chapter 8

"Like I'm his father?!" he yells, leaning over the console toward me.

Our eyes lock.

"Don't you dare yell at me," I say in a soft, unforced way. "You can be angry with me, but you know I won't be spoken to like that."

Rex rests a hand on the dashboard. "I don't know you at all, Isabella."

He's right. We are strangers. One month together five years ago doesn't mean we know each other.

And yet my heart breaks. That time of my life, that month, felt untouchable. A perfect crevice of time before life got really real.

Now, Rex is back. And everything is different.

"You were a kid," I say, finally.

"I was twenty-six."

"Yeah," I say. "A kid."

Rex scoffs. "Don't act like because you were a few years older than me that meant we were so different."

"Rex, we were different! You were literally about to become famous. Don't tell me you would have sacrificed any of your dreams to deal with an unplanned pregnancy," I reply.

These are all facts I'm telling him. Not assumptions. We both know that it w