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And just before I turned the corner, I felt a hand gently grab my wrist and pull me into the girls’ bathroom. I knew it was him even before I saw that face.
“It’s my way of telling you that I can’t bear to look at my bed without seeing you in it,” he said, and his words made me shiver. “So do try to avoid a lockdown.” I felt him withdraw, and I opened my eyes. “I’ll get right on that,” I breathed. One final wicked smile. “You’d better.”
Are you KIDDING ME?!!? Why are you so smooth Noah Shaw??!!!!
I watched Noah walk up to our house, his gait languorous despite the rain. I was at the front door before he could even knock, and the second I saw him, I pulled him inside. He stood there in the foyer, with wet hair curling into his eyes and droplets of rain falling from his soaked T-shirt onto the glossy hardwood floor. “What happened?” I didn’t answer him. I led him into my bedroom instead. Opened my messenger bag and handed him the picture of me, the one Jude took. And then I began to talk.
His lips brushed my skin and suddenly it was too much. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled him against me as close as I could but he was still not close enough. My hands were trapped between the hard ridges of his stomach and my softness and I was almost breathless with wanting, trembling with it.
I shuddered against Noah’s mouth and my heart thundered against his chest. I did not imagine him almost dying. I remembered it. And I was afraid it would happen again.
It was interesting and beautiful, just like the boy who always wore it. Noah was impossibly still as I pulled down the collar of his T-shirt. I looked at the charm around his neck, the one he never took off, and then stared back at the charm in his hand. They were exactly the same.
I arched my neck and my hips and stretched my body up toward his. But Noah placed one hand on my waist and very gently pushed me back down. “Slowly,” he said. The word sent a thrill through every nerve.
His mouth made me ache, sweet and furious. It was impossible to keep still, but when my body instinctively curved toward his, he drew away.
I was ignited, on fire, flooded with heat and ready to beg.
I felt and probably looked like a wild thing while Noah kneeled there like an arrogant prince.
Noah moved forward, toward me, next to me then, the slender muscles in his arms flexing with the movement. “I’m not sure you can appreciate how much I want to lay you out before me and make you scream my name.” My mouth fell open.
“When you’re frightened, your pulse changes,” he said. “Your breath. Your heartbeat. Your sound. I can’t ignore that and I won’t, even if you think you want me to.”
“There will come a moment when there’s nothing you want more than us. Together. When you’re free of every fear and there is nothing in our way.” Noah’s voice was sincere, his expression serious. I wanted to believe him. “And then I’ll make you scream my name.” I broke into a smile. “Maybe I’ll make you scream mine.”
I used to think there was nothing I could do to change the way my family saw me. There was nothing I couldn’t say. But now I knew that wasn’t true. I’ll walk forever with stories inside me that the people I love the most can never hear.
I opened the door to find Noah standing there in a long-sleeve plaid shirt and dark jeans, with sunglasses on that masked his eyes. He looked perfectly disheveled and perfectly blank. He only ever shows you what he wants you to see.
“Boys are stupid and girls are trouble.” Truer words were never spoken.
“He will die before his time with you by his side, unless you let him go. Fate or chance? Coincidence or destiny? I cannot say.” Her voice had turned soft. Soft and sad. A fist closed around my heart. I tried to let him go once before. It didn’t work. “I can’t,” was all I said to her, and quietly. “Then you will love him to ruins,” she said, and let my hands go.
Noah slid his arms around me and fitted me against him. “It isn’t real,” he whispered into my hair. Maybe it wasn’t. But even if it was . . . “I’m too selfish to leave you,” I said. Noah pulled back so I could see his smile. “I’m too selfish to let you.”
You will love him to ruins. If I did, it would ruin us both.
“In spite of everything I loved you, and will go on loving you—on my knees, with my shoulders drawn back, showing my heels to the headsman and straining my goose neck—even then. And afterwards—perhaps most of all afterwards—I shall love you, and one day we shall have a real, all-embracing explanation, and then perhaps we shall somehow fit together, you and I . . . we shall connect the points . . . and you and I shall form that unique design for which I yearn.”
My heart beats her name. She glances over her shoulder and smirks like she can hear it.
I have no idea what’s going on in her mind but even if it takes her years to let go, it will be worth it. I would wait forever for the promise of seeing Mara, unleashed.
It was hard to appreciate how beautiful the silent, secret beach was with Noah standing there, looking like sex in a slim-cut tux, lean and tall and extravagantly gorgeous. I dropped the hem of the dress, along with my jaw and my thoughts and everything else.
They lie, you know. It’s not easier to ask forgiveness. Not even a little.
I wanted to lose myself and I couldn’t. I’m chasing an oblivion I will never find.”
He wasn’t afraid of me—not just because he believed I couldn’t hurt him, but because even if I did, he’d welcome the pain.
The air around us was charged as we stood opposite each other. Healer and destroyer, noon and midnight. We were silently deadlocked. Neither of us moved.
“You want to know what I want? I want you to be the one wanting me first. Pushing me first. Kissing me first. Don’t be careful with me,” he said. “Because I won’t be careful with you.”
You can’t hurt me the way you think you can. But even if you could? I would rather die with the taste of you on my tongue than live and never touch you again. I’m in love with you, Mara. I love you. No matter what you do.”
“If I were to live a thousand years, I would belong to you for all of them. If we were to live a thousand lives, I would want to make you mine in each one.”
“You’re stronger than you believe. Don’t let your fear own you. Own yourself.”
“Fuck,” he murmured against my lips. The feel, the word, sent a hot little shock through my spine. It skittered through my veins, danced through every nerve.
I was starved for him, for this. I was a creature of need—soaked in feeling and breathless.
Noah whispered my name like a prayer, and I was free.
This was the boy I loved. A little bit messy. A little bit ruined. A beautiful disaster. Just like me.
I was right. Something changed in me when we kissed. But Noah was also right. I didn’t hurt him the way I was sure I would.
I wasn’t sorry that I tried to kill him. I was sorry he was still alive. I would kill him again if I had the chance.
“Yes,” I said, still staring at the inexpressibly gorgeous boy who told me he loved me a few days ago, and who didn’t acknowledge me now.
We were both right, I decided then. Our files were part of us—the parts that people wanted to fix. But they weren’t all of us. They weren’t who we were. Only we could decide that.
“Everyone’s a little crazy. The only difference between us and them is that they hide it better.”
Noah’s hand wandered over the folder on the desk behind my back, and then he leaned back in the chair to read with me still in his lap. We were silent. His fingers wandered beneath my T-shirt, drawing invisible pictures on my skin. Distracting me, I realized with a smile. I was grateful.
Noah’s arms wrapped around me, vise-tight and perfect. He folded me into him. He lifted me up, the warmth of him warming me through my sweat-damp shirt. I wrapped my legs around him and buried my face in his neck and sobbed without sound.
Another scream. We were corralled by it. Drawn to it. That was the point. We walked into my nightmare together.
Noah placed a hand on my stomach very softly, keeping me back. “You aren’t killing anyone, Mara,” he said to me. Noah looked straight at Jude. “He is.” That shadow had crept back into Noah’s voice, into his face. I had never, ever seen him lose it, but I had a feeling I was about to.
“Go,” I said to Noah, even knowing that he never would. His jaw was iron and his stare was fierce. I would miss it. I was saying good-bye, I realized.
