Page 167 of The Bet
“Jacob’s fascinated by Xavier’s car.”
Izzy nodded. Her mouth tightening at the sound of his name.
“Tobias took to heart what you and Xavier had said, about Jacob feeling left out. We’ve both been making a real fuss of him ever since. Has Jacob said anything else to you?” Savannah asked.
“No. He seems pretty happy to me these days.”
“Tobias loves Jacob as his own, even I can see it, but I know my boy, and I know what he’s been through. I know he’s afraid of losing Tobias’s love, and that’s simply not the case, but it can be so hard trying to make a child see that.”
“Yes, it is, but you’ve done all the right things,” Izzy replied, hoping to reassure Savannah.
“Unfortunately, Tobias doesn’t always get things right.”
“No?”
“I mean, with Xavier.”
Another jab at another mention of his name. “No, he doesn’t,” she replied, carefully, forcing herself to think about the topic at hand, and not what had happened between the two of them.
She thought back to the things Xavier had told her, and of the way Tobias often placed the blame on him. “I used to feel sorry for Xavier.”
Savannah peered at her. “Used to?”
She brushed her bangs out of the way. “I—I …”
She wasn’t sure how much Savannah knew. Wasn’t sure how much Xavier would have told them, and wasn’t sure, now that she thought about it, that there had been anything worth telling in the first place. “I don’t work for him anymore.”
“Oh,” said Savannah in a voice which indicated total surprise. “I know he was going to find you some work. I hadn’t realized you were still doing it.”
“I did some work for him, before,” she replied. There had been nothing seedy in it, but it felt suddenly felt clandestine. “He gave me a few hours here and there, but I stopped a few weeks ago.” She turned away, and coughed. She still had his MacBook Pro and had been meaning to drop it back to him.
It was a daily, constant reminder of him, lying in her bedroom, on one of her bookshelves. She no longer used it, and had reverted back to her slow and clunky laptop in the hopes of forgetting him and putting him out of her head, and her heart.
Because she had her weak moments, now that the initial burst of rage had passed. In those moments lay the reminders of what they had once shared, of what she had started to feel for him. It went beyond the lust, and the way he made her feel, physically, and emotionally, and all the other ways in between.
She dared, in those moments, to think that might have been something between them.
“A few weeks ago?” Savannah asked, in a way that indicated there was more to the question.
Izzy nodded.
“This is news to me,” confessed Savannah.
“It’s old news now, and not as exciting as your news. Jacob is so excited, he can’t stop talking about the twins. How are you doing?”
“Nervous, excited, ecstatic.” Savannah’s eyes glistened. “As for Tobias, he’s been more guarded. I would even go so far as to say that’s he’s been more grumpy lately, and that’s because there’s a lot going on that I’m not always privy to. He’s annoyed that the twins news broke before we were ready.”
“I don’t blame him.” Izzy had seen first hand how intensely private Tobias was about personal matters.
“He tries to shield me from most things,” said Savannah, stroking her stomach, “but he also has an annoying tendency to go inward. And while I understand his anger over the news breaking, I think he’s taking the whole argument with Xavier too far.”
“They had another argument?”
Savannah looked puzzled. “Another one? I can’t keep track. They’re talking now, though. They argued recently about the twin’s news being leaked. Xavier owned up and apologized, saying he might have—in his excitement—mentioned something to someone during a meeting, and that was how word got out.”
“That’s what he told you?”
“That’s what he told Tobias, and he apologized and they made up. You know what men are like. They’re hardly going to go out for a coffee and talk things over. I like it when things are calm, when there are no arguments. His parents do as well.”
