Page 77 of Play On

“I’m not wrong!” Noah cries, his calmness shattered by my words. “We could have been at the hospital. They would have found it. They could have done surgery. Mum said so.”

His mum said so.

I have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach the second I hear those words. His mother, out of grief and guilt, flung those words at a shattered sixteen-year-old boy. A boy who has taken those words and guilt and carried them with him this entire time.

“Have you ever googled aneurysms?” I ask softly.

Noah nods. “Yes. I know where you are going, Violet. Odds were he wouldn’t have made it. But maybe hecouldhave. There could have been a chance.”

“From what you are describing,” I say gently, “I think your dad had passed before he even fell to the floor. You staying home wouldn’t have changed that. Your mum said things out of guilt and grief, things that were misplaced onto your shoulders.This was a horrible tragedy, Noah. But I don’t think it was preventable. It just happened.”

Noah’s body flinches underneath mine. I stare into his eyes, and I see the torment of a man who knows I’m speaking the truth, but I also see a sixteen-year-old boy who is haunted by his mum’s words.

I put both my hands on his face, holding it still. “It’s not your fault. It’s never been your fault. You need to let this go. Because from what you’ve told me about your dad, he would hate that you’ve carried this with you. It’s the last thing he would want.”

Noah stares back at me. I see a desperation to believe me, but a fear to let go of the lie that has haunted him for all these years.

“I’m telling you the truth,” I whisper. “I’m telling you this as someone who cares about you. I’m telling you this as someone looking at this from the outside. There is nothing you could have done to prevent this. If your mum is blaming you, that’s misplaced grief. Not reality. It’s not your fault.”

Tears fill Noah’s eyes.

“It’s not your fault,” I repeat, my voice stronger. “It’sneverbeen your fault. You’ve never had anyone tell you this, so I’m going to be the one to do it. There is nothing that would have changed the outcome of what happened.Nothing. And you deserve to be free of this burden. You’ve carried it long enough. It’s time for it to end, Noah. You can let it go.”

His Adam’s apple moves. Noah is desperately trying to keep his emotions from coming out, but I know that is the last thing he needs. So I draw his head down to my shoulder and cradle him to me.

“Let it go,” I urge, my own voice breaking. “You don’t have to keep this with you any longer.”

A choked sob escapes him. Tears fall down my face as he cries softly into my shoulder. We cry together, for the tragedy that took his father, for the blame Noah has been forced to shouldersince he was a teenager, and for the family forever fractured by loss and grief.

When his tears stop, Noah lifts his head. I wipe the tearstains off his face, and his eyes search mine.

“I haven’t cried since the day he died,” he whispers. “It’s like part of me died with him.”

“You said you aren’t close to your mum and your brother. Now I think I understand why.”

Noah nods. “Jake never forgave me for what happened. I don’t think Mum has, either. She spiralled in grief. We sold the house soon after Dad died, as she couldn’t bear to live there anymore. We got another place, but Mum hated Surrey, and as soon as I turned eighteen and was put out on loan to Spain, she moved back to Kent. We talk from time to time, and I see her a few times a year, but she refuses to come to any of my games because she associates that with what happened to my dad.”

Now it all makes sense. Noah has had this stellar career with no one ever coming to one of his fixtures.

Ever.

“Something happened about a week before Dad died that I didn’t believe in at the time, but now it makes sense,” he says, interrupting my thoughts.

“What was that?” I ask.

“We had a conversation, one that I hadn’t thought about until the night I met you for the first time at Wisteria House. Dad told me my dedication to the game was great, but almost too much so. He told me I needed to have fun and I wasn’t very good at taking time out to do that.

“He also told me,” Noah continues softly, continuing to brush away my tears, “that one day I’d meet a girl who would make everything make sense. She would be the spark I needed to want more than life on the pitch. She would push me in different ways.Dad told me that when I met her, I would know it. And he told me I would be an idiot if I didn’t pursue it.”

My breath catches in my throat.

“I brushed it aside. I had fun on my own terms, but nothing that interfered with my schedule for football. Women were limited to discreet hook-ups, and those weren’t frequent. I was not one to be out partying, I kept more to myself. It was what I had to do to achieve what I wanted to do, and after Dad died—well, I felt like I had to make sure my goals were realised not only for myself, but for him, too.”

I see everything so clearly about Noah now. His relentless pursuit of excellence has a fuller picture behind it. He has been driven since he was little because he loved the game, but after his dad passed, it became a mission to achieve so his dad’s death wasn’t for nothing, as misguided as that thought was.

“I didn’t understand what Dad meant about women until that night I met you at Wisteria House,” Noah confesses, tracing the freckles on my nose and cheeks with his index finger. “Iknewit, Violet. And when I found out Camden had an invitation to come to your house in Dorset, I went to Bella and asked a favour. I asked her to see if she could get me an invite to come down here, too. I was going to take my chances with you.”

I stare at him in amazement. “I don’t know what you saw that first night that made you think that. We didn’t even speak!”

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