chapter 28

"Why? I'm going to be back. It's a few weeks on and a few weeks off. I'll come right back here. I'll be with you. And Leo."

His hold on me is insistent. Too bad it's useless when I've already made up my mind.

"You keep the rings," Rex says and tries to shove them back in my hand. When I don't close my hand around them, he tries to squeeze my fingers into a ball. "Come on, Isabella."

"Why would I keep them?"

"A promise. They're a promise. I'm coming back and when I do, we'll be together."

The coil has nowhere else to go. I snap. "You'll always be coming back, Rex! You'll have to go on tour, you'll have to record an album, you'll have to go and go and go and it will never be enough for me."

Rex's lower lip trembles. "You really won't let me even try to make it work?"

He's not allowed to break down. Not when I'm so close to my own. "I won't hurt Leo by making him think that he'll have a life like all the other kids have."

"You already have! He calls me 'Papa' and thinks we're together. Y