Read Online Into the Fire by Suzanne Brockmann - Free Book Online Page A

room.
    Izzy’s alarm clock said it was just after oh three hundred as he swung his legs out of bed. Just to go to the bathroom. He moved quietly out of his room and down the hall. He quietly took a leak and quietly flushed—and realized that there was no such thing as a quiet flush.
    Sure enough, when he came back out of the bathroom, Eden was silent.
    Izzy stood there for a moment, in the doorway to the living room. He should have gone back into his room and shut and locked the door. Instead, he proved that his older brothers were right. He
was
unbelievably stupid. He spoke into the darkness, asking her, “You all right?”
    “I’m fine,” she said, a small voice from the shadows.
    Fine?
“I…kinda don’t believe you,” Izzy told her.
    “Well, duh,” she said, shifting to sit up on his couch. “Because I’m lying. I mean, God, nobody’s
really
fine.
Are you all right? I’m fine.
It’s like going to church and saying the responses to the prayer. It’s automatic—and meaningless. A stupid ritual.”
    “I, uh, pretty much meant it,” Izzy pointed out. “You know, when I asked. You.”
    “No,” she said. “Okay? No, I’m
not
all right. What could possibly be
all right
about my stupid boyfriend ditching me, and me being stupid enough to wait there, at that
stupid
doughnut shop,
praying
that he’d come back, even though I knew he was gone for good.”
    A-ha. Eden had reached the anger phase of her heartbreak. Over the coming days and weeks it would cycle around—despair, sorrow, pointless what-if-ing, self-recrimination, emptiness, equally pointless hope-for-a-reconciliation, and yes, scalding anger. Shake well and repeat. Over and over.
    “I
knew
he was a total asshole,” Eden continued, her voice shaking, “and I must be one, too, because I love him. Loved him. I don’t love him anymore, how could I still love him after what he did?” The self-recrimination mixed with sorrow and body-slammed the anger to the mat, and she started to cry again. Big time, with body-shaking sobs. But the anger wasn’t gone without a fight. “I hate him, God, I hate him—I should hate him, right?”
    “Well, yeah,” Izzy said, because she seemed to want a response.
    “I must be a total idiot, because he played me, right from the start, because I
still
can’t believe he left me there like that, like, something must’ve happened, he must be hurt or bleeding or dead because he
said
that he
loved
me. He said I was the one, only I know he’s not dead because some girls who work for Richie came into the Krispy Kreme and they told me Jerry was working for him again, too, even though he promised me that he wouldn’t go back, and they said he already has a new girlfriend, so apparently I
wasn’t
the one. And all I could think was
thank God he’s not dead.
I’m
such
an idiot…”
    Jerry was, no doubt, Eden’s douchebag of a former boyfriend. Richie was…apparently some local LA lowlife?
    During Eden’s tirade, Izzy had gone back into the bathroom to get a spare role of toilet paper because the box of tissues on the back of his toilet had been empty for about three years. He stood there now, right in front of her, holding that TP ineffectually, able to see her a little more clearly in the light from the streetlamp that shone in through the front window. Tough-as-nails Eden Gillman had buried her face in her hands and was crying her heart out.
    “Hey,” he said, at a loss as to what to say, what to do. He set the roll of TP on the arm of the couch as he crouched down next to her. “He’s an asshole. Jerry is. You have every right to feel betrayed and hurt. And upset. And sad. He definitely played you, Eden, and that’s definitely…sad. But don’t put that on yourself. That’s his shit. He’s the idiot. Yeah, you missed the clues—if there even were any. Some guys are skilled and…It takes a while to, you know, recognize exactly who deserves your, you know, time.”
    Listen to him. Izzy Zanella,