Hastily pulling the jacket off her, she held it out to Maia like it was a bomb. Considering the irrational attachment she was forming with it, it may as well have been.
“You can take it back to Jace on your way home,” she told Maia brusquely.
Maia took a step away from her. “First of all, I’m not leaving any time soon so you should just accept that and move on. Secondly, you can give it back to him yourself; I’m not going to be the messenger.”
Isabelle froze, jacket still in hand as she imagined seeing Jace again. Her heart sped up, which was completely ridiculous, then her palms started to sweat and her lips tingled.
Clearly she was getting sick, it was the only explanation.
She was thrown out of her head by her phone buzzing again. She used to love how persistent and driven Tate was, but now it was getting beyond a joke.
A beautiful slender wrist moved past Isabelle, pulling her phone out from the pillow and drawing back before she even knew what was happening.
“Hello ‘Tate love heart’, how can I help you?” Maia asked cheerfully.
Isabelle nearly died, watching in morbid fascination when Maia’s eyebrows drew together and she turned away, walking a few paces.
“Maia, I’m her new neighbour. Don’t worry; we’re taking good care of your girl.”
Another pause.
“She’s doing great, a little sad maybe, but I can only assume that’s from missing you guys.”
Please let this be a dream. Or a hallucination. Hell, she’d even take a drug induced coma at this point.
Maia spun around suddenly, her eyes blazing as she stared at Isabelle. “I see, well she has been super busy settling in…no, I can see where you’re coming from…right. Well, I don’t really know what to say, except it was nice sort of meeting you. I’ll let Isabelle know you called. Yep, will do, bye.”
Silently, Maia pressed end and then handed Isabelle back her phone. She took it wordlessly, as she tried to go into damage control. Her past was not meant to blend at all with this new life she wanted to build for herself, she needed to find a way to justify everything Tate had just said… even though she wasn’t entirely sure what they had talked about.
“Stop before you hurt yourself,” Maia told her kindly, settling herself next to Isabelle on the bed.
“I’m sorry?” Isabelle blurted.
She really had to learn to pay better attention.
“You’re trying to come up with an excuse, right? Jace has the same look when he gets home late and Mum catches him. I can assume that since you’re ‘pig headedly ignoring your best friend in the whole world’ - those were his words by the way, not mine, that you’ve got something going on and it’s more than just a disagreement.”
She felt too exposed having Maia name exactly what was going on. What was it with the Scown twins and seeing into a person’s soul? No one had ever taken such an interest in her before in her old town… except for Tate of course. And look where that got him.
“He didn’t do anything wrong,” Isabelle blurted, feeling like it was the only point that mattered.
Maia nodded. “So, you did something and can’t handle someone so close to you knowing?”
Damn, she was good.
“How do you do that?” Isabelle asked in wonder.
Maia shrugged. “My brother has a myriad of issues that he works to conceal from me, but I’ve learnt all the tricks.”
“I don’t want to get into it,” Isabelle said, a little more firmly than she meant to, knowing that Maia was only trying to be a friend.
Emotional intimacy it seemed, was a trigger for her bitchiness.
Maia shrugged, completely nonplussed. “I never asked you to, I just came over to see how you’re feeling after last night.”
Isabelle smiled softly. “Jace said you’d be over to interrogate me.”
Maia grunted in frustration. “Jace would be wrong. If I were interrogating you, I would be demanding answers and not just asking.”
Isabelle flinched; she was in no shape for a question and answer session. Thankfully, it seemed that Maia understood because her face softened and she leant against Isabelle in a casual display of support.
“So, you met Kimberley,” Maia said carefully.
“What delightful taste in women Jace has.”
Maia chuckled. “She wasn’t always so bad; I mean she was always a bit unstable but never to that extent.”
“Were they serious?”
Isabelle hated herself for asking, but she had to know.
“I don’t really know how to answer that,” Maia said in a sigh. “It’s not an easy answer with those two. They’ve been on and off for the last two years and they went through a lot of bad stuff together, which I guess bonded them. But they didn’t have a relationship built on love, trust and loyalty. So I guess it was serious, but in all the wrong ways.”
“Wow, thank you,” Isabelle said gratefully, feeling oddly out of sorts with how candid everyone seemed to be in this place.
“For what?”
“Being so honest with me when you didn’t have to.”
Maia rested a hand on Isabelle’s arm. “I’m not being nice.”
Isabelle eyed her warily, not sure where this conversation was going.
“What do you mean?”
Maia rose from the bed, strolled over to the balcony doors and threw open the drapes, just staring out across at the adjacent balcony.
“I love my brother,” she said finally. “More than words could ever say, and I want him to be happy. He’s had a hard life. Our Father, he wasn’t… well, he just wasn’t any sort of nice to Jace.”
Isabelle shuffled back, hoping it would give her some distance from this conversation but knowing it was futile.
Maia turned to her, those beautiful eyes sad.
“I know you probably don’t want to hear all this but I need you to. I need you to understand that Jace deserves the best and never gets it. He is worthy of so much love, even if he’s convinced himself otherwise and I will do anything to help him get that.”
“I don’t know how that involves me,” Isabelle said slowly.
“I don’t know that it does yet,” Maia admitted. “But there’s no denying that he’s drawn to you in ways I didn’t even know he was capable of, and for that reason you terrify me.”
Isabelle curled her arms around her body. “Me?”
“Yes,” Maia sighed. “You have the potential to completely destroy him. I can see it in the way he stares at you, and I would never try to turn you away when you could possibly save him from himself. I just want to ask, no beg you really, to please don’t hurt him if you can help it.”
She felt like she’d been slapped. Never in her life had she felt so guilty for something she hadn’t even done, or angry at the assumption.
She opened her mouth to retort that she was broken and perhaps her brother best stay away so she doesn’t get ruined completely, but Maia beat her to it, wrapping skinny arms around her neck.
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to upset you but I just can’t lose him, I won’t.”
Isabelle hesitantly put her arms around Maia, her anger fading as she realised it wasn’t anything personal. This was just a sister who had seen her brother go through hell, and wasn’t sure she could watch idly anymore.
Maia had nothing to worry about though. Isabelle wasn’t entirely sure she would ever get over her aversion to male touch and she liked Jace enough to want to spare him from her issues.
“You have nothing to worry about when it comes to me,” she told Maia flatly.
Something in her voice must have startled Maia, because she pulled away and gazed into Isabelle’s eyes, a slow horror spreading across her face.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Maia whispered, her cheeks pink with shame.
Isabelle shook her head, trying to keep it casual and shift the conversation forward before she did something stupid, like tell Maia her own sorry little tale.
“Have I been blacklisted by the whole school yet?”
Maia looked like she wanted to say more but then changed her mind and plastered a smile on her face.
“You definitely made an impression, but if anything you’ve just made everyone even more determined to get to know you and have you around. Especially the guys, you caused quite a stir!”
Isabelle felt a blush creeping on her cheeks. That was almost as bad as being blacklisted; she hated attention.
“And your little showdown with Kimberley ended in your favour. Once you left, Ben actually got mad and he never gets mad! He told her that she better leave before he decided to take out the trash. People actually cheered!”