Page 57 of Branded

“I hope that’s a good thing.”

“It is.”

Her high heels even out our height enough so I only have to dip just a little to let our lips touch.

We kiss softly as we dance through three more songs. It’s like no one else is even in the room when she is in my arms. All that matters is what is right in front of me, and that’s her.

“Have something to tell us?” Caleb and Finn corner me by the bar when Sawyer excuses herself to the bathroom.

“Uh... what are you talking about?”

“We are talking about the fact we’ve never seen you with anyone the way you’re with Sawyer. You seem so... content,” Finn says with a wave of his arm. “Old Isaac would have already had a bridesmaid in a coat closet somewhere.”

I rub my chin and chuckle. “Old Isaac is tired. New Isaac would much rather put his energy into the stunner on his arm.”

“Did you see Isabelle is here?”

“What? Where?” I turn around and glance over at the bar and out on the dance floor.

As if she had heard us mention her name, Isabelle appears at my side.

“Hi, Isaac,” she says softly. “I’m glad to see you’re alive.”

“On that note,” Caleb announces, “Finn, let’s go see if we can find... well... anything other than this.”

The two of them disappear back into the crowd, leaving me with a very despondent looking Isabelle.

“I forgot you were going to be here,” I tell her honestly, because at the end of the day, I probably would have made sure not to rub Sawyer in her face.

“Well, we did all go to school together, Isaac. Christopher is my friend too.”

“I know that, Bells. It just slipped my mind you’d be here.”

“You haven’t been returning my texts or my calls. Though, I can see now why that’s the case. She’s very pretty.”

Guilt eats at me. Isabelle and I were never official, we never would have been, but I do consider her a friend, and I know how she feels about me. Ignoring her was a dick move of the highest degree.

“She is,” I agree apologetically, because there is nothing else I can say that will make her feel any better.

“You know, you could have just told me, Isaac. Telling me to my face would have been better than ghosting me completely.”

Isabelle started off as the easiest casual fling. It was fun, it was hot, and then I could feel something shift a few months ago, and it was a shift I didn’t reciprocate. I should have broken it off with her then, but I’m an asshole who was more worried about continuing our arrangement than protecting her feelings.

“Listen, this isn’t the place for this conversation, but it needs to happen. It should have happened sooner, and I’m sorry it didn’t. You deserved better than that.”

“You’re right, I did, and I’m so hurt by your lack of respect in that way. That’s not the Isaac I know.”

“I have always been fond of you, Isabelle, but I think we both know it would have never worked.”

“I don’t know that. You just weren’t willing to try.”

“I just don’t see you in that way, Bells.” It’s brutal, it’s honest, but it’s real.

“But I was good enough to fuck?”

“We talked about this before we even started sleeping together, Bells. You’re my friend and I didn’t want that to change.”

She looks down at her feet then back up to me with a glistening of tears in her eyes.

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