“Rip off the bandage,” Paul said. “It’s easier that way.”
Noah nodded. “Okay. I…” He swallowed hard and glanced at Nio, who urged him on with a look. “I owe all of you an apology.”
“For what?” Mick asked, with a laugh. “For kickin’ our asses on the dance floor tonight?”
His joke fell flat as everyone stared at Noah, waiting.
“I lied to you. All of you. A long time ago. It’s time I came clean and told you the truth.”
They grew quiet, waiting him out. He ran his hand along the smooth oak mantel.
“I’m not…exactly…I’m not who you think I am. Noah Mathis isn’t the name I was born with. Before joining the service, I changed it. Legally. But everything else I told you about myself was untrue. My father didn’t sell boats in Seattle. We didn’t have a little dockside shop like I told you we did. I’m not even from Seattle. I wasn’t an only child. I’m not a salesman. I’m not moving to London or Tokyo anytime soon. Basically, everything I’ve ever told you about my other life, my family, my past…it was a lie.”
Mick was sitting up straight now, a line forming between his brows. “What the hell, Noah?”
“Why would you change your name?” Paul asked.
“And then lie to us about it?” Cowboy added.
They were all imagining him on an FBI poster right about now, he supposed. From the looks on their faces, at least, he was sure he had them spooked now. Nio tipped his chin and urged him on.
“My name, my original name was Eamon Connelly. My father owned a shipping conglomerate, one of the most successful in the world, and he bought and sold other companies that built ships. It’s a business I run now for my mother after my father passed away a couple years ago.”
“Hell, you never even told us that happened,” Paul said with a frown.
“I couldn’t without telling you the rest.”
That sunk in slowly, visibly. Jaws went tight as they all remembered the lies he’d told them to their faces. But confusion swirled in the room. “And you never told us any of this, ’cause…why exactly?” Mick asked.
He felt his chest going tight again. “It’s complicated.”
“Try us,” Mick said.
He nodded. That’s why he’d come. “A few years before I joined the navy I had a pretty good life as a kid. A privileged life, actually. Not that I fully appreciated it. My parents were busy with their lives. Gone most of the time. But I was busy with mine, by then. I was…rebellious in my own idiotic, privileged way. Angry with them for ignoring us. Got into minor scrapes at school, occasionally with the local authorities. Nothing serious. Just stupid stuff. My younger sister Reena, who was nine by then, always wanted to tag along with me. And I let her, mostly. Our family was just the two of us pretty much all the time. She kept me out of more trouble than I deserved, just having her there beside me.
“Then, one day, when I was sixteen, I was supposed to pick her up after school in my shiny new BMW, but that day, I was late. I left her on the school steps waiting while I was doing drive-bys on the house of some girl I wanted to impress, who wasn’t even home. When I finally remembered I was supposed to get Reena, I was too late. She was already gone. Gone without a trace. At first, everyone thought she’d been abducted.
“We searched. The whole town searched. Weeks went by. There was no ransom. No calls. No body. They eventually concluded that she was dead. They looked at us first. The family. I was obviously the only one without an alibi. They began to quietly try to build a case against me. For lack of anyone else to blame, I became the prime suspect. The person of interest.”
Cowboy whistled. The others looked shocked. Trey just stared at him with that even, PI look no one could read.
“That was…you? I remember that case,” Holly said, stunned. “I remember reading about what happened at the time.”
“You and everybody else who wasn’t living under a rock. They made our lives hell. My life, hell. They decided my motive was jealousy or inheritance, or something equally asinine. But I loved her. I was just as heartbroken as my parents. The truth didn’t matter to the cops—who were sure I had done something to her—or to the press, who nailed me up and hung me out. Everyone needed a villain. The DA couldn’t charge me without evidence, but I’d already been tried and convicted in the rags and the press long before Reena managed to finally escape the woman who’d taken her away from us and find her way home two years later.”
Paul swore quietly.
“Reena’s okay now. She’s better than okay, actually. That woman who took her tried to make her the daughter she never had. But Reena wasn’t having any of it. She pretended to go along, then she plotted her escape. She came out of that time stronger than the rest of us. She’s an inspirational speaker now with her own company. She even forgave me for being late that day. Though I never really forgave myself.”
“They cleared you, of course,” Holly said. “The police.”
“Oh, yeah. For all the good that did. They apologized,” he said. “They were very sorry for the trouble their accusations caused me. But our family had been ripped apart. Broken. The press hounded me anyway, fascinated by anything I did. Looking to see how I was taking being declared innocent. Every move I made was news. We took it. My parents moved on.
“But as soon as I could, I decided the best thing I could do would be to erase myself. Start over. My father was against it, but with his lawyer’s help, I legally changed my name. My identity. I took my middle name and my mother’s maiden name as my last name. New birth certificate, new everything. I was done being judged by what had happened. I wanted to shed my past like a…skin. Be someone else who wasn’t under suspicion for anything. I didn’t want the press hounding me anymore. I wanted to disappear into my own life. To redeem myself somehow. To prove something to myself, I guess. So, I enlisted.
“But nothing is that simple. With that name change, I had to reinvent myself when I joined the navy. I didn’t want to be that guy anymore. I did my best not to talk too much about myself, as I’m sure you all remember, but over the years, it was unavoidable. It didn’t occur to me until much later—after I’d gotten to know all of you, trust you, and knew I’d earned your trust as well—that the lies I had told were a betrayal of that trust, that bond we had. But by then, I couldn’t backtrack. I was…embarrassed to tell you the truth. Afraid, too. I feared what admitting everything would cost. I wasn’t willing to give you all up just yet.
“When I separated from the service, after my knee was shot up…I spent a month or two in the hospital and then in rehab and at Nio’s, trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life. I wanted to become that man I’d invented. Do everything I could to live up to what all of us had done back there. Your faith in me. But then, my father died suddenly and my mother needed me to help her with their business. So I was dragged back into the world I’d managed to avoid all those years.”
“Did you go back as Noah Mathis?” Cowboy asked. “Or as Eamon Connelly?”
“I use Eamon Connelly as a doing-business-as name now. For my mother’s sake and for practical purposes, since everyone knows me that way already. So I’ve been playing both sides and neither one has been doing very well.”
He took a deep breath and went on. “It’s impossible to express how sorry I am for lying to all of you. I’ve never had much of a family life, except for Reena. You guys became my family. And I disrespected that. And for that I’m damned sorry. I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
Trey unfolded his arms. “I doubt any of us here is without past crap we’d like to forget. You’re not the only one who has joined the military to leave something behind, or to make something else of yourself. Myself included. As for me? I’ve known who you really were for a long time.”
“What?” Noah stared at him, openmouthed.
“As your C.O., of course, I knew. Security check. But that was your business. If you wanted us to know, I figured you’d tell us. I never gave a damn abou
t what name you were born with or who your father was. Or what anyone was saying about you. And no, I never told them,” he said, indicating the others.
“He never even told me,” Holly said, casting a sidelong glance at her new husband.
“Not my decision to make,” Trey went on. “But let me tell you what mattered to me. What mattered was the man who fought like hell beside us and took fire for everyone around him. Who would have—and even tried to—give up his life for any or all of us. Just like we’d do for you. That’s what matters to me. You proved—with your blood and your heart, to each and every one of us—who you really are.”
Emotion filled his throat. He didn’t know what to say.
Mick got to his feet. “I’m with Trey on this. That guy who walked in the door a few minutes ago is the same guy I’ve known for almost ten years. The guy I’d still want havin’ my six no matter what. Not excluding any of you, of course. And how old were you? Eighteen? Nineteen when you changed your name thinking that would solve things? If your nineteen was anything like mine, that’s the zero-dark-stupid age when the only good decision we all made was joining the navy.”
Cowboy chuckled. “You implying you’re any smarter now?”
Mick snorted. “Speak for yourself, man.”
“Well, I, for one, am pissed,” Paul said, leaning back on the couch. Every head turned to him. Noah braced himself.
“Yeah, you wanna know why? That you’d doubt, for one minute that the thing we all share could be broken by you wanting to start over and keep that a secret. Which,” he added, “shouldn’t have been a damn secret for as long as it has, when this has clearly been eating you up. ’Cause I come from a family of brothers. I call you my brother. And brothers talk that shit out. Or beat the crap out of each other over it. Either way, shit gets dealt with straight up. So, you trust us or you don’t, which is it? ’Cause if it’s no, I’m gonna come over there, fake leg or no, and I’m gonna beat the livin’ daylights out of you for underestimating us.”
“Watch out,” Cowboy warned, moving away from Paul. “I think he’s serious.”
Relieved, Noah turned his face to the fire. He forced back the emotion threatening him, hissing out an epithet of his own. “You’re right. On a scale of one to ten, my trust meter is officially at an all-time low. But there’s nobody in the world I’d want watching my back more than any of you.” He turned toward each of them. “I was wrong to have underestimated you like that. That’s my lack, not yours. I’ve never truly believed I had anyone to count on but myself. Walking away altogether felt like no option after this week. So…” He swiped a knuckle under his nose. “Shit.”
Holly was first out of her chair. She went to him and threw her arms around him. “I don’t really get a vote in this, but you’re part of our family as far as I’m concerned, too.”
Noah hugged her as Trey and the others got to their feet. Trey lifted his beer. “‘All for one and one for all!’ Isn’t that how that saying goes?”
“If you’re a Mouseketeer,” Mick deadpanned.
“That’s Musketeer, fool!” Cowboy said, raising his own drink.
“I bow to the literary genius in our midst.”
Noah laughed and the men shared an uncharacteristic, manly group hug. Nio got in on it as well.
“Now,” Trey said, “why don’t you get the hell out of here and go fix whatever happened with Gemma.”
Noah shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “Turns out, she was a reporter, just here to get the scoop on me.”
“What?” they all said in shocked unison.
“Like I said, my trust meter is down right now. She had her ex—some reporter from the Seattle Tribune—show up here to out me. I’m supposed to be in New York right now, finishing up the negotiation on a big acquisition. I came here instead. This was more important to me. And I needed some time to think before signing that agreement. My disappearance has caused something of a stir, apparently. Anyway, Gemma and I are—” he shook his head “—finished.”
“Wait.” Holly frowned. “She had her ex show up to do her job? That doesn’t sound right. And that doesn’t sound like the Gemma we knew.”
“None of us knew her. Not even me.”
“Are you sure that’s how things went down? Are you even sure she was writing about you? She told me she was doing research on romance in Marietta.”
Obviously not.
“I assume you talked to her,” Holly said. “What did she have to say for herself?”
He hadn’t given her a chance to defend herself. Or say anything, for that matter, except “I’m sorry.” Was she? Now that he’d had a few minutes to cool down, he guessed maybe she was just sorry she’d let things go so far. “I didn’t really let her say much,” he told Holly. “Things got…a little heated with the other guy.”
Beside him, Nio grinned. “Just a bit.”
“Point him out to us,” Cowboy said. “We’ll take care of him.”
“Yeah, Jase,” Holly said, her voice thick with sarcasm. “Look what happened last time you said that. Remember Grey’s Saloon? I believe there was a group jail cell involved.”
“Point taken,” he said, backing off.
“I’m leaving town tonight anyway. I rebooked another flight out of Bozeman on the way over here. I won’t run into him again.”
No one argued the point with him, but they all looked disappointed he was leaving early.
“On the bright side,” Trey said, “we know where you live now and you’ve just talked yourself out of all of your excuses to avoid us.”
“Well, damn,” Noah said, but what he meant was, Thank God. They spent the next few minutes saying their goodbyes. There were cell phone pictures of the wedding, but since Gemma was part of them, they worked around sharing them with him.
“I’ll drive you back,” Nio told him.
“I can call a cab.”
“No you won’t. Besides, Becca’s back there waiting for me.”
Noah smiled. “Right. Thanks, man. For everything.”
Nio clapped him on the back. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Just remember, Noah,” Holly said, walking him to the door as Nio headed to his rental, “when you consider not letting Gemma tell her side, that’s what you were about to do with us. I don’t know, but at least she deserves to be heard out, doesn’t she?”
Maybe. Though nothing she could say could change the truth. He’d see her when he got back to the hotel. That was unavoidable. He kissed Holly’s cheek goodbye. “Take care, Holly. You got a good guy in Trey. Happy for you both.”
“I wish the same for you.”
He hugged her and Trey goodbye as Nio pulled up in front of Trey’s house and he watched the bunch of them as they pulled away, waving at him from their driveway. Resting his head against the headrest, he thought of how long he’d carried the weight of his story around with him, avoiding being honest with them for fear they’d hate him. He wouldn’t have blamed them if they did, but, in hindsight, the whole lie seemed like a giant misappropriation of his life, stealing away his peace of mind and happiness. And all of that was on him. His decision.
Bracing himself to see her again, he couldn’t help but remember the time they’d had. Holding her last night, making love to her. The week of getting to know each other. More accurately, both lying to each other about who they were. He’d done his part in that, too. He was not blameless. But what she’d done…he couldn’t reconcile that with the Gemma he’d gotten to know. Then again, he’d been played by reporters before, seeking a way in through a ‘back door.’
He even wondered now about the way they’d met. Everything she’d done now seemed suspicious. But how could she have known he was going to be there? Fallen on that dock as he arrived? Had that just been some happy coincidence for her, as a journalist, to recognize a story that had fallen in her lap? Or had she somehow contrived to be here? But that didn’t make sense. How could she have known?
At the hotel, he hesitate
d outside his door, listening for sounds in her room. He heard nothing. Inside, he listened at their now closed connecting door too and still nothing. For a while he stood at the window, staring out at the night sky, contemplating whether or not to knock on her door. Holly was right. Gemma deserved a chance to have her say. But he had no expectation that would change anything. Facts were facts.
And the fact is, you were just given a gift tonight that you didn’t deserve.
The devastation on her face as he’d walked away from her still ate at him. Why did she look so ruined when her whole plan had been to expose him?
The envelope on his pillow grabbed his attention as he turned to knock on her door. His stomach sank at the sight. So that’s why her room was quiet. She was already gone.
Ripping open the envelope, he read her short letter:
Dear Noah,
I’m so very sorry. Please forgive me for not telling you the truth. I know how this must look, but everything that happened between us was real. Believe me or not, your secret would always have been safe with me. I wish you only the best.
Goodbye.
Gemma
Chapter Ten
The lead story on the first page of the Times’ business section was Connelly Shipping’s acquisition of Pellmer Shipping. But the real story behind the headline was how Eamon Connelly had returned from his disappearance to defuse the protests by speaking directly to the workers. He promised them that their jobs would not be eliminated, nor would their union be busted. Instead, he told them that he supported collective bargaining and would treat them fairly.
It was a stunning change of direction for Connelly Shipping and a welcome one to the many employees who had feared losing their jobs. That was Noah, Gemma thought. The Noah she’d come to know.
Gemma’s personal interest article on Marietta’s romance surge was published the following week in the paper, and drew an amazingly good response from readers. So good, in fact, that Somerhalder gave her a weekly column in the paper. He wanted her to write more, just like that one. She knew, however, that what she’d written on Marietta was unique and very personal and could not be repeated. But that week had changed her in more ways than she could name, and even influenced how she looked at stories. Everyone’s story was as uniquely intimate as hers had been, and accessing that uniqueness and heart changed her writing. She supposed she had Noah to thank for that, and everyone else she’d met back in Montana.
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