Page 38 of His Relentless Angel

“I’ll explain it to you later,” Shayla says beside him, then waves us off.

“I worry about him sometimes,” I tell Isaiah once we meet up at my apartment and he’s finished lugging our bags through the front door.

“Who? James?”

“Yeah. I think he’s gotten worse over the years. I don’t know if he remembers catching us in bed together or if he registered how close we were at the house.”

“It’s the kids. Daddy-brain or something. Gets worse with each one. Can’t wait to experience it myself,” Isaiah says with a wicked grin, dropping the bags after he closes and locks the front door. He swings me up into his arms, making me squeal with delight. “Remind me to run out and get a pregnancy test for you soon.”

“Do you think it could happen that fast?” Isaiah lays me down in the middle of our bed and climbs on top of me, kissing his way down my body after dragging off my shirt. “I mean, it doesn’t usually happen that fast, right?”

“No idea.” Isaiah drags the rest of my clothes off. “But I’m trying my best to make it happen.” Isaiah strips quickly, then pushes my knees up and out to suck my clit until I’m cumming, screaming his name.

* * *

I search the drawer in Isaiah’s computer desk, hoping he has tape I can use to fix a dress pattern I accidentally cut into, and I pause when I discover he has a second cell phone. My breath is uneven when I palm it, having spent way too much time on relationship subreddits.

Isaiah is lying back on the couch, reading Wild Seed for possibly the twentieth time, and I sit on the wood trunk, facing him. “Hey, um, can I ask you about something?”

He smiles and drops a hand on my knee. “What’s up, baby?”

“I found this in your desk,” I say, passing the phone to him.

His smile slowly fades. He sets his open book face down on the trunk next to me and sits up, dragging one hand down his face, and fear tries to butt its way into my thoughts. No, no, no, ignore it. Positive thoughts only.

“Bailey.” His brows crease in the middle when he sees my expression, and he hauls me off the trunk to straddle his lap, wrapping one arm around my lower back and pressing a kiss to my lips. “I know what you’re thinking, and I promise, it’s nothing like that.” He powers on the cell phone, taps on his text messaging app, and hands it to me. He caresses my back, watching my face as I read through his messages.

There are the usual contacts—James, Martin, his brother and sister, my parents and his. The last of them are dated right before James and Shayla got married. But at the top of his threads is my name, the most recent being the day I drove home the weekend after my eighteenth birthday, reminding him that I was coming into town and wanted to see him before I got his letter.

With my breaths coming faster, I tap on the thread and scroll up…and up…and up through all the messages I sent to his old phone number. There are pictures of me setting up my tiny dorm room, the picture of my acceptance letter when I got into college, and from my senior prom—where I went with friends instead of a date, of course.

“I read every one of them,” he confesses in a low voice. “Back then, I read them simply because I cared about you and your family and wanted to see all the pictures and videos you sent of your accomplishments. I ignored the pictures that were obviously meant to…make me feel a certain way.” He gives me an apologetic look.

I look up sharply, tears blurring my vision. “You did? I thought—you never responded. Dad told me you only kept your old phone number so you wouldn’t hurt my feelings. He said you told him that you never read them.”

“The first lie I told him. I’m not proud of it.”

I come across the messages I sent about my near head-on collision. “You saw these?” I flash the phone at him.

He pulls me closer, a pained expression twisting his features. “That’s the one time I came close to breaking my no-contact rule.”

I nod, biting my lip. “I really needed you,” I say, more tears spilling down my cheeks.

“I was there,” he confesses, leaning forward to kiss my cheeks. “Drove right over. Pulled over where you couldn’t see me. Followed you home to make sure you got there safe.”

“You did?” I’m full-on blubbering now. “Thank you.”

I scroll back up, and sure enough, there’s the picture of me at my pool party for my seventeenth birthday. My parents had rented the pavilion at our neighborhood’s pool since it was still open, thanks to the crazy hot weather that year. I had invited everyone, including Isaiah, who didn’t come.

I sent him several pictures and videos from the party—blowing out my birthday candles on my cake, silently wishing for the same thing I always did; the picture of my sisters and me gripping the pool’s edge with just our faces showing, cheesing it up for the camera; videos of Shayla’s kids splashing in the water; and lastly, a picture of me in my neon orange bikini that I took in the full-length mirror attached to the back of the hall bathroom door at home, my hair wet and tousled, my hard nipples poking through the triangles of my top that I bought a size too small.

I turn the phone around to show it to him, infinitesimally rocking on his lap. “You saw this one too?”

He looks away and parts his lips with a small exhale. “Yeah.”

“I wore that bikini for you.”

“I know.” He may not be looking at me, but he slides his hands up under my oversized T-shirt—the only thing I’m wearing—to grip my hips, helping me to rock over his lap.

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