It Takes Two (2 page)

Isabelle smiled at her. “Yes, you are.” They were. They totally were. But there was an important difference between Emma and Shane. Emma had to love her—she was her sister. Emma couldn’t break up with her. She was stuck.

Shane wasn’t.

“Listen, if I can’t keep up with him, or I start telling him no now, he’s going to get bored and frustrated. He’s not going to hang in there for long. And that would…” She stopped and cleared her throat before she said
devastate me
. “Better I be the one to call it quits.”

Olivia sighed. “Iz, he’s madly in love with you. He’s been telling you that since you broke up.”

Isabelle pressed her lips together and looked around the table. These women were more than her sisters—they were her best friends and the people she trusted more than anyone. She took a deep breath.

“He’s in love with the woman he
thinks
I am.”

“But that is you,” Olivia insisted. “You’re fun and sexy and creative and daring and…”

“I can’t keep doing that,” Isabelle interrupted. “We weren’t supposed to last this long. I really thought it would be super hot, but burn out fast. I can’t keep going like this, ignoring all the things I
should be
doing.” Isabelle took a deep breath. “I’ve decided that I have to take control of my…knitting.”

She’d only said
fibromyalgia
out loud three times since she’d been officially diagnosed a little over nine months ago. She knew she wasn’t handling it well. She’d tried a few positive changes in the first month after the rheumatologist confirmed that her pains and fatigue and upset stomachs and mood swings were legit. But then she’d met Shane and she’d thought,
What the hell?
One more fun fling wouldn’t hurt. Like one last piece of cheesecake before going dairy-free. A great big, best-she’d-ever-had piece of cheesecake.

She had planned to only indulge with Shane for a few weeks. Not six months. And she certainly hadn’t meant to fall in love with him.

A few weeks had turned into months of trying to keep up, trying to keep him from knowing that she was struggling, so she could have one more night, one more kiss, one more good time.

It hadn’t been that hard to keep him believing she was all he wanted and more. Isabelle was a fantastic actress. It made her a successful pharmaceutical sales rep. She put on a great façade and could convince anyone of anything. That they told the funniest jokes, that they were her favorite clients, that they absolutely needed to try the new drug her company was carrying.

For eight months now—the six months they’d been together and the two months she’d been trying to break up with him—Shane had believed that she was the perfect woman for him and that he wanted her more than anything.

And now she was going to have to convince him of the exact opposite of all of that.

“You’re going to start
knitting
again?” Emma asked.

Isabelle met her sister’s gaze. She wasn’t sure which made Emma more uncomfortable—the fibromyalgia that had led to her learning to knit or the actual knitting. Both were equally foreign to Emma.

“Yes, it’s definitely time to start again. I’ve been ignoring it for too long.”

When she’d first told her sisters what was going on with her, Amanda and Olivia had been sympathetic and supportive. Emma had been shaken. She’d realized instantly that Isabelle’s crazy lifestyle was going to have to drastically change. And that was going to impact Emma directly.

Emma was the one who loved to stay out until the wee hours of the morning, but she didn’t like staying out alone. Which was exactly what a trusty sidekick was for. However, staying out until the wee hours made Isabelle’s disrupted sleep patterns even worse. Which made her fatigue and muscle pain even worse the next day. Which made her stress levels go up, which made her irritability worse.

Emma had felt guilty for her part in making Isabelle’s symptoms worse and she’d been uncomfortable and unsure about asking Isabelle to go out and do things with her, not knowing what was good and bad for Isabelle’s condition. She’d also started making adjustments in her own routines—coming home earlier, buying protein bars instead of her favorite chocolate brownies, and trying to act interested in the book that Isabelle had brought home about fibromyalgia.

It had been painfully clear that Isabelle’s condition was changing their relationship.

When Isabelle had started knitting and doing other craft projects in an attempt to keep busy on the quiet nights when she stayed home, Emma had actually tried a few with her.

It had bored and frustrated her within an hour.

Isabelle had finally sat Emma down and told her that she needed to keep doing things for
herself
. Emma needed to live her life the way she wanted to. Isabelle gave her permission to go on without her.

And the relief had been immediate and obvious.

After that, they’d started referring to the fibromyalgia as “knitting”. It was less uncomfortable, for some reason, for Emma to ask, “Are you staying home to knit tonight?” rather than ask if Isabelle was missing a party because she didn’t feel up to it physically.

That had gone on for only two weeks and was, she knew, a big part of why she’d finally said yes to Shane. Dating and going out with Shane was proof that things hadn’t changed that much, that Isabelle could still do all the things she and Emma had always done and, most of all, that Emma didn’t have to worry.

Emma’s reaction was also why Isabelle hadn’t told Shane about her diagnosis.

For one, why would she tell a guy she intended to have a short but steamy affair with something so personal? It was a…fluke…that they were still together months later. For another, if her sister, her best friend, reacted with discomfort and awkwardness, she could only imagine how Shane would react.

“Are you going to tell Shane about the knitting?” Olivia asked.

“The actual knitting or the figurative knitting?” Isabelle asked.

Olivia looked confused for a moment. “Yes.”

“Wait, you’re going to tell him about the knitting?” Emma asked.

“I think I have to,” Isabelle said. Breaking up with a guy like Shane Kelley wasn’t any easier than getting a full night’s sleep with him next to her. For one, she’d missed him within six hours of telling him they were done.

For another, he didn’t give up.

“He thinks he wants me to move in. We either break up or I tell him all about the knitting. It’s not like I can hide it from him if we’re living together.” Figuratively or literally.

Shane needed excitement, spontaneity, the unpredictable, anything but routine. As a cop, he had that rush of adrenaline every day. His free time was spent on a four-wheeler or playing football or driving in demo derbies. And he liked just as much thrill in his sex life.

Their first time had been on the hood of his car in the rain.

And that had been the first time of three in that same night. The first night they’d gone out.

Then they fell in love—something Shane also did with gusto. He was romantic and sexy and sweet and amazing. She got lots of surprise flower and gift deliveries at work, sexy text messages during the day and even love notes tucked in her briefcase and purse at random times.

But living apart, she at least had a break once in a while. They didn’t see each other every single day. If it was going to be twenty-four-seven there was no way she was going to be able to constantly deliver the spontaneous fun Shane had come to expect. And there was no way she could hide her need for downtime. At least, not without lying. Which she had stooped to already more than once since she’d known him.

“Do you think he’s going to be okay with the knitting?” Emma asked. “Either kind?”

“Well, he wouldn’t
break up
with you because you…knit,” Olivia protested. “Would he?”

Isabelle signaled the waitress for a mojito. “It doesn’t matter. I’m breaking up with him.”

“Yeah, that hasn’t really been working for you, sis,” Emma pointed out.

Isabelle hated that she didn’t feel she could talk to Emma like she used to. She hadn’t confided any of her fears about what was going to happen with Shane, she hadn’t told Emma any of her plans, she hadn’t told Emma any of the ways that she needed her relationship with Shane to change. Because there were many parallels to how she needed her relationship with Emma to change and Emma would know that. It was easier to avoid it and keep things status quo than to potentially hurt her sister or ruin their relationship.

Emma was the woman all women secretly—or not so secretly—wanted to be. Even her sisters. She was fun and sexy and unapologetic. She was no angel, so a lot of women might not
admit
to wanting to spend time in her shoes, but deep down they did. Especially her four-inch Gucci leopard-print heels.

Isabelle knew that a lot of people assumed she and Em were two peas in a pod. But the truth was Emma was her role model. Em was fearless, sure of herself and had never met a man she couldn’t win over.

Except for Nate Sullivan. But that was another story.

Bottom line, Isabelle wanted to be like Emma.

Over and over Emma charmed people into letting her do exactly what she wanted and she always brought Isabelle along for the fun. Riding on amusement park rides before they were old enough, summer cheerleading camp when they were in junior high, tattoos on their spring break trip. Going on their spring break trip in the first place.

All of the fun stuff she’d done had been because of Emma.

Even as an adult, when it came to being daring and exciting, Isabelle relied on Emma’s example.

Emma
was
sexy and fun.

Isabelle was a good actress.

She cleared her throat and started to explain. “That’s because I haven’t told him
why
. He’s not buying the whole thing about me being upset about his impromptu trip to Vegas because I’m
not
upset about it. He’s not buying that I don’t want to be with him because I
do
want to be with him. I have to be honest with him so he’ll end these ridiculous stunts and we can both move on.”

She looked around the bar wistfully as she said it. She kind of liked these ridiculous stunts. And moving on was not something she was great at.

“But what if he still wants to be with you after he knows about the…knitting?” As Olivia asked the question it was clear that she wasn’t absolutely sure which knitting she was referring to at this point.

Not that it mattered. Isabelle’s answer to the question was the same. “Shane does not want to be with me if I’m going to knit…in any way. Jumping on a plane in the middle of the night to jet off to Vegas is something he does without blinking. It’s normal. Excitement and fun and crazy is normal for Shane. Asking him to curl up and cuddle and watch TV or get a massage or do yoga or take a cooking class or…”

“Knit,” Emma supplied.

Isabelle sighed and nodded. “Or decoupage or sit and read or play checkers…all that nice quiet, normal stuff that I should be doing instead of going out, is not Shane’s kind of thing. It would drive him crazy. Even faster than it drove Emma crazy.”

“Hey, I—” Emma broke off as Isabelle gave her a look. “Yeah, okay, it wasn’t my thing either.”

She glanced over to the pool table where Shane was laughing with a bunch of guys. She didn’t even have to be over there to know that he’d told some hilarious story, that someone was offering to buy him a beer and he’d thrown the game to let someone else win. He won about thirty percent of the time. He
could
win one hundred percent of the time. But he knew that no one liked the guy who won all the time and took all their money, but they also didn’t like to play the guy who sucked. “He’s just so…”

“Shane,” Olivia and Emma said at the same time.

Isabelle nodded. “Exactly. He’s
Shane
. He’s loud and crazy and fun and everyone loves him.”

“And?” Olivia asked.

“I want to be with him,” she admitted. “And he knows it. I can’t keep playing this game with him. He’s going to keep asking because he knows deep down I want to say yes. If I can explain why I can’t say yes, he’ll stop.”

Which sucked.

She wanted to be the woman Shane thought she was. She
had been
that woman for a long time, in fact. She liked tequila shots and a good deep bass beat and sexy heels. Isabelle had been right beside Emma when they’d splashed around in the public fountain in only their bra and panties. She’d been the instigator behind more than one scheme to get a guy’s phone number and more than one road trip and more than one all-nighter.

But she’d also discovered the beauty of time alone, how productive she could be when she woke up and didn’t need a caffeine IV to make it through blow drying her hair and how wonderful fuzzy socks felt compared to three-inch black leather boots. She liked a cup of gourmet hot chocolate as much as a great mixed drink. She liked her soft flannel pajama pants as much as she liked pretty lingerie. She liked sitting at home knitting as much as she liked getting sweaty on the dance floor at the clubs.

She felt like Jekyll and Hyde. One minute she was the wild, sexy, naughty girl Shane loved and the next she was content with her latest knitting project and reruns of
Firefly
.

That would, understandably, drive Shane nuts and make their relationship tense when they both wanted different things. Like how things had been with Emma and Isabelle before she’d started dating Shane.