Noah glared at me. “It was because of me, Mara, because of what I made you do.
“You didn’t make me kill every living thing in that room. I did that all by myself.”
“Not everything in that room.”
“What?”
“You didn’t kill everything in that room.”
“With the exception of us, I did.”
Noah laughed without amusement. “That’s it. You could have killed me. I tormented you, and you could have ended it by ending me. But you didn’t,” he said, and brushed my hair away from my face.
“You’re stronger than you know.”
His hand lingered on my cheek and I closed my eyes in anguish.
“I know we don’t know how or why this is happening to you—to us,” he said. “But we will figure it out.”
I opened my eyes and stared at him. “It’s not your responsibility.”
“I fucking know it’s not my responsibility. I want to help you.”
I inhaled sharply. “What about tomorrow? Someone’s going to wonder what killed hundreds of endangered species.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll—”
“Fix it? You’ll fix it, Noah?”
As I spoke the words, I knew that that was exactly what he thought. That despite all rationality, he did think he could fix me, like he could fix everything else.
“Is that how you see this working? I’ll screw up and you’ll take care of it, right?” I was just another problem that could be solved if only we threw enough time or practice or money at it. At me. And when the experiment failed—when I failed—and people died, Noah would blame himself, hate himself for not being able to stop it. For not being able to stop me. I wouldn’t do that to him. So I said the only thing I could.
“I don’t want your help. I don’t want you.” The words felt mutinous on my tongue. And they hit him like a slap in the face.
“You’re lying,” Noah said, his voice low and quiet.
Mine was cold and distant. “I think it would be better if I didn’t see you again.” I didn’t know where the strength to say such a thing came from, but I was grateful for it.
“Why are you doing this?” Noah said, piercing me with an icy stare.
I began to lose my composure. “You’re really asking me that question? I murdered five people.”
“By accident.”
“I wanted it.”
“God, Mara. You think you’re the only person to want bad things to happen to bad people?”
“No, but I am the only person who gets what she wants,” I said. “And Rachel, by the way, wasn’t a bad person. I loved her, and she did nothing to me, and she’s dead anyway and it’s my fault.”
“Maybe.”
I whipped around. “What? What did you just say?”
“You still don’t know if the asylum was an accident.”
“Are we back there again? Really?”
“Listen to me. Even if it wasn’t—”
“It wasn’t,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Even if it wasn’t an accident,” Noah continued, “I can warn you the next time you get close.”
My voice went low. “Just like you warned me before I killed Morales.”
“That’s not fair, and you know it. I didn’t know what was happening then. I do now. I’ll warn you the next time it happens, and you’ll stop.”
“You mean, you’ll make me stop.”
“No. It’s your choice. It’s always your choice. But maybe if you lose your focus, I can help bring you back.”
“And what if something happens and you’re not there?” I asked.
“I’ll be there.”
“But what if you’re not?”
“Then it would be my fault.”
“Exactly.”
His expression went carefully blank.
“I want a boyfriend, not a babysitter, Noah. But let’s say I agree to this plan, and you’re there but can’t stop me. You’ll blame yourself. You want that on my conscience too? Stop being so selfish.”
Noah’s jaw tensed. “No.”
“All right. Don’t. But I’m leaving.”
I stood to leave but felt Noah’s fingers on my thighs. The pressure of his grasp was feather-light on my jeans, but I was frozen.
“I’ll follow you,” he said.
I looked down at him, at his hand-stirred hair above his grave face; his lids were half-closed and heavy. Sitting on his bed, he was level with my waist. A thrill traveled along the length of my spine.
“Get off,” I said, without conviction.
The ghost of a smile touched his mouth. “You first.”
I blinked and stared at him carefully. “Well. Isn’t this a dangerous game.”
“I’m not playing.”
My nostrils flared. Noah was provoking me. On purpose, to see what I’d do. I wanted at once to smack him, and to rake my fingers through his hair and pull.
“I won’t let you do this,” I said.
“You won’t stop me.” His voice was low, now. Indescribably sexy.
My eyes fluttered closed. “Like hell I won’t,” I whispered. “I could kill you.”
“Then I’d die happy.”
“Not funny.”
“Not joking.”
I opened my eyes and focused on his. “I’d be happier without you,” I lied as convincingly as I could.
“Too bad.” Noah’s mouth curved into the half-smile I loved and hated so much, just inches from my navel.
My head was foggy. “You’re supposed to say, ‘All I want is your happiness. I’ll do whatever it takes, even if it means being without you.’ “
“Sorry,” Noah said. “I’m just not that big of a person.” His hands traveled up the side of my jeans, up to my waist. The pads of his fingertips grazed the skin just underneath the fabric of my shirt. I tried to steady my pulse and failed.
“You want me,” Noah said simply, definitively. “Don’t lie to me. I can hear it.”
“Irrelevant,” I breathed.
“No, it isn’t irrelevant. You want me as much as I want you. And all I want is you.”
My tongue warred with my mind. “Today,” I whispered.
Noah stood slowly, his body skimming mine as he rose. “Today. Tonight. Tomorrow. Forever.” Noah’s eyes held mine. His stare was infinite. “I was made for you, Mara.”
And at that moment, even though I didn’t know how it was possible or what it meant, I believed him.
“And you know it. So tell the truth. Do you want me?” His voice was strong, confident as he voiced the question that sounded more like a statement.
But his face. In the slightest crease and furrow of his brow, barely perceptible, it was there. Doubt.
Did he really not know? As I tried to comprehend the impossibility of that idea, Noah’s confidence began to fray at the edge of his expression.
Right would have been allowing his question to go unanswered. Letting Noah believe, impossible though it was, that I didn’t want him. That I didn’t love him. Then this would all be over. Noah would be the best thing that almost happened to me, but he would be safe.
I chose wrong.
56
I WRAPPED MY ARMS AROUND NOAH’S NECK AND buried myself in him.
“Yes,” I whispered into his hair as he held me.
“What’s that?” I could hear the smile in his voice. “I want you,” I said, smiling back.
“Then who cares about anything else?”
Noah’s hands on my waist, on my face, felt so familiar, like they belonged there. Like they were home. I pulled back to look at him and see if he felt it, but when I did, I shattered into a million pieces.
Noah believed in me. I didn’t understand until then, right then, how much I needed to see it.
I shivered at the lovely scrape of his jaw on my skin. His lips skimmed my collarbone and when he shifted his hips into mine, I became senseless. I knotted my fingers in his warm hair and crashed my mouth into his. When
I tasted his tongue, the world fell away.
But then the bitter air of the asylum stung my nostrils. Jude’s face flickered behind my eyelids and I pulled away, gasping.
“Mara, what’s wrong?”
I didn’t answer him. I didn’t know how. We’d come so close to kissing a thousand times before, but something almost always stopped us—myself, Noah, the universe. Before now, the only time we’d succeeded, I was sure, positive that he almost died. My heart rebelled at the idea, even though I knew I was right. What was happening to me? To him, when we kissed?
“What is it?” he asked.
I needed to say something, but that’s not the kind of thing you can just bust out with.
“I’m—I don’t want you to die,” I stammered.
Noah looked appropriately confused. “All right,” he said, and pushed back my hair. “I won’t die.”
I looked at the floor, but Noah ducked his head and caught my eyes. “Listen, Mara. There’s no pressure.” His hands brushed down my face. “This,” he said, as they trailed down my neck. “You.” My arms. “Are enough.” He laced his fingers into mine and held my stare. I knew he meant it.
“Just knowing you’re mine.” He released my hand and lifted his to my face, glancing his fingers over my lips. “Knowing that no one else gets to touch you like this,” he said. “Seeing the way you look at me when I do.
“And hearing the way you sound when I do, “A slight, uneven smile played on his lips. Just looking at them was not enough.
Seized by boldness and frustration, I grasped Noah’s hand and pulled him to his bed. I pushed him until he was sitting and climbed into his lap, ignoring his raised eyebrows as I straddled him. My hands furiously worked the buttons on his plaid shirt but fumbled. My dexterity had vanished along with my decorum.
Noah placed one of his fingers under my chin and tilted my head. “What are you doing?”
“We can do other things,” I breathed, as I slipped his shirt off his shoulders. I wasn’t completely sure if that was true but I was completely sure that at that moment, I didn’t care. I was desperate to feel his skin against mine. I was desperate to try. I gripped the hem of my T-shirt and started to pull it up.
Noah reached down and clasped my wrists gently. “You want to sleep with me, but you won’t kiss me?”
Well, yeah. I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it, because I thought that might not fly.
Noah lifted me off of his lap. “No,” he said, and shrugged his shirt back on.
“No?” I asked.
“No.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why not? You’ve done it before.”
Noah looked away. “For fun.”
“I can be fun,” I said quietly.
“I know.” Noah’s expression leveled me.
“You don’t trust me,” I said quietly.
Noah measured his words before he spoke. “You don’t trust yourself, Mara. I am not going to die if you kiss me; I told you that already. But you still think I’m going to. So, no.”
“You’re kidding me,” I said, incredulous. Noah, Noah Shaw, was slamming on the brakes.
“Does this look like my kidding face?” Noah composed his expression into one of mock seriousness.
I ignored it and stood up. “You don’t want me.”
Noah threw his head back and laughed, rich and loose. A blush crept up into my cheeks. I wanted to punch him in the throat.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he said as he stood. “I could barely keep my hands off you last night, even after seeing what you’d been through this week. Even after knowing how wrecked you were when you told me. And I’m going to spend an eternity in hell for that dream I had about you on your birthday. But if I could call it up again, I’d spend it twice.”
He took my hand and turned it over in his, studying it. “Mara, I have never felt about anyone the way I feel about you. And when you’re ready for me to show you,” he said, brushing my hair to the side, “I’m going to kiss you.” His thumb grazed my ear and his hand curved around my neck. He leaned me backward and my eyes fluttered closed. I breathed in the scent of him as he leaned in and kissed the hollow under my ear. My pulse raced under his lips.
“And I won’t settle for anything less.”
Noah pulled away and drew me up with him. I was disoriented, but not enough to ignore the cocky grin he was wearing.
“I hate you,” I muttered.
Noah smiled wider. “I know.”
57
I COULDN’T GO TO SCHOOL THE NEXT DAY, EITHER— that much was obvious. Who knew what triggered the deaths—was a stray thought enough? Or did I have to envision it? And what about the animals that died, even thought I never explicitly wanted them to? What about Rachel?
I needed to rebuild my world and figure out my place in it before I would be safe around the general population. I told my mother that I wanted to stay home, that going back to school yesterday was a little too much for me and I wanted to wait until after my appointment with Dr. Maillard today to try it again. Given my recent behavior, she was happy to oblige.
I made it to lunch without incident. But as I stood in the kitchen midway through making myself a sandwich, someone started pounding on the front door.
I froze. They didn’t go away.
I crept soundlessly to the foyer and looked through the peephole. I let out a sigh of relief. Noah stood on my front step, disheveled and furious.
“Get in the car,” he said. “There’s something you need to see.”
“What? What are you—”
“It’s about your father’s case. We need to make it to the courthouse before the trial’s over. I’ll explain, but come.”
My mind raced to catch up but I followed Noah without hesitating, locking the door behind me. He didn’t stand on ceremony and I flung open the passenger door and dove in. Noah backed out of the driveway in seconds, then reached into the backseat and withdrew a newspaper. He dropped The Miami Herald in my lap as he wove between lanes, ignoring the irritated honking that followed.
I read the headline: crime scene photos leaked on final day of palmer trial. I scanned the photos; a few of the crime scene and one of Leon Lassiter, my father’s client. Then I skimmed the article. It gave a detailed overview of the case, but I was missing something.
“I don’t understand,” I said, focusing on Noah’s clenched jaw and angry stare.
“Did you look at the photos? Carefully?”
My eyes roamed the pictures, disturbing though they were. Two of them showed Jordana Palmer’s dismembered body lying piecemeal in the tall grass, with chunks of flesh ripped from her calves, her arms, her torso. The third was a landscape, taken from the distance, with markers showing the position and location where the body was found. The little concrete shed where Noah and I had found Joseph was cast in a penumbral shadow by the flash.
My hand fluttered to my mouth. “Oh my God.”
“I saw it when I went to go buy cigarettes during lunch. I tried to call but there was no answer at the house, and of course you still don’t have a mobile. So I drove straight here from school,” he said in a rush. “It’s the same shed, Mara. Exactly the same.”
I remembered Joseph, lying on the concrete floor in a nest of blankets, his hands and feet bound by twist ties. And how Noah and I were almost too late to save him.
To save him from ending up exactly like Jordana. My stomach rolled with nausea.
“What does this mean?” I asked, even though I already knew.
Noah ran his hands through his hair as he sped, pushing ninety-five. “I don’t know. The photograph they have of Lassiter shows him wearing a Rolex on his right hand. When I saw the documents in the Collier County archives in my mind, whoever was pulling files had the same watch,” he finished, before swallowing. “But I’m not sure.”
“He took Joseph,” I said, my voice and mind hazy.
Noah’s expression was hard. “It doesn’t make sense, though. Why would
he go after his own lawyer’s child?”
My mind flooded with images. Joseph, the way he must have looked when he was waiting for a ride home from school the day he was taken. My parents, as they spoke in tense voices about my father dropping the case. My father speaking to Lassiter—
That same night.
“My father was going to drop his case,” I said, strangely removed. “Because of me. Because I was falling apart. He spoke to him that afternoon.”
“Still doesn’t make sense. Your father would have dropped it for sure if one of his children disappeared. The judge absolutely would have ordered a continuance.”
“Then he took him because he’s sick,” I said, my voice a twisted hiss. My mind raced, tumbling ahead before my mouth could catch up. I flashed back to before I knew about the case, before this had all happened. To my brother watching the news one afternoon, as Daniel lifted an unmarked envelope.
“Where did this come from?” Daniel asked.
“Dad’s new client dropped it off, like, two seconds before you got here.”
Lassiter knew Joseph. Knew where we lived.
“I’ll kill him.” I spoke the shocking words so softly I wasn’t even sure I’d said them aloud. I wasn’t even sure I’d thought them, until Noah’s eyes turned on me.
“No,” he said carefully. “We’re going to go to the courthouse and find your father and have the trial continued. We’ll tell him what happened. He’ll withdraw from the case.”
“It’s too late,” I said. The words congealed on my tongue, and the weight of them pulled me down. “The trial’s over today. Once the jury’s out—it’s over.”
Noah shook his head. “I called. They’re not out yet. We can make it,” he said, his gaze flicking to the clock on the dashboard.
I turned the paper over in my hand, examining it as my dark thoughts grew and spread and swallowed up any possible alternative.
“Whoever leaked these photos did it to influence the jury. They did it because my father—because Lassiter—is winning. He’s going to be acquitted. He’s going to be free.”
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer Page 29
