by Ali Parker
Blowing out a deep lungful of air, I realized that she wasn’t totally wrong. I might just be in love with him. From the descriptions I’d heard of people being in love, it sure sounded a lot like how I felt when I was around him.
All those things Mom mentioned, too. Eyes lighting up, constant smile? Those were dead giveaways, weren’t they? I thought so.
Thinking back to the butterflies that woke up and stretched their wings in my stomach when I saw him or how my heart soared when I saw a text from him or heard his voice, I might just be screwed.
I didn’t know if I was strong enough to withstand it if the past repeated itself. Despite all the cheerful thoughts and the hopeful ones I’d had about Noah since we’d reconnected, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t hurt me again.
He’d proven that he was more than capable of doing it, and he hadn’t proved the contrary yet. We hadn’t even talked about why he’d done it in the first place. Worrying my lip with my teeth, I wondered if I should have brought it up earlier.
Questions about what had happened back then had been on the tip of my tongue so many times when we were together. I’d woken up with them playing through my mind and fallen asleep with a burning curiosity to finally get my answers.
I was a fool to have let things go as far as they had without asking him about it. Everything between us had just felt so comfortable and familiar and new and exciting all at the same time. I hadn’t wanted to ruin what we were building now by mentioning our painful past.
If I was being honest with myself, I’d admit that deep down inside, I was also afraid to remind him about what he had done. I was scared that if I did, he might remember why he’d done it and realize that he had been right back then, only to turn around and do it again.
It wasn’t exactly rational, I knew, but then again, matters of the heart never seemed to be. Not matters of my heart, anyway. They never seemed to adhere to logic, reason, or rationality. Oh no, my stupid heart had to go off on its own random tangent only to leave my brain without its answers.
My phone pinged, buried somewhere under the scraps of fabric littering the table. I dug it out, cursing my stupid heart for hoping it was Noah.
When I drew my pattern on the screen and saw that it was from him, the foolish thing soared all the way to the sky. No matter what I did, I couldn’t control its reactions to him.
Tapping into my messages with my thumb, I couldn’t stop myself from letting out a quiet squeal when I read what he had sent me.
Noah: Do you and Lydia want to have dinner with me tomorrow night?
See, my heart whispered. He’s in love with us too.
My brain had a couple of counterarguments to that, but I didn’t let it influence my reply.
Me: Sure, we’d love to.
There it was again, that seemingly innocuous four-letter word that had the power to turn lives upside down and even start wars. I stared at it for a beat, wondering how four little letters strung together in that order could mean as much as they did.
I just hoped they meant the same to Noah now as they did to me because they sure as hell hadn’t when we’d been kids.
Please, please don’t let history repeat itself. Not this time, please?
Chapter 31
Noah
After spending all night tossing and turning, debating with myself until I wanted to scream, I finally gave up and walked to the kitchen to make some coffee. I’d gotten a few hours sleep at most, but I wasn’t tired. I was wired and ready for the day.
The sun was only just starting to creep over the horizon when I walked into my kitchen, the soft light accentuating the tiny specks of dust floating in the air. There was just enough light for me to make coffee without flicking any on.
Ambling to the one-cup coffee machine standing on my counter, I chose my preferred setting and placed one of the special white cups in the slot. Although I knew it was less than a minute before the coffee was ready, the time seemed to drag for all eternity.
It had been that way all night, except for the brief periods of it when I managed to convince myself that Maggie was with me for me and that I was worried over nothing. It was during one of those times that I’d gotten a bit of sleep.
I’d woken up drenched in sweat, only remembering wisps of a dream in which Maggie was laughing manically while throwing dollar bills at me. Bringing my hands up to massage my temples, I shut my eyes and tried not to replay the few lingering images from that nightmare.
It was no wonder I hadn’t been able to get back to sleep after that. I shuddered just thinking about it now.
The worst of it was that all I really wanted was to be with her right now. I’d come close to calling her a few times during the early morning hours, just to hear her voice and be reassured that she was still the person I remembered, not the one my brain conjured up when I slept.
I was seeing her and Lydia for dinner tonight, but I didn’t want to wait that long to see her. I wanted to be around her all the time, but especially now. It was almost like she had one pole of a magnet in her heart and I held the other in mine. That was how strong this constant tug was to be with her.
While drinking my coffee, I tried to ignore that tug in my chest. I rubbed absently at the spot where I felt it so acutely, I was half considering going to a doctor to make sure there wasn’t really something in there.
Pulling up the news on my phone didn’t help, nor did taking a walk around the house or trying to watch an early-morning rerun of a sitcom I didn’t follow. A deep sigh parted my lips when I walked back into my bedroom and passed right through to my bathroom.
Before I’d consciously made the decision, I was freshly showered and dressed, thinking about how I should go see her before we went to dinner tonight. We wouldn’t be able to talk frankly with Lydia around over dinner anyway, so it was better for me to speak to her about this before.
What I was going to say, I didn’t know yet. Words came to me when I was around her, so I figured it would just happen when I saw her. If it didn’t, I wasn’t even sure I’d need words. Maggie was so expressive, it was like I could read her mind sometimes.
Between her eyes and her facial expressions, she might as well have screamed every thought out loud. I’d teased her about it once when we were kids. Although that probably wasn’t a night I should be thinking about, today of all days.
My palms started sweating, and my heart somersaulted. Yeah, definitely don’t think about that night.
In fact, that was the very night when I had made the decision that was leading me to wonder now if she was exacting revenge on me for it, like maybe she had figured out early on where the only weakness I had was and was stabbing me in it now for what I had done to her.
I didn’t think I’d ever been as nervous as I was when I was on my way to the dry cleaners to see her. Spotting a florist on my way, I stopped to get her some flowers. Just a guy, stopping to pick up some flowers for his girl.
The woman behind the counter in the florist smiled when I walked in, her chin lifting and her eyes sparking with interest. “How can I help you today?”
“Just picking up some flowers.” Walking along the back wall of the shop with different kinds of loose flowers in black buckets, I heard a girlish giggle and realized it had come from the woman behind the counter.
“Well, of course you are, silly. What kind of flowers?” When I looked at her to make sure she was speaking to me, her eyelashes fluttered.
There was no one else in the shop, so I was pretty sure she’d called me “silly” in that sickeningly sweet voice and that the eyelash batting had been aimed at me too. She’s flirting with me?
A quiet groan rumbled in my chest. Being flirted with was not something I could handle today. Well, not unless it was Maggie doing the flirting. I was all for that.
There had been a time when I’d enjoyed flirting and being flirted with, but I was long past it and didn’t miss it—especially not now that I had Maggie back in my life. “I’m only after a si
mple bouquet. I’m sure I can manage.”
“Let me help you pick.” She walked around the counter and came up to me, twirling a pair of glasses between her fingers as she beamed up at me. “Who are the flowers for, and what’s the occasion? If you forgot your mother’s birthday, I’d go for one of those.”
She jabbed a pale pink painted fingernail at an elaborate bunch of arrangements displayed in the windowsill. “Or if you’re sending condolences, perhaps you should choose something more subdued.”
Crouching down on her haunches, she ran a finger along the edge of a white lily in a bucket. “However, if it’s a woman you’re in here shopping for…” Still sitting on her haunches, she moved her knees apart a fraction of an inch and, without a hint of shame, ran her tongue along her lower lip in what I assumed was supposed to be a seductive move. “Well, then I’d be happy to give you some options.”
It was crystal clear that the options she wanted to give me didn’t have anything to do with flowers. “Thanks, but I’m taken.”
Striding directly to the counter, I looked at the various bouquets displayed around it and reached for the biggest, brightest one of them all. “I’ll have this one, please.”
“Are you sure?” She straightened, walked over to me, and eyed the arrangement I had chosen. “There might be something better in here for you.”
“Again, thank you.” I laid the flowers down and pulled my wallet out of my back pocket. “I don’t need anything better. I need exactly what I have. What do I owe you?”
I had no interest in anyone other than Maggie, and I didn’t know how to make it any clearer. The woman thankfully caught on to what I meant and rang me up without any further attempts at flirting. She did bat her eyelashes at me one last time after she’d wrapped the stems of the flowers in purple paper and tied a yellow bow around them, but I just smiled and waved goodbye.
Somehow calmer now than I had been before, I whistled under my breath as I headed over to the dry cleaners. My conviction in the face of temptation that Maggie was the only woman for me had reminded me why she was the only one for me: she was Maggie.
Maggie didn’t care about money. She never had. The universe could go fuck itself. I was done listening to it.
I still wanted to see her this afternoon though, and since I had flowers to deliver, I didn’t see any reason to derail the original plan of going over there. I’d pop in, give her the flowers, and kiss her six ways from Sunday before we both got on with our day. Simple as that.
When I pushed open the door, I realized Addie’s bell was still out of order. I let the door shut behind me and grinned, hoping to find Maggie working the front, but she wasn’t there.
“Mags?” I asked before walking up to the counter and waiting for a beat. There was no answer. I said her name again, louder this time, but still nothing.
“What the hell?” I muttered. Then I heard a clatter coming from the back, followed by a shout and muffled laughter. “Right. They must both be in the back.”
Usually, one of them manned the front, but they were probably having a slow day and had both decided to get the work done that they already had.
Smiling as I walked around to the back, I stopped dead in my tracks when the voices grew louder and I could finally make out what they were saying. My heart stuttered, slammed to a halt, and then started galloping so fast, I wondered when it had entered the Derby.
“Yeah, of course, I’m only using him for his money.” Maggie giggled. “I mean, why else would I be with him?”
Blood rushed to my head and began pounding in my ears, cutting off my hearing from whatever else she was saying about me. My mouth went dry, and I felt suddenly dizzy as my world came crashing down around me.
Yeah, of course, I’m only using him for his money. It was my worst nightmare come true, hearing those words being spoken by her. I mean, why else would I be with him?
Why else indeed? I’d thought it was because of our connection, because of the way we clicked and how well our personalities complemented the other, but apparently, I’d been wrong.
I briefly considered confronting her, demanding to know why. But I already knew the answer to that. It was because I had money and she needed it. Motherfucker.
I didn’t need to hear anything else from her. I wasn’t interested in justifications or excuses.
Pivoting around, I walked away quietly and dumped the flowers in the trashcan down the street. I knew it. I fucking knew it. I’d been played, used again. Great. Just fucking great.
Also, I’d been right about what the realization that she was using me for my money would do to me. I felt completely pulverized. Crushed. Obliterated. It was the kind of heartbreak I’d only felt twice in my life. Once when I lost Dad and other when I lost Ryan.
But they hadn’t chosen to leave me. They would’ve wanted to stay.
Maggie didn’t. There was only thing she wanted, and it sure as hell wasn’t to stay with me.
Chapter 32
Maggie
“So,” Angie said when she walked into the dry cleaners, grinning from ear to ear. “Did you talk to Noah? Am I looking at our next biggest local designer?”
“I haven’t talked to him yet, but I’m thinking of doing it over dinner tonight. There just hasn’t been time to do it before then.”
She smiled and sat down in her usual stool at the counter, sliding the strap of her purse off her shoulder and setting it down on the floor beside her. “I’m sure he’ll let you take him up on his offer. He wouldn’t have made it if he wasn’t serious about it.”
“Probably not.” My teeth sank into my lower lip. “To be honest, I’m not even sure how to bring it up. Asking for money is not something I’m comfortable with at all, especially not from Noah.”
“You’re not asking for it.” She sighed and propped her elbows on the counter, resting her head in her left palm but keeping her eyes on mine. “He offered to give it to you. There’s a difference. All you need to do is to say you’d like to take him up on it, and by this time tomorrow, you could be on your way to starting your company.”
“If only it was that simple, but it doesn’t feel like it is. There are so many things we’ll have to discuss if we are going to do this, but I’m not sure if talking about it with Lydia around is a good idea.”
“Is she coming to dinner with you?”
I nodded. “He invited both of us out. It was sweet of him to include her.”
“He probably realizes he needs to get to know her if he wants to become her daddy someday.” She smirked. “Because you and I both know that’s where this is headed.”
The thought of giving her a playful nudge crossed my mind, but I couldn’t bring myself to actually do it. Ever since my mother pointed out to me that I was in love with him, I’d been obsessing over it. Every waking minute was spent ricocheting between worrying about the past repeating itself and being deliriously happy that he was in my life again. I was going to give myself mental whiplash if I couldn’t get it under control.
When I didn’t respond to her comment fast enough, Angie’s brown eyes grew wide, and she let out a loud squeak. “Is there something you’re not telling me? You always shoot me down when I tease you about this, but today, all I hear is crickets. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” It wasn’t a lie. There wasn’t really anything new going on. All that had happened was that I’d had a bit of a revelation. It was hardly worth mentioning until I knew what I was going to do about it.
“I’m just looking forward to dinner with the two of them tonight. That’s all. I want them to get to know each other, and not because of the reason you seem to think. Lydia is my everything, and Noah used to be a big part of my life. It feels like he’s becoming a big part of it again, so it means a lot to me that the two of them get to know each better.”
She lifted her head from her palm to tilt it questioningly, her eyes narrowing. “Why do you sound so dreamy?”
“I don’t sound dreamy,” I protested,
but Angie’s only response was to raise a brow and cross her arms. “Fine. Maybe I do sound dreamy, but it’s because I’m about to have dinner with two of my favorite people in the world.”
“Noah’s one of your favorite people?” She laughed. “It’s not a surprise. I’m just imagining your reaction if I’d told you a few weeks ago when you’d first run into him that you’d be saying that about him again so soon.”
A smile pulled at the corners of my lips. “You may have a point there, but I was wrong about him that day. He was just acting like an idiot. Apparently, it comes with the territory for him nowadays.”
I thought back to when he told me about the act he had to put up and how he’d had to learn to hide his real self from the world as a defense mechanism. I couldn’t imagine having to live like that, and I was more than happy to provide a safe space for Noah where he could simply be himself.
That version of him was really one of my favorite people. Noah being Noah was amazing and fun and sexy and playful and—
“Why are you smiling like that?” Angie interrupted the stream of adjectives my brain was churning out to describe Noah. “You’re acting kind of different today. Are you sure nothing happened?”
I sucked in a deep breath, holding it while I considered what to tell her. “Nothing really, no. I was thinking about Noah and dinner, and I got a little carried away. I just want to spend as much time with him as I can, you know? It feels like our time together is always over too soon.”
Both of her eyebrows jumped up, and a knowing gleam came into her eyes, her lips quirking up. “You know, you’re talking an awful lot like you’re in love with him.”
“What?” I cleared my throat. Hopefully, my next words wouldn’t come out quite as squeaky as that one had. “It’s too soon to be in love with him.”
“Too soon?” She scoffed. “You met the guy when you were three, didn’t you? How much longer could you possibly need?”
