I watch as Noah leans back against the table, his arms crossed at his chest, and his face unreadable. My first thoughts shouldn’t be that he looks impossibly sexy, but it is. He’s wearing his faded blue jeans, the ends worn and frayed. No shirt, and his hair rumbled from this morning and not pulled back as normal, instead falling down around him like a halo of beauty. His face is a mask, giving me nothing, but that’s okay. I can think he’s sexy and still be pissed at him.
“You’re new to the club life babe, but there are rules. First and foremost is that the meetings with my men are sacred. It’s called church for a reason. You don’t eavesdrop, you don’t fucking listen.”
“I’d write that down, but since you seem intent on pushing me away, I doubt it’s a lesson I need to learn.”
“Second, you don’t fucking disrespect me in front of my men. It undermines my authority,” he says, ignoring anything I said about pushing me away.
Fine. Two can play that game.
“You’re new to being my boyfriend, babe, but there are rules. First and foremost is that you don’t demand things from me without giving me time to process them and talk to you. You don’t speak over me and refuse to let me get a word in edgewise.”
“Funny, I thought to be your man, you had to have feelings for me,” he growls, stressing the word man and making it clear he didn’t like the term boyfriend. Whatever.
“If you don’t realize I have feelings for you, Noah, then you’re not only stupid, you’re blind,” I tell him.
I’m feeling guilty. I know what hurt him the most is that I didn’t tell him immediately that I loved him. I have so many emotions and the biggest one is fear. I have no idea how I’m supposed to make Noah understand when I’m not sure I do myself.
“How long will you hold it over me, Rory? How long will it affect what we have?” he finally asks, sounding tired. “Will I have to pay for it the rest of my life?” he asks. “I get it, Gorgeous. I even fucking admit I deserve it, but I’m not sure I can live like this.”
“I don’t understand, Noah. Live like what?” I ask, so confused and feeling completely clueless.
“I don’t know if I can live our new life together and remember what it was like with you before. It’s not fair, I get that, but I… Fuck, Rory. I miss what we had.”
“What we had? Noah how is what we had any different from what we’re sharing now?”
He looks at me and for a second his face looks like I just slapped him.
“How about for starters you refuse to make love to me without a condom?” he growls.
“Uh…Hello? You demanded condoms before. Are you getting pissy now because I’m the one demanding them? If they cramp your damn style that much, lift your lockdown long enough for me to go get on the pill and the problem will be solved.”
He stares at me, and I get the distinct impression that my answer didn’t make him any happier.
“What?”
“How. Fucking. Long?” he growls, using each word like an accusation. The only problem is, I have no idea what he’s accusing me of.
“I don’t understand,” I tell him, starting to believe no matter what I say, it’s not going to make anything better.
“How long are you going to hold my failure over my fucking head? How long will you let it affect our relationship? How we communicate with each other? How we fucking sleep with each other?” he growls.
“Your failure?”
“You said I let you down, Gorgeous. You admitted to it. The other night when you were drinking. I told you I was sorry that I let you down and you said you were too. You can’t go back and pretend those words weren’t said now. I apologized and I know that doesn’t make it all better, I’m not stupid. But, will you ever be able to look at me and not hate me? Will we ever be able to get past the fact that I’m the reason we lost our child?” he asks, his voice tortured, his face a mixture of pain and misery.
“Will we ever be able to get past the fact that I’m the reason we lost our child?”
Is that really what he believes? Is that what he thinks I feel?
“Noah,” I whisper. I walk to him slowly, hating the misery I see on him—and probably because it reflects what’s inside of me. “Sweetheart, I don’t blame you for the loss of our child,” I add gently, sliding my hand under the fall of his hair and holding the side of his face.
“You agreed I let you down, Rory, and I did. I let everyone down,” he says, his voice agonized.
“Not about me losing the baby, Noah. You let me down by not believing me when I told you I was pregnant, but I’m past that now. I told you after talking with Dani, I could understand that your reactions are your own—colored by the experiences you’ve been through. Just like mine are now. Things change us, we can’t help that,” I stress to him.
I thought my words would help. I thought that maybe they’d make him feel better. One look at the pain on his face and the tears that are unshed, but glowing in his eyes proves that I am wrong.
How do I fix this?
“It’s fine, Rory. It’s okay,” he says, but he’s wrong, nothing is okay.
“Noah, you have to listen to me,” I plead, needing to erase the pain on his face. It hurts to see it.
“Just go, Rory,” he says turning away from me to look out the window. “I know what I did. I know nothing can change it. If it wasn’t for me we’d be welcoming our child into the world like Torrent and Devil. It’s all my fault. I was stupid to think you could let that go.”
“It wasn’t you, Noah!” I tell him, hating that he feels this way. I hate that he’s making me relive it all too, but I push through it. I push through it because at least one of us should have that weight lifted away.
“There’s no one else to blame, Rory,” he says quietly.
“There is! There’s King! It’s not your fault our child isn’t here anymore, Noah. It’s his!”
“If that’s true, then why the condoms, Rory? Why? Why can’t you tell me you love me anymore if you don’t blame me?” he asks, turning to look at me, despair laced in every word… the same despair in mine.
We’re both so broken I don’t even know how to begin to fix either of us.