“That’s your thing, isn’t?” Reagan lets go of the screen door. It slams shut and she’s back in front of me, glaring at me to get down. “You have this chip on your shoulder as if the world hates you. Brooding heroes only work in books, Noah. In real life they’re annoying as hell. You wanted me and I’m here.” She strikes a hand against the ladder again.
This time it upends my balance. I drop the paintbrush as I try to brace myself against the wall. It’s bad enough I have another black eye, I don’t need a broken neck on top of it all.
“I thought you wanted me. I came because I—”
I want to her finish that sentence, but when she doesn’t, it just pisses me off more. I jump off the ladder and come at her, crowding her by the front stairs. I curl my hand against the banister and lean in. She wants blood, then here it is.
“I don’t owe you anything and if you don’t like that truth, then go ahead and go to New York City.”
“You owe me the truth. Your truth.”
I’ve worked hard separating the Noah from Splendid from the Noah in Portland, especially from Asher Stone. There are pieces of me, of my past, that don’t belong here in the future, greedily grabbing what little time I have left with Reagan. But she’s breathing heavy, her eyes wide and full of hurt. I’ve done that. I’ve put that look there. I can’t stomach standing here, breaking her heart. Not when I can’t even stomach the fact that she’ll be leaving soon and I’ll be stuck keeping the pieces of me separate from the world once more.
I shove away from the stairs and pick up the paintbrush, pissed I now have white paint on the hardwood floors I refinished over winter break. “Fine.” I toss the brush onto the canvas drop cloth by the fireplace. “This place is mine,” I confess. “I bought it sophomore year.”
Reagan tilts her head, her hands clutched over her stomach. It kills me to see her in nothing but my T-Shirt and some boxers. Her hair is messy from bed and her eyes—God, those gorgeous blue eyes—are so confused.
“I’m an author, one who somehow was lucky to make that one in a million break and actually make some money. But that was my secret to keep because I’m not a fucking role model. No one is going to want to read a book by young adult author who killed his mother.”
“You didn’t kill her.” Reagan steps forward, her arms outstretched as if I might break apart. “It was a car accident. An accident, Noah.”
“My dad sold this place after she died. My brother was going to go to college. Instead he never graduated. He’s working on an oil rig in North Dakota now. He gave what he had saved to my dad for the general store. And you want to know what I was doing? I was in and out of fucking juvie because I can’t quiet this part of me that’s pissed off at the world. I’m trouble, Rea. I’m a fuckup. I steal everything and it crumbles in my hands.”
“Noah.” She crosses the room, standing before me. “Stop.”
My voice rises and I really just want to see what little good I had in my life burn up and fade away because it doesn’t help fix the hole of my past. “You don’t get to pick the truths you want to hear, Four Eyes.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” she snaps back.
“Is it too much to want you only for myself?”
*
A stranger is staring back at me, his shoulders rising and falling on a rapid beat, his eyes flared with frustration and that feeling I was so close to admitting. Those whiskey eyes of his are set aflame, burning. I’m left smoldering under their heat.
“I’ve given you everything I can,” I whisper, my voice edged with steel. Sweat rolls down the curve of my spine as I stand in the stagnant living room filled with paint fumes and the smell of sawdust. And as grounding as that sounds, it feels as if I’m miles away from Noah right now, my heart throbbing with a dull ache.
I turn and race upstairs, throwing open the bedroom door. His old metal bed is still a map of our love, the sheets rumpled and wrinkled, even if he never came to bed last night. Noah never came to bed, never told me the truth, never wanted me for more than something he couldn’t have. I start throwing my clothes into my bag, then stop, holding back the scream that’s clawing at my throat.
I strip off the T-shirt and change into a dress. I grab my phone then head back downstairs, barefoot, and ignore his protests for me to listen. I run. I run into the fields until it feels as if I’ll start tumbling down the mountain, into the river that winds through the valley below. Eventually everything flows to the ocean. Eventually everything gets eaten by a bigger truth.
It’s late when he finds me. Noah’s covered in paint and sawdust, his jeans ripped and worn. I wish he had on a damn shirt. A moth to the flame I am to that boy. He sits next to me on the fence while we both watch the sky grow red above the mountains.
“I never meant—”
“I never knew my father,” I confess to the endless space before me. “And my mother was never around much. My sister has been missing for seven years. She’s all I’ve ever had for family, really. I grew up in homes, shelters, and lived on the streets whenever I could run away.” I drag in a deep breath and exhale, wishing away the stars that are slowly coming into focus as the sunset washes away to indigo blue. Another wasted day when we have such little time together. “So maybe you ruin everything or maybe you just don’t realize the good you have left, Noah—” I finally turn to him, resting my chin on my sunburnt shoulder, “—but I lose everything and there’s no changing that.”
Noah’s hand reaches for mine and we sit side by side, quiet, while the stars burn bright above us. He holds my hand as if he’ll never let go and I hold on because I know I’ll have to soon.
Chapter Twelve
Noah
My legs are stretched up to rest on the porch railing while I rock slowly in the chair, facing the mountains. When I was younger, I never sat out on the porch. My mom did. She would do what I’m doing now, losing herself in daydreams, building a life for herself that didn’t include a selfish son like me, I bet. When I was really little, she would say that the mountains told her stories. Now when I’m alone here and things are quiet except for a breeze and a few birds, I think I might understand.
The screen door slams shut behind me and I hear Reagan pad up. She hands me a cold glass of water, then steps around and sits in my lap. We’ve been alone at the ranch for a two and a half weeks now. I try ignoring the fact we only have a few days left before she has to leave. We’ve already changed her ticket once after we had our fight. She can’t afford to do it again, no matter how much I want to keep dragging out this time I have left with her.
“What are you thinking about?” She leans her head against the back of the chair to gaze at me.
I ignore her, spotting the worn book in her hands. “What’s that?”
Reagan glances down at the book, then holds it out to me with a soft, defeated sigh. “Pretty words. I think I could use them tonight.” She drops a kiss on my nose, raking her free hand into the nape of my hair. They’re cool against my skin. “Will you read to me?”
I bite back my sarcasm. It’s not her fault I’m having a shitty day. I should be looking after Isla after my dad texted me that they had to rush her to the emergency room. But for today, right now, I want to live in the present and forget what’s happened. I don’t want to move on, I just want to have a day that’s mine. I want to enjoy Reagan and us and the reality that for a few more days, she’s mine and we pretend we have something solid.
“‘Are you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose….’” I kiss the top of Reagan’s head, falling mercilessly into this gorgeous peace between us, in this feeling that everything has changed. “‘…Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man? Have you no thought, O dreamer….’” I suck in a breath as a photo of Poppy falls out from the book’s pages.
Reagan’s hands shake as she picks up the photo of me holding Poppy upright in a bright yellow sundress, her tiny hands cl
utched around my fingers as she attempts to walk on those pudgy, bowed legs of hers. Her eyes—my eyes—are wide and full and happy. Her lips parted in a smile as she is mid-step. Her hair—her mother’s straight black hair—is short around her ears, pulled to one side in a bow that’s slowly slipping out. It never did hold a bow or a braid. But nothing ever did stick to Poppy. She showed me more than anyone how to pick up and keep moving. She always wore a smile when she did; I’m still trying to learn the art of that part.
“She has your eyes,” Reagan says, guessing correctly. She swallows, then passes me the photo as if it’s too much for her to hold. It’s too much for me to talk about, but I take it.
The book falls with a thud against the porch and it’s quiet between us, all except for how my heart hammers in my chest, how I hear the phantom shrill laugh of Poppy and my own laugh at her being an adorable goofball as she bounced and twirled around. This was her favorite dress. It matched the flowers that grew by fence where the horses were kept. She loved everything. She never had a chance not to.
“That’s my daughter, Poppy.” My hand falls against the arm of the chair and I stop rocking. I stop moving because I always do when I remember her. When I remember what I could have had, what I lost, how I keep sleepwalking through my days, half in the past and half in the present, but never fully here to have a future. “She died in the same car accident that killed my mother.” I close my eyes, letting a warm hiss of air escape my mouth as if I collide with the road again as I’m propelled from the windshield. “And now you know everything.”
Reagan avoids looking at me, picking at my T-shirt with her chipped nails. Her hair is down, the summer heat curling its ends as the wind blows it softly around us, spreading around the sweet perfume of her shampoo.
“How old?”
I tilt my head back, battling for more air. I never talk about the accident, not even with my father. Besides that horrible time before I left for Sutton, it’s a part of our past that we leave out of our lives today. It’s a void, one that’s always hungry and willing to suck us both back in, but I can’t. I can’t go back. Isla’s already too far gone for us both.
“She had just had her second birthday.” And I wasn’t there. I was still locked up. I had Isla buy her a doll, but I never saw Poppy with it. I’m not sure if Isla ever gave anything to Poppy that I wanted. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.
My chest aches and my eyes sting and I can’t stay still. I stand, dumping Reagan to the ground. I think to apologize except with each step I take toward the porch steps, I fall back, back to that day. Back to that pointless argument I was having with Isla on the way back from juvie as she drove us home. On how I swore up and down to my parents I’d straightened out while they sat in the back seat, Poppy wedged between them in her car seat. Of how I’d held Poppy to me when I walked out of juvie that afternoon, never wanting to get into that car, never wanting to let her go.
I’d messed everything else up, and sure I was an asshole who didn’t want to be a father, but that all changed the moment I held her, the moment I looked down at her face and calmed as she cried, her hand full of my pinky finger. She was mine and perfect, so completely perfect, and maybe I hadn’t loved anything before her, but she had my heart then.
“Noah?” Reagan comes up behind me and taps my shoulder.
I stare down at her, a wave of words and confession building up inside me. I want to shout, I want to punch something, I want to warn her that she can’t fall for me because I’m not someone she should get close to. That even if I love her, I’m only going to hurt her. And because I’m an asshole, because I’m selfish and I think I’ve forgotten how to speak, I stay quiet and keep that to myself.
Reagan nods, her eyes falling from mine back to the porch. Her shoulders slump and she steps away. “We all have our secrets, Noah. Maybe this was going to happen eventually, maybe we were always going to have to confront the reality of us. And I guess this is it. You have your past and I have mine, and I’m not sure we’ll be able to bridge that divide in our hearts.” She pauses, then glances over her shoulder. “But this isn’t impossible if we don’t want it to be.”
I walk down the steps of the porch, then drop to my knees and bend down, screaming into the earth. My hands rake into the dusty grass, and I pull, yanking back as if I can tear a hole into this reality to escape. But this isn’t One Way Out, and I’m not that boy.
The screen door closes behind me and it’s quiet again, only the crickets, only that day playing out over and over as it does at some point every day. It only gets worse when I’m home. When I have to look at my father and only have myself to blame for robbing him of a life with the only woman he ever loved. When I have to bring Isla back to the trailer when she’s sick or passed out drunk. When I have to face the fact that even if I never loved her, I ruined her life. How I have to live each day knowing that a part of me has died as well. I killed everyone in that car. And even if I’m alive, I’m convinced I killed myself, too.
I lower myself to the ground and roll over, staring up at the sky and the house, remembering the sounds here. The happier sounds. How I would climb out of my window and shimmy down the porch columns to sneak out to a party. How I’d smoke up on the roof, or how that one night I rolled my dad’s car down the driveway so I could ride around town for no other reason other than I wanted to.
That was the first time I came home in the back of the cop car, my dad’s best friend and sheriff having to bring me home so my mom could scream at me. In the morning, she still made me pancakes even though my dad had decided I was helping him clean out stalls at four in the morning. I was still high, my eyes still stinging as I worked until I had calluses, until my hands bled. My dad made me work the entire day, almost until midnight. I wasn’t sure how I was even standing after I finished everything he set out to teach me that day.
“Noah?” Reagan whispers, walking up to me. I don’t move, not even when she lies down on top of me and covers my body with hers. “Noah, we can’t do this.” She pushes up so she can hold my face. It’s only then that I realize I’m crying and I don’t care that she sees. I don’t care much about anything because I haven’t let myself fall apart this much in years.
“I want to take it all back, but then I couldn’t have you,” I say. “How’s that for shit luck? Losing something you never thought you wanted or losing something you never thought you’d find.”
Reagan holds my face tighter and lowers her lips to mine until we both get caught up in now, in her skin against mine, our bodies pressed together so closely it’s a finite truth we’re completely in love. It’s there in her fingers as they caress me, in the soft sighs she utters as she kisses my eyelids, the way her pulse races under my lips as they call to me, as if I’m calling her name and she’s answering—finally answering me after years of being lost.
“Poppy wanted my attention,” I whisper, “and I turned around, reaching out to tickle her from her car seat, when the car took a corner too fast and we rolled over, clipping the side of an oncoming truck.” I swallow, keeping my eyes open, trying my best to focus on the blue eyes in front of me, even if they are watery. “It struck my side of the car and I was thrown out the windshield. I don’t remember much besides everyone screaming, then the quiet. I woke up to my father at my bedside in the hospital the next day who had to tell me I lost my mother, and Poppy was fighting, but they weren’t sure she was going to make it. I begged the nurses to let me see her. But it was too late.” It’s not the sight of her little body in the hospital with tubes sticking out of her that haunts me, but of her running ahead of me in the field at the ranch. At how she loved to chase the butterflies in August. “They couldn’t stop the internal bleeding—” My voice drops off, a knot in my chest, “—and she died. I had been so completely selfish and then I lost everything.”
I wrote in juvie, trying to figure out what I was doing with myself. I tried to figure it out because when you see your roommate dead, you start to realize life isn
’t this unending game. I’d been so mad at my other roommates for teasing him that I got thrown back into isolation. I fought every one of them until my knuckles were split open and coldness I had felt when I saw his blood on our floor had drained. And then I had spent a week alone, surrounded by concrete walls, dreaming about my little girl who loved the color yellow.
I was going to better for her. I was going to get out and make Poppy proud of her Daddy.
“You’re right here,” Reagan says, over me. “Can you feel the ground beneath you, see the moon above us?” I don’t answer so she takes my hand and places it over her heart. My fingertips burn at the feel of her soft skin. “You can’t spend your life chasing a green light. We both know how that ends.”
I haven’t been chasing anything. I’ve been an impostor in my own life, living out what others had hoped and even then, I almost screwed it up. I’m sure Mom would have been real proud to see me fail out of Sutton.
I sit up, holding Reagan close. I don’t want to let her go. I’ve only just had a bit of good in my life.
“I’m sorry, Noah. So sorry.” She places her hands over mine as they cradle her head. “I’m sorry, but she’s right here with you, too. They both are. And you have to live for them. They’d want you to do that.”
I nod, exhaling a breath I swear had been lodged in my lungs since that photo fell out from between those pages. I kiss Reagan again and again until we end up naked on the kitchen floor, forgetting about the dinner she’s been making us, forgetting about everything for a moment to live here, to be present. To feel her skin against mine and remember what it’s like to have a life where I can breathe and be me and feel as if I have a future ahead of me.
*
Dusk settles over us, an inky light veils Reagan’s tanned body a couple of days later. She smiles back at me over her shoulder, her hand clutched tightly in mine as she leads us through the cool, tall grass. I drove deeper into the ranch where there’s nothing but fields and endless sky and promises of good. I study the line of her back from her cropped top and those denim shorts of hers. She’s curves and soft sweeping lines, no angles. I’m convinced her barefoot on a summer night might be the sexiest thing yet.
Anything More Than Now (Sutton College #2) Page 13
