Chapter 7

The drive to Izzy's house is short, only two blocks from the club. When she found this little ranch on a dead end street she was so excited. Said it was exactly what she needed and she didn't have any nosey neighbors poking around so that was a plus. 

We don't talk, but it isn't an awkward silence, just two people thinking over their day. When we pull into her garage we keep the silence between us as we grab our bags and go inside. The mudroom is one of her favorite rooms in the house; one of the only ones she's finished since she bought the place. The walls are a pale silver, which I never knew even existed. The floor took her days to do, a dark night sky done in epoxy. It's beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Just like Izzy. 

Our bags hit the floor and shoes come off before I head to the living room and she heads to the kitchen. Hopefully to grab some snacks. I plop down in her oversized recliner and curl myself into a ball while I wait for her to come in here. The living room is set up to be the most comfortable room in the house, with two oversized navy blue recliners and a huge TV on the wall. The small coffee table stands out among all the massive furniture in the room, just a small square white table. 

Izzy steps into the room, a bag of chips and bag of hershey's kisses in one hand, bottle of wine under her arm and two glasses in her free hand. She gives me a sad smile, the kind that doesn't reach her eyes before she sets it all down on her small coffee table and sits down next to me. Her head leans on my shoulder and I drop my head to lay on hers. 

"I don't know how I missed it." I say quietly. 

"You trusted him." She says just as softly and it throws me a bit. Izzy isn't soft. She isn't gentle. She's fire and sass and doesn't hold back. 

"I did. I tried so hard to be what he wanted me to be." Izzy doesn't respond, instead sits up straight and reaches for the wine. She pours us each a glass and hands me mine before we clink glasses together and I down half of mine in one go. 

"You should have been enough for him just as you are. You should never change yourself for a man." Izzy says after she finishes her drink. She pulls her tray from the bottom of the stand and gets ready to roll a blunt, knowing this is what I really need to decompress. We've had this arguement before, it's the same reason Izzy isn't with anyone, and hasn't been for years now. She's firm in her belief that if someone can't accept you for who you really are, they don't deserve your love. I always believed that love was compromise, two people who have to live together, have to share intimate space with each other, are never going to get along all the time. There has to be compromises in the relationship for it to work. 

Where were Jack's compromies though? If I think back over our relationship, over all the years, he never had to compromise once. He'd argue back with me for hours, twisting words and accusing me of being a "unworthy partner who just doesn't understand the role of a good wife." Those words used to hurt me more than I let show. 

"He ruined me Izzy. Shattered my soul in a way I'm not sure can be glued back together." It took me months to warm to Jack. He was relentless. Sending flowers to the office, texting all hours of the day and night. He even went to my parents after he found out who they were and how much of an influence they had in my life. I didn't let new people into my life. I had Izzy, my club family, and my actual family. I didn't let strangers in. This was exactly why. 

"No babe. He didn't ruin you. He transformed you. Starting tomorrow we get you back. Not the Sky you've been the last five or six years. The Sky you were when you walked into a room with confidence, when every head turned in awe as soon as you broke through the door. The Sky the bosses men still talk about, the one they still compare every woman who comes through that door to." She says with the most deadly serious tone I've heard from her. 

"I don't know, Iz. I'm not that person anymore." She stares at me with what might be pity, before she shakes her head. 

"Exactly Sky. That's exactly what the problem is. You never took shit from anyone before. Are you seriously telling me-" she stops to light the blunt and holds it in for a second before she finishes. "That you're going to let that rattlesnake dick son of a bitch be the reason you're sexy as sin soul is shattered? You, Skyline, are going to give a sad sack of shit that much power over you?" She asks, inhaling again before passing it to me. I take it from her hand and inhale, holding it in until my lungs burn. 

"Well, shit. When you put it like that, I don't think I can." We sit silence for a while, just passing the blunt between each other, both of us lost in our own heads. 

"Six years, Izzy. It's been six years since I've had a good orgasm." Her eyebrows raise and her mouth drops open.

"You can't be serious, Sky. Jack never made you cum?" She asks in disbelief, and I can't say I blame her. 

"No, love. I tried to play with myself once, you know, trying to help get myself there, and he got upset. Really upset. Said I was "too old" for that." 

She puts the blunt out as she shakes her head. "That's just crazy babe. No wonder you're so unsure of yourself. You've got to be going mad by now. How the hell have you survived? Wait- you have a toy hidden, right?" Her tone makes me laugh and her gaze narrows on me, lips thinning into a flat line.

"I don't find this humurous Sky." Ooohhh, this isn't fair. She's using the tone with me. She knows what that tone does to me. My eyes go wide and I meet her stare, a small smirk playing at her wine stained lips.