“I can’t take back what I just did. I can’t take back any of it, for that matter. And it’s fucking killing me …” Noah’s voice trailed off until he sighed and looked at me. His face was twisted up in anguish, his hair wet and disheveled like his clothes, and I saw him clearly. He looked every bit as broken as I felt.
He ran his hands over his face with a frustrated growl. “I know, Delaine. I know about your mother, and I know she’s the reason you did this. I didn’t want to fuck you, because it wasn’t right. I didn’t want to fuck you anymore, because … somewhere along the way, I did the unthinkable,” he said incredulously as he threw his hands up into the air. “Jesus, I fell in love with you. There. Are you happy? Now you know. And for the record, it was never about Julie. It was always about you.”
He didn’t wait for me to respond. Truthfully, I don’t think I could have. It didn’t matter that he loved me, just like it didn’t matter that I loved him, too. We would never work. Maybe in another time, another life where we were equals, but that wasn’t now. In this life he would forever be Noah Crawford the successful millionaire, and I would forever be the whore he had bought for his sexual pleasure.
He dropped his arms in exasperation, curled his shoulders in on himself, and walked up the stairs, cursing along the way. A rumble of thunder rolled across the sky like a solemn ovation for my enormous screw-up.
What the hell had I done? And how was I supposed to fix it?
15
MAKING LOVE OUT OF NOTHING AT ALL
Noah
As I uttered the words that would forever change the dynamic between Delaine and me, I could hear my own voice breaking, the emotional turmoil on the inside seeping its way out. I tried to rein it back in, but when I looked down at her, her gown still shoved up around her waist and her fragile body lying on the hard stairs—how could I have done that to her? I had vowed to never treat her that way again, but I guess my word didn’t mean anything, not even to myself.
I ran my hands over my face with a frustrated growl. Not telling Delaine about everything that I knew was exactly what had forced her hand and led us to that moment. And I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I had to get it out. I had to purge the secret, because if I didn’t, I was going to cross that thin line between guilt and insanity, and things between us would only get worse.
Fuck me, I’d done it. I’d told her everything.
She just looked at me, stunned.
And all I could do was sit and wait for the fallout, but not then, and not there. She would find me when she was ready, and I’d feel so much better about doing it in our room. At least within the relative safety of those four walls maybe she wouldn’t get the urge to push me down the fucking stairs.
I dropped my arms in defeat and started the long trek up to the second floor. My legs felt heavy, my feet like cement blocks as I took one step at a time, willing myself to walk away. Everything inside me screamed to go the opposite direction, to sweep her up into my arms and run like a madman, carrying her away from everything to someplace where the outside world couldn’t interfere anymore.
That was the dreamer in me. The realist, he knew we couldn’t hide from anything anymore.
With every step I took down the corridor that led to our room, the distance to the door seemed to lengthen, but I finally made it. Leaden arms grasped the knob and gave it a turn, opening up to the place where we’d first consummated our relationship. Even I had to scoff at that. “Consummated”—the word sounded far too clean for what had actually happened there. More like I had damned it, doomed it to failure from the very fucking beginning.
I shed my jacket, throwing it to the side like it was a dirty washcloth instead of the expensive tailor-made masterpiece that it was. I didn’t care. There was far more catastrophic shit going on in my life for me to worry about whether or not a jacket got a crease in it. Catastrophe number one: I owned a sex slave. Catastrophe number two: I’d fallen in love with said sex slave. Catastrophe number three: said sex slave had a dying mother whom I was keeping her away from. Catastrophe number four: I knew all of that and still fucked her like a goddamn animal on the stairs.
Grabbing my pack of cigarettes, I loped over to the couch and slumped onto the cushions. The flame from my lighter cast an orange glow over the otherwise darkened room as I lit my cigarette and exhaled the smoke in an exaggerated fashion. The nicotine calmed me, and God knew I needed it. I was ready to explode, ready to tear down my parents’ home with my bare hands until there was nothing left but a pile of rubble. Because that was what my life had become. Fucking rubble.
I hauled my ass off the couch and stripped out of the rest of my clothes, badly in need of a shower. My clothes landed wherever I was when I discarded them, because again, they didn’t matter. I made my way into the bathroom, not bothering with the light because I didn’t want to see myself in the mirror. Images from that day in my bathroom were already on a constant replay in my hyperaware mind, reminding me of just how alike David Stone and I really were. I didn’t need to see that again.
What was wrong with me? The more I tried not to be like him, the more I was. I’d fucked her on the goddamn stairs, for Christ’s sake. Fucked her without any emotion, fucked her without giving her any pleasure, fucked her and then left her there, but not before I admitted how I’d fucked her over.
I stepped into the shower without first letting the water warm, because ice water on the boys was not a pleasant thing, but that was what I deserved. All I really wanted was to relax to the point where I could drift off into a coma, so I wouldn’t have to feel the ache that had set up camp in my heart. But what I wanted and what I needed were two completely different things. I needed to face what I had done. I needed to stand before Delaine and take it like a man while she reamed my ass for snooping in her business. I needed to look her in the eye when I apologized for stealing her virtue. I needed to watch her walk out of my life with no hope of ever seeing her again. And I needed to feel the heartbreak of losing her.
Emotionally and mentally exhausted, I leaned my head against the wall, using my forearm as a prop, and just let the water cascade over my body. I’d hoped the shower would somehow wash away the filth that was festering on the inside, staining my soul, but that wasn’t possible, unless I could somehow find a way to turn my skin inside out. Even still, mere soap and water would have never done the trick. Hell, I doubted bleach would have touched it.