Falling For Him

by Ali Parker

  They met, got in a fight about two minutes later, and after both of their mothers made them apologize to one another, realized that they had a lot in common. They were just about joined at the hip after that.

  Noah practically lived in our house and Ryan in his. Where the one went, the other followed. Simple as that.

  Since I was only three when they met, I didn’t quite remember the first time I met Noah. He was just always there. Until he wasn’t, anyway.

  For those first few years that I remembered knowing him, he was like a second big brother to me. Well, a big brother who was kind and didn’t really mind if I wanted to hang out with them as much as my real big brother did.

  Ryan was a great brother, absolutely, but understandably, he didn’t want his baby sister cramping his style all the time. Understandably now. Back then? Not so much.

  What started as me deciding that Noah was a way better big brother than Ryan ended with Ryan reminding me one day that Noah wasn’t, in fact, my brother. Therefore, he had argued, I couldn’t call Noah my favorite best brother.

  That was when it had hit me. Noah wasn’t my brother.

  I was twelve at the time, and honestly, my life had never been the same again. It was like a whole new world of possibilities had opened up for me. A world in which I could look into those stunning hazel eyes of his and be looking into the eyes of my boyfriend, maybe even my husband.

  I had always loved Noah, but that was the first time I realized I loved him in a different way than I had thought. It was puppy love then, sure, but it grew right along with me.

  Before I knew it, my teenage heart belonged in totality to Noah Sims. I dreamed about running my fingers through his jet-black hair. When he started to grow fuzz on his angular jawline, I fantasized about what it would feel like scraping against my palms.

  No longer could I lie next to the pool and focus on my sketches while Ryan and Noah horsed around. Oh no, I couldn’t focus on my sketches because I was way too focused on Noah’s half-naked, dripping-wet body. And his skin wasn’t the only thing that was dripping wet while they swam. That was for damn sure.

  For years, no other boys existed in my world. I was all about Noah Sims and determined to make him realize that I, Maggie Hampton, should be the girl he gave his last name to one day. By the time I was fourteen, I even had my Maggie Sims signature all practiced and ready to go.

  Unfortunately, as all these tales usually end, Noah obviously never gave me his last name. All he gave me was a shattered heart and a lifetime of memories that I couldn’t bear to think about.

  “Noah?” If I kept frowning as hard as I was, I wasn’t sure my face would ever recover. I couldn’t, however, for the life of me, remember how to straighten my features. “It’s your suit that I ruined?”

  “You ruined it?” God, his voice had gotten so much deeper. So much raspier than it had been when I had last seen him. Which was when he was eighteen years old, you idiot. Of course he sounds different.

  I wondered what else was different about him. Probably everything—not that I intended to find out if I was right. The Noah Sims chapter of my life was over, and I refused to reopen it. Not after everything that had happened.

  Looking right into his familiar hazel eyes, which were something about him that hadn’t changed, I nodded. “Yes, I ruined it. I just started working here today, and I didn’t know there was bleach in the bottle. If you’re going to be angry with anyone, be angry with me.”

  God knew I’d been angry at him plenty of times in my life. It was probably time for it to be the other way around.

  “I’m not angry,” he said, shaking his head slowly as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “I’m just… Wow. Mags. What are you doing here?”

  I crossed my arms and tried to ignore how flipping hot he had gotten. If I’d thought eighteen-year-old Noah had it going on, he had nothing on the thirty-one-year-old version of himself.

  Muscles rippled in his exposed forearms when he moved, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows. The Henley he was wearing matched the greenish hues in his eyes perfectly, the effect of them so much more stunning for those jet-black locks on his head. They still curled ever so slightly around his ears, something else that hadn’t changed about him.

  When I found my mind wandering to what else might not have changed about him instead of what had, I actively yanked my mind out of Noahville. It didn’t live there anymore.

  “It’s Maggie, not Mags.” If he thought he could just pick up right where he left off, he had another thing coming. “I just told you what I’m doing here. I work here now.”

  A ghost of a smile appeared on his lips. “Yeah, I got that part. I meant what are you doing in Spokane?”

  “I live here.” I jutted my chin higher into the air and took a step back. “Well, if that’s all, then I really have to get back to work. Again, I’m sorry about your suit. Really. If you want someone to be mad at or if you want to recover the cost of it from someone, it’s me.”

  “I don’t want to recover the cost from you, Maggie.” He put emphasis on my name, his eyes narrowing just a fraction as he said it. “Accidents happen. I get it.” Hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his light blue jeans casually, he tipped his head in the direction of the door. “Do you have time to grab a cup of coffee?”

  “No, I’m working.” Once upon a time, Noah wanting to buy me a cup of coffee would have made me swoon and start practicing the Mrs. Sims signature again. Not so anymore.

  His lips pulled into that sexy little smirk that I hadn’t seen in thirteen years but remembered too damn well. “Maybe it would save the business money if you weren’t on the clock ruining clothes.”

  “You should go, dear,” Addie chimed in. “It’s the least you can do if you really think about it.”

  Oh, dear God. Why me? “But it’s my first day, and Noah’s already said he’s not angry.”

  “It really is the least you can do,” he said solemnly, but there was amusement in the way his eyes crinkled at the sides. I hated that I still noticed those kinds of minuscule things about him. “One cup of coffee, Maggie. Is that really too much to ask?”

  It was, coming from him. But since I had ruined his suit and my boss was nodding her head at me, it didn’t seem like I had much of a choice. “Fine, one cup. Let me just grab my purse.”

  Ten minutes later, Noah and I were seated across a table from one another for the first time since high school. Regardless of how much life had been lived in the last thirteen years, sitting there with him still made my traitorous heart race like I was fifteen again. Before you go racing for him, remember that he was the one who broke you into a million pieces.

  The useless organ ignored my snide comment and continued to thrum happily in my chest, like it was happy to be back in this familiar place. Outwardly, I kept my expression unaffected. No way was I letting him know that my body remembered him this well.

  “So, you’re working at Addie’s now?” Noah asked once our coffees were delivered. It was the first thing either of us had said since we left the dry cleaners. I figured that just because we had to have coffee together didn’t mean that I had to be all buddy-buddy with him.

  “You’re very observant,” I teased before I could remind my tongue to say something scathing instead. Damn it. Why was it so natural to fall back into that easy rhythm with him?

  Thankfully, it turned out that I needn’t have worried. I was the only one who still had that rhythm. Noah had definitely fucking lost it. Not that he would have noticed, since he was too busy talking about himself to realize much of anything.

  “I am observant.” He grinned, bringing his coffee to his lips to blow on it before taking a sip. “I also can’t believe I haven’t seen you for, what is it now, ten years?”

  “Thirteen.” Not that I’d been counting. Not at all.

  His eyebrows lifted as his chin lowered and a quiet whistle blew through his teeth. “Thirteen, huh? Wow. So much has happened in that time. Let�
�s see. Have you ever heard of the Simply Water Purification system?”

  I shook my head, which earned me a huffed-out sigh. “Seriously? What rock have you been living under for the last thirteen years?”

  This was the guy who I used to be able to gauge the tiniest emotions of in one glance. Now I honestly couldn’t even tell if he was kidding or not. Either way, he didn’t give me any time to respond that the rock I’d been living under was not a rock exactly but a little island called New York.

  “Okay, so Simply Water is a water filtration system I invented,” he explained. “It’s called Simply as a play on Sims, get it?”

  I nodded.

  “Of course you do. You always get me.”

  Always? Maybe for the first fifteen years of my life I had, but I was starting to realize that the person sitting across from me now was a stranger who wore a familiar face.

  “Anyway,” he said. “After I got my engineering degree in college, I invented the system and bam!” I startled when he clapped his hands together, but I didn’t even think he’d noticed. “It took off in a flash. I swear, my entire life changed in the space of a week.”

  My entire life had changed in the space of a week too. It was the week in which my brother died and we had to arrange and have his funeral, which Noah didn’t even bother to attend.

  “Can you imagine going from dirt-poor college grad to billionaire? It’s crazy how lucrative the system has been. I wouldn’t even have dreamed of it.”

  I wouldn’t have dreamed that my brother would die and his best friend wouldn’t even show up to pay him his final respects. Jesus. I hadn’t even gotten a text message with condolences from him.

  My heart had stopped racing at some point, clearly finally remembering how devastated we had been by this man one too many times. Noah blabbed on and on about how much money he’d made, his invention, and how he’d been named one of the state’s most eligible bachelors five times now.

  For the first time in my life, I was annoyed by him. I wasn’t hurt. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t anything except annoyed. Okay, annoyed and disappointed.

  When I realized that he might as well keep speaking to the mirror behind me for all the input I was giving in this conversation, I pushed to my feet. “I’m so sorry, Noah, but I have to go now.”

  “What?” He frowned. “Why?”

  I waved a hand in the general direction of Addie’s shop. “I have to get back to work, and then I have to get home.”

  “You haven’t even finished your coffee yet.” He glanced at the half-full cup. It was lukewarm by now, so I picked it up and swigged the leftover bitter liquid down.

  “There. All done.” I set the cup down and forced myself to give him something that I thought resembled a smile. “I’m sorry again about your suit. I hope your company keeps doing great. Thanks for the coffee.”

  Pivoting around, I did something I’d never done before. I walked away from him as fast as my feet could carry me. Fifteen-year-old me was torn between moping about it in a corner because we still love him, and waving poms poms around because take that, you asshole.

  Whatever she decided to do was her business. Twenty-eight-year-old me was getting the hell out of Dodge. I’d never really believed that there would come a day when I didn’t know Noah Sims, but I had no idea who that guy was back there.

  It was safe to say that if Mom still had one of my old sketchbooks with the Mrs. Sims signature in it stashed away somewhere, we could burn it now. Because that guy? He was not the guy I used to know.

  He looks like Noah Sims, but he’s not him. All that he is is a self-centered asshole.

  Chapter 9

  Noah

  “I want to be a princess for Halloween,” Della declared when she walked into Mom’s living room.

  Jordan and I had lit a fire and were chilling on the couches while Mom was at bingo. Both of us thought it was hilarious that she played on a weekly basis, but we weren’t allowed to say a word about it.

  Della walked up to the couch I was sitting on and planted her hands on her slim little hips. “I’m going to be a princess, and you’re going to be a frog.”

  “A frog?” I pointed a finger at my chest and tossed a look at Jordan, who was shaking with silent laughter on the other couch. “Me? Don’t you mean your dad?”

  “No.” She shook her head, dark braid swinging behind her. “Not Daddy. You, Unkie.”

  Eyebrows hitched up, I let a smile curl on my lips. “I’m not sure about dressing up as a frog, most awesome niece of mine. How about we come up with a different idea?”

  “Nope.” She popped her lips on the P sound and glanced at Jordan. “What do you want to be this year, Daddy?”

  “Why does he get a choice if I don’t?” I asked. “He’s your Dad. Surely, he’s the one whose choices should be impacted by your decisions.”

  “Trust me. It’s better to go as a frog than to go as what I have in mind for you.” He smirked. “Unless you feel like going as an ass?”

  “Daddy said a bad word.” Della giggled and pointed at Jordan.

  He shook his head. “No, sweetheart. An ass is a type of donkey. The wild ancestor of the donkey is the African wild ass, in fact.”

  “That so?” My lips crested on a smile. “It’s incredible how you know so much about the ancestry of asses. Is it not perhaps because you have some personal history with being one?”

  Jordan laughed. “Nope, it’s because I have one as a brother.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about anymore,” Della muttered, walking forward to put both of her hands on my knees and looking me right in the eyes. “Promise me, Uncle Noah. You’ll come to Halloween with me as a frog.”

  “I promise.” I covered her hands in my much larger ones, leaning forward to drop a quick kiss on her forehead. “It’s not like I could say no to you if I tried, princess.”

  A radiant grin beamed back at me. “Thank you. Excuse me. I need to choose a dress.”

  “You still have more than a week for that,” Jordan called after her as she skipped out of the room, but she ignored him. He looked at me and shrugged. “At least she said excuse me. I’m taking that as today’s win.”

  “What was yesterday’s win?” I asked.

  In the early days after Hillary’s death when Della was still a newborn, Jordan and I had started finding something positive in each day to count as a win.

  I’d suggested it as a way for him to focus on all the good in his life in the midst of his heartbreak. We’d tried it and it had stuck.

  “I hit every traffic light green on the way to work after we finished lunch.” He grinned. “Got there in six minutes flat. Yours?”

  I didn’t even have to think about it. “I ran into Maggie Hampton.”

  Jordan’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head, and he sat bolt upright on the couch. “What? How is this the first I’m hearing about it?”

  “Well, remember the ruined suit?” He nodded and I continued. “She’s the one who ruined it. Apparently, she just started working for Addie, and there was a bleach-related mishap.”

  A soft whistle came from him. “Maggie Hampton is back in town. Imagine that. How’d that go for you?”

  “Honestly?” I sighed and rolled my head back on a groan. “Not as well as I thought it would. I took her for coffee. She didn’t even finish hers before she ran out on me. Downed the last fucking half of it to get away from me, actually.”

  “Really?” He laughed and ruffled the hair at the back of his head. “So you didn’t manage to knock her feet right out from under her, huh?”

  “Definitely not. There was not even a minute where I felt like she was swept off her feet. If anything, she seemed firmly fucking grounded.”

  Jordan spoke through his laughter. “Sounds like she hasn’t changed at all since high school. She always was the one girl who could see through all your bullshit.”

  “What bullshit? I took the girl to get coffee. That’s it.”

  He level
ed me with a look. “That’s it? There’s no such thing as ‘that’s it’ when it comes to the two of you.” He made air quotes with his fingers. “Never has been, never will be. Unless… is she married?”

  Fuck. The very possibility of it hit me like a mule kicking me in the chest. “I don’t know.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean you don’t know? You had coffee with your ex-girlfriend from high school, and you don’t know her current relationship status? How is that even possible?”

  “It didn’t come up.” He was right. It shouldn’t be possible that I’d had coffee with a girl who had not only been one of my best friends, but who I’d also dated way back when and not know if there was a husband somewhere out there who was going to try to kick my ass for taking his wife out.

  Jordan’s eyes narrowed on mine. “How could it not come up? You were head over fucking heels in love with her, dude. Don’t tell me you enjoy the thought of her being with another guy, even now.”

  I didn’t, but I wasn’t about to admit that to him. “I wasn’t head over fucking heels in love with her. She was just the one girl that I felt like I could tell the truth to about everything and anything and not be judged for it.”

  “That’s why you jeopardized your friendship with your lifelong best friend in order to date her? You just wanted to talk to her and tell her all your truths?” He snorted. “The only part of that sentence that’s true is the part about her not judging you. Fuck knows she had a lot of reason to, but for some reason, you always came up golden with her.”

  “I didn’t jeopardize my friendship with Ryan over dating her.” I had. I so had.

  He’d caught me looking at her one day, and he’d said my feelings for her had been written all over my face.

  Just after he said it, he put a fist through said face because of it. That was the second and only time one of us had punched each other—if you didn’t count our pathetic attempts on the day we met. The punch he threw after figuring out that I had a crush on his sister was not pathetic. It had hurt like a bitch, but I hadn’t done anything back.