Page 37 of Liberating Bells
“Do you think I’m an embarrassment?” Izabel asks so quietly that I almost don’t hear her.
I set the bottle down and pause for a second, wondering where this question’s coming from. “Why would you ever think that?”
She shrugs again and looks at me sheepishly. Her hands are wrapped around her beer bottle, her feet tucked underneath her. She seems small, so small. That’s all she is these days. “It’s nothing. Sometimes I just wonder…”
I narrow my eyes at the beautiful girl pressed against my side. “You couldneverbe an embarrassment. Hey, look at me,” I say as I lift her chin with my finger, drawing her attention to me. “You are the smartest, most beautiful girl I know. Anyone in their right mind would be glad to have you around, regardless of the setting.”
She smiles, her cheeks lighting up with a blush, but she doesn’t respond.
My eyes travel over her face. Her makeup is smeared from her tears, her eyes ringed with red, and her hair torn to bits.But she has honestly never looked more beautiful than in this moment right now, sitting curled up next to me in only my t-shirt and her panties.
Izabel notices my staring, and her lips turn up again awkwardly. “What is it?”
I shake my head. “Nothing, I’m just thinking.”
“About what?”
I inhale deeply and brush some hair off her face. “About tonight. What a mess it turned into.”
“Oh,” she says, looking down. Her fingernail picks at the label on the bottle. “Yeah.”
“Izabel, has he everdonethat to you before? Like...does this happen a lot?” I ask her hesitantly, afraid of the answer. I’m treading carefully.
If her answer is yes, I swear nothing will keep me from hunting down Mark and breaking all of his fingers. If it’s no, I’m afraid I won’t believe her, not after what I saw tonight.
Izabel presses her lips together and looks at me with wide eyes before shaking her head fervently. “No.” I let out a loud breath, my chest deflating. “I mean, he’s never spoken to me like that before, or grabbed me like that.”
Her delicate hand finds its way to the back of her head, and she winces. I saw him holding a fistful of her hair before I shoved him off of her.
“What was his deal? If it’s okay to ask.”
She shrugs again, her eyes back on the TV. “He was really upset with how I’ve been acting. He said I shouldn’t have been dancing with you because it makes him look bad.”
I knew it. It was my fault.
“I mean, he’s probably right. I’m his fiancée. I don’t know what I was thinking, dancing with you like that,” she pauses, “like how we used to.”
“You should be allowed to dance with whoever you want.”
“Yeah, but I’m his. I have to respect that.”
My eyebrows knit together, and I give her a hard look. “You’re not property. You don’t belong to him. You are fully capable of making your own decisions.”
“Yeah, and look where that gets me, Ryan. Besides, you always used to tell me I was yours. I don’t see how Mark doing the same thing is any different.”
I tighten my hold on her. “I used to say that you were mine as in ahow the hell am I such a lucky bastardtype of way. Not in theI’m going to keep you hooked on a short leash, so you don’t disobeyway.”
She tilts her head. “To-may-toe, to-mah-toe.”
I emit a low growl from my chest but let it be. I’m not going to win this conversation. All I can hope is that someday she’ll see the difference.
“You should be asleep,” I say as I take another sip of beer. “Why don’t you go on up?”
She looks at me with wide blue eyes and gives an involuntary tremble. “Will, um...will you come with me?”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I mutter. Isn’t she in this whole situation because I didn’t know my own boundaries? Maybe it is time that I take a step back.
“Please? I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep by myself. And I’d feel awful making you sleep on this couch.”
