Brad:I can meet you at Scooter’s at six.
I was usually the second person in the office every day; Brad was always the first. Six thirty was his normal start time, which was probably why the man was on his third wife and had chronic high blood pressure. I replied,Six o’clock it is, but let the record show that I texted you the minute after I opened the updated org chart.
Brad:Noted.
I swiped out of my messages and plugged the phone into the kitchen charger. Hitting the lights, I exited the kitchen as the room plunged into semidarkness. The city lights outside the window provided a little illumination, which usually made me feel less alone when I couldn’t sleep.
But tonight the lights didn’t matter.
Because Izzy was wrapped in my blanket, my shirt on herbody and my socks on her feet. I felt…fuck,whole, was it? That seemed way too dramatic, but whenever I was with her, I wanted nothing else. I thought of nothing else. Everything else ceased to exist.
When I was with Izzy, I was with the only person who mattered to me.
I walked through the living room, and even that looked different with her there. Her bag on the couch, her shoes on the floor, her shirt lying on the area rug as if she’d undressed on the way to bed.
I was usually a big fan of tidiness. For some reason, though, seeing her things scattered around my apartment made me feel some kind of fucking way.
When I walked into the bedroom, it was amplified to thenth degree. Because there, on the nightstand where I usually set my glasses when I went to bed, wereherglasses. It felt polarizing, staring at her crooked frames with the smudged lenses, and I had the overwhelming urge to do something to keep them there indefinitely.
Yeah, I was clearly losing it.
I went around the bed and climbed in beside her, doing my best not to wake her. She was out, sound asleep with her hands tucked under her cheek on my pillow. I wanted to look at her, to watch her sleep, but I was pretty sure that was another level of creepy. So I rolled over, settled onto the other pillow, pulled the blanket up, and closed my eyes.
“Everything okay?” she asked, her voice slurred and a little gravelly with sleep.