Page 138 of Echoes of Us

“I don’t have it in me. I don’t want to keep having this same fight. I don’t want to feel like this. We’re done, okay? Please let me be done. Give up on us, Noah.”

His eyes were filled with anguish. “I won’t.”

I took his hands from me and placed them on his lap. “I’m sorry.”

He gave me a brisk nod and looked down.

I got up and walked away. I didn’t think it could keep hurting this much.

I thought it couldn’t break any further.

I was so fucking wrong.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

BEFORE

That day, Noah told me everything. We were up until one in the afternoon as he opened up about his life. His dad, a hedge fund manager, was twice as old as his mom. He had a previous marriage, and Noah had two older brothers he no longer spoke to. When his dad was diagnosed with stage three Hodgkin’s lymphoma two months before Noah graduated high school, he signed over all his assets to Noah. This move caused a rift in the family. His brothers stopped speaking to them and didn’t attend his dad’s funeral. His mom and sister were furious. During his dad’s last year, Noah was the only one on good terms with him. He went through it all—chemo, doctor appointments, surgeries. It was all on Noah.

When Noah started college, he frequently flew back to be with his dad. Things got worse, and his dad was put into a medically induced coma while Noah wasn’t there.

His dad never woke up.

After he died, things with his mom became more complicated. She didn’t want to hand over the accounts and was spending all the money, so Noah had to use the family lawyers to set things right, even organizing an allowance for his own mother through a hearing. Around that time, rumors started circulating about his dad—insider trading and market manipulation. His dad’s reputation plummeted, and there was even a documentary about it. It aired a week before Noah was sent to rehab.

Noah’s mom had always been an issue. Young and beautiful, a former model, she left him to be raised by nannies. She roped him into modeling when he was thirteen. That’s when he flunked out of a year in high school and the substance abuse started.

It began with weed, then drinking. At fifteen, he tried coke for the first time at a party. He used it for a couple of weeks before his dad intervened and got him out of his modeling contract. Returning to school, he joined the volleyball team and met Colin. He didn’t use again until college, when he got his own apartment. Then it never stopped.

He told himself he’d only use at parties, but as his dad’s condition worsened, so did his addiction. He needed it to stay awake for classes after sleepless nights, to focus, to work out, to stay in shape, to socialize, to be interesting, and more outgoing. After his dad died, it was constant.

Out of rehab and back at school, the first thing he did was call his dealer. His mom made him enroll again, and he agreed, just to move away from her and be close to Holly, his only real friend. He had no intention of quitting or taking classes seriously until he met me. By then, it was too late. He flunked out of four of his five courses for lack of attendance.

At Christmas, he told his mom he was staying here in LA, even if he wasn’t going to keep going to school. The fight began. She screamed at him for not amounting to anything, being irresponsible, and snorting their money away. Heyelled at her for being a gold digger jumping at the first chance of a richer husband. Their relationship was worse than ever, barely speaking, only when absolutely necessary.

Now I knew everything, or as Noah said, most of the worst. He told me he was in therapy but didn’t stick to it regularly. He was trying hard this time because he didn’t want to let me down. He didn’t expect to meet me in the middle of this and fall in love, but he did, and he wanted to make it work.

Hearing all this made my heart bleed for him. It was worse than finding him alone in that apartment. I had been right. He was really alone, dealing with heartbreak I couldn’t begin to understand. The whole thing with his dad was horrific. He’d been through something terrible, and everyone judged him for not handling it well enough. He was still a kid. He shouldn’t have been going through this alone.

He promised me he wasn’t using and wouldn’t again. He was serious this time, and I believed him. I really did.

I hated that this ruined his birthday and spent the day trying to make it better. I got him a cake, and after we slept, we spent the rest of the day in bed, Noah clinging to me. That night, I saw his pill bottle by the sink and opened it to count them. Fifteen pills. The next night, before bed, I counted them again. Fourteen pills.

I couldn’t get away from Noah until Monday to talk to Colin. Noah told me he was going to take a week off from training because he didn’t want to deal with Ezra. So, after training, we finally got a chance to talk. I went to their apartment, and they sat with me in the living room.

“You know, this feels like an intervention.”

They exchanged glances.

“Or like you’re about to tell me you’re getting a divorce,” I added.

They both chuckled.

“I think it might be more like the first one, Att,” Colin said.

“I talked to Noah after the party. He told me about everything.”

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