Isla smiles. “You always were. You may have had a tough exterior, but we all do…look at who our mother is.”
Touché.
We go to stand, but I follow my gut and throw my arms around Isla. She freezes as I’m not even sure if this is a thing we do. But she soon reciprocates. “Even though you were always nice…I like this Peyton better,” she whispers, hugging me tighter.
I smile because I couldn’t agree more.
On the way back to my house, Isla and I catch up on everything. It seems now that the cat is finally out of the bag, she can talk freely, without fear of saying something wrong. Talking to her has made me see that I wasn’t such an awful person.
Yes, I sounded like a hard-ass who had some serious baggage, but my past wasn’t exactly what you’d expect from someone of my social standing to be
