His men hesitated, not wanting to sacrifice their lives if Pavel was already gone. Leaning over him, I slapped him across the face until he woke up. "I don't need to kill you today to know you're a dead man, Pavel," I growled, straightening to my full height. I brought my foot down on his kneecap sharply, his scream of pain as it crushed beneath my shoe soothing the edges of my anger and the frustration that I couldn’t kill him then and there. Going back to Isa with a bullet hole after the inevitable shootout would be difficult to explain. I turned my back on him and made my way for the door.
He'd signed his warrant in blood the day he threatened Isa.
All that was left was to slowly carry out the sentence.
16
Isa
My body felt so heavy that it ached, but I'd be damned if I admitted it and called Rafe to take me back to the suite. I didn't even want to tell Chloe and Hugo about our carelessness, but with every step it got worse and worse until I just wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep for a year.
But Chloe wanted to go for a stroll through Ibiza Town. She chatted about all the parties they'd gone to while Hugo smiled, watching me thoughtfully. "So how is it?" Chloe asked finally. I'd waited for the question, knowing she wanted me to bring it up. But given the intensity of the night before and that morning, I didn't know what I could say.
"I feel like he's hiding something from me," I said, looking at her. "I'm probably just being paranoid."
"You're good at that," she agreed. "But either way, it's a fling, Isa. He doesn't have to spill his secrets and neither do you. Because in a few days you'll go home and he'll be nothing but a fun memory as you flounce on to the next guy."
"That's not me," I said with a sigh. "I don't think it's that simple."
"Isa, you aren't supposed to develop real feelings for him," Chloe groaned. "If you can't do that, then I think you should end it now." Hugo snorted at my side, sputtering on the swallow of water as he pulled the bottle away from his lips.
"Wrong tube," he grunted, smacking his chest lightly. We walked a few paces as I considered Chloe's words. She was right, I knew. My feelings for Rafe grew every day, even with the drama we'd had.
If I kept going with him, I wouldn't be able to help falling in love with him. "I don't think I can," I admitted, working to convince myself that the inability to walk away was because of my feelings.
Not because of the danger I saw in his eyes when I talked about leaving.
"There need to be some boundaries, at least," Chloe said with a sigh. "Force yourself to talk about going home. Talk about your family. Remind both of you that you'll be ending things soon."
"I don't think that's necessary," Hugo interjected. "You saw the way he looked at her. I think he's interested in Isa enough that he knows when she's due to go home. Have you tried talking to him about how you feel?"
Chloe scoffed, echoing my instinctive reaction. Emotions and feelings and the conversations about them: not my thing. "Yeah okay," she said.
"That's what normal people do in relationships, Isa," Hugo sighed. "When they feel insecure, they talk about it. When they feel like things are moving too quickly, they talk about it so they know they aren't alone."
"That's too much emotional involvement for a fling," Chloe argued.
"Maybe it's not a fling," Hugo disagreed as the pair of them stopped in the middle of the walkway. "It might have started that way, but you can't predict love. If Isa really has feelings for this guy, she owes it to herself to explore them. She should give it a chance."
"I know you did not just advise her to drop her plans for her future so she could stay and have a fling with some guy she just met. I'm so sure it has nothing to do with you living in Ibiza and wanting your friend to be close by!" Chloe shrieked, and I watched the conversation devolve into one of their fighting matches. Each one wanted the best for me in their own way, but neither knew the full scope of what might be at stake either.
"I have watched Isa go through the last year of her life without ever being so much as interested in a guy. Then this guy comes along, and she immediately reacts to him. All I'm saying is that it deserves to be explored. She doesn't have to know that she's staying in Ibiza right this second, but she should give it until the end of her vacation and not cut it short because she's scared. Living a life afraid of everything that makes her feel is no life at all,” Hugo said.
Chloe opened her mouth, her anger rising to a new level as she narrowed her eyes at Hugo. "There's a...small chance I might be pregnant," I said, cutting off whatever Chloe had been about to say in response to that.
"You what?!" she shrieked.
"Would you keep it down," I hissed, taking her arm and guiding her over to the side of the road. "I took the morning after pill. It's probably fine."
"I can't believe you of all people would forget about something like that," she spat back, staring at me with a slack jaw as if I'd lost who I was.
Sometimes it felt like I had.
"He makes everything else go away," I whispered, watching as she rolled her eyes.
"It's called being horny, Isa. We all go through that, but that's no reason not to be responsible."
"That's not what I mean," I argued. "Even when we're not having sex. He just—he makes me feel like I'm right where I'm supposed to
