Pacifier

🍎 Van 🥀

I stood there, quite stunned, more than a little relieved that Camille had stepped in and come to my rescue.

It wasn't that I'd never seen people break down like that in front of me before, wasn't like I'd never had people question how I slept or called me evil, told me I'd stolen their kids life away... Had Jakes own mother not abandoned him when he was a boy I was sure she'd have been beating at me exactly as Izzy had been. No it wasn't that I wasn't used to hysterics, it was that I'd never seen them on Izzy before.

She'd always been quiet and shy and for a long time I'd recognised the fear in her eyes when she looked at me. The same fear with which some kids fear teachers, parents and the police. She looked at me like she didn't want to get caught misbehaving or breaking the rules but today, just then, she'd looked at me with so much anger, so much betrayal in her eyes and I could tell that she'd meant every word which had come tumbling from those pretty little lips.

That morning she'd despised me and she didn't care who knew it.

I wasn't used to that.

If the girls got mad they did it quietly, if the lads had something they wanted to fight about they fought it out with me in private.

No one, not a single bottleman before Isabelle, had ever caused a scene in the middle of the balcony like that. No care for who might be watching. No care for the reputation we worked hard to uphold.

She'd broken all the rules at once and when Camille had taken her away I hadn't known what to do.

I couldn't have put my foot down that was for certain, i couldnt have shouted back or slapped her like i might have been tempted to do if it had been anyone else. I couldn't have grabbed her shoulders and shook, told her to snap out of it. Because she was my Izzy and she was too precious, she was too delicate and actually in the moment all my instincts had told me to hold her tightly against me and mutter sweet things into her ear to calm her down.

I'd had no desire to reprimand her and yet I knew that next time I saw her I was going to have to. She needed to understand why we didn't go around screaming at one another like that. She needed to understand that no matter how upset we were we had to swallow things down. Pain must always be gritted teeth until we're alone.

If a Reid had seen that, if someone passed that scene onto Billy, he'd have known we were vulnerable. Isabelle probably didn't even realise that that was the kind of risk she was taking when she stepped up to me like that but it was and now i had one more problem to deal with. Izzy.

"Van..." Larry closed the door to my office, a phone in his hand, his palm blocking the mouth piece, "la we need to s..."

"I'm coming im coming!" I dismissed him with the wave of my hand, waving him away, back behind the bar which he'd said he'd mind for Dylan who had been supposed to be working it that afternoon but who probably wouldn't be now for quite awhile.

I took the phone and I ground my teeth preparing for the conversation I was about to have, the one where Dylans estranged mother was going to call me a murderer, tell me all the ways I was going to burn in hell. The one Dylan would be watching from his chair, slouched opposite me, glowing with a hollowness like no other. One only brought out by death.

"Hello Mrs Smith..." I said, voice low leaky with condolences before id had the chance to tell her the news, but she already knew. She'd seen the news, by now everyone had and Jakes face was on every television screen across the country.

We were making a name for ourselves in every kind of way i hadnt wanted and sooner or later, when the time came, we'd have nowhere to go.

"You disgusting, you vile evil man, no you're not a man you're the devil himself, you have no heart! No soul, you wretched scum! You took my boy from me!" she wasn't crying, at least I couldn't hear her rolling tears, she was hoarse and bitter with rage. Her grief burning in her throat with every word she spat at me.