Page 15 of Catching My Dreams

How had she ever thought Noah Warner, the man who hated her guts, and maybe rightly so, would ever want her?

“You and I both know that’s not true,” she bit out before standing up and turning back to Becca and Jasmine. “I’ll see you guys at practice.”

“Ella, you don’t have to go,” Becca said before sending a glare in Noah’s direction.

“If I don’t want to be arrested for murder, I really do.”

“Wow, progressing to murder threats,” Noah tutted. “Very classy.”

Ella’s headache was getting worse by the second, and if she didn’t leave soon, she was sure the muscles in her shoulders would never recover from the tension.

“You’re seriously going to stand there and accuse me of not being classy?” she asked, not believing his audacity. “After the stunt you pulled, you’re actually going to stand there and pretend you have the higher moral ground?”

The muscles in his jaw feathered, and his eyes darkened. “I didn’t d—”

“Don’t you dare,” she spat, yanking her bookbag onto her shoulder. “You’re a real piece of work. I can’t believe I ever saw anything good in you.”

His eyes flickered, and if Ella didn’t know that he didn’t care a lick about what she thought of him, she would have thought her words had inflicted hurt. His jaw set harder, and Ella could have sworn his nostrils flared ever so slightly. His rage became almost palpable, thickening the air between them and making Ella’s skin tighten with nerves.

He leaned forward, his next words landing like bullets against her paper-thin skin. “I can’t believe Asher still does see good in you.”

“You wouldn’t, would you,” she managed to reply before her throat grew too tight for any more words to escape it.

Ella left the building in a daze, her vision misted with tears and her mind replaying Noah’s words on a loop. What he’d said had hurt, and the knowledge that he might have been right made them hurt even more so.

She had been selfish when it came to Asher. She’d relied on him for years, had called him at all hours of the night when she’d seen anything particularly bad in her dreams, and he’d always been there for her.

She’d never told him the truth of her dreams until after he’d gone missing, but he’d always been there, never demanding to know why she suffered from such terrible nightmares or getting frustrated when she inevitably called him again and again.

But when it was her turn to return the favor, she’d failed miserably. She hadn’t done the one thing she should have done until it was far too late. And worse, it had taken Noah’s harsh words after they’d slept together for her to finally face her fears. If Noah hadn’t been honest with her about how selfish she’d been, she might never have gone back to the spirit plane.

Even when she eventually did the right thing, it wasn’t because she’d come to the realization herself. It was because Noah had broken her so badly that her fears no longer seemed so scary. He was the reason she’d found Asher. He was the hero of the story. Not her.

Asher may have forgiven her, but Ella didn’t know if she could ever forgive herself.

5

Regret was becoming a familiar taste on Noah’s tongue. Words rolled off of it too easily, each one a barbed dagger aimed at the one person he desperately wished he could hate but had never been able to. She dished it back just as well, but Noah didn’t think either of them could ever win the war that had become more vicious since he’d left her bedroom weeks ago.

How could either of them win when all they ever accomplished was tearing one another down? Lord knew he didn’t feel like he’d won when Ella left the Intercultural Centre. Every word she’d said to him was laced with venomous loathing, and he hated that he hated that. It was a mess. They were a mess.

His first instinct when it came to Ella had been to attack and deride for so long that it had been all too natural for him to scoff when he’d overheard her talking about her new nail polish color.

He knew she wasn’t some shallow woman who only cared about her looks. He knew she had gone through so much more than any of their classmates could ever imagine.

But that stupid nail polish had set him off, reminding him of the time he’d seen her when Asher was still missing, and she’d been gushing about her freshly painted nails to her gran. Yet she hadn’t taken the time to be at any of the search parties.

He couldn’t connect that image of her with the young girl he’d once crushed on so hard that he’d wanted to put a candy ring on her finger. He couldn’t connect that version of her with the woman who’d told them about what Brett had tried to do to her when she was sixteen. He couldn’t connect the selfish, shallow person he’d thought she was for most of the time he’d known her with the strong person who’d gone through something so terrible yet still managed to put a smile on her face every day.

The lines between the two versions of her were so blurred that he no longer knew what to think of her or how to treat her. All he knew was that he was angry.

Angry at her for thinking he would ever stoop so low. Angry at Brett for ever laying a finger on her. Angry at himself for hurting her. Angry at Ella for abandoning him but remaining friends with Asher when they were kids. Angry at her for rejecting him when he was old enough to know he wanted her but too young to know what that really meant.

He was angry. At Ella. At himself. At the world.

And when he was angry, his teammates knew it.

“You were a beast today,” Chris said when they were leaving the field.

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