Page 4 of Saving Noah

Chapter 2

Noah leaned his head against the damp wall of the gym sauna and closed his eyes.One, two, three, four. If he counted slowly and focused only on the next number, he could forget he’d left the safety of his apartment.Five, six, seven, eight. If anyone happened to look in his direction, they wouldn’t know he was a certified nut case as long as he kept his focus on the numbers.Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. He could pretend his life wasn’t a PowerPoint presentation of one mistake after another.Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. If he focused on the numbers, he wouldn’t focus on the fact he suffered from a serious case of the lusts for his incredibly hot asshole neighbor. The neighbor who clearly thought he engaged in some sort of illegal activity and, if every past encounter they’d had was any indication, hated him.

He stopped counting, banged the back of his head against the wall, and tried to fantasize that he was a normal person instead of a walking, talking disaster. His mental shape that morning wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity of good; it never was after awork night. He hated himself for what he did to earn money—what he let them do to him for money—but his illness didn’t allow for a lot of job opportunities, so he sucked it up and did what had to be done. The following day always left a bad taste in his mouth and an ache in his heart, but this Saturday had been exceptionally bad. He’d made a fool of himself in front of his neighbor last night and ended up making the man dislike him even more.

For about the millionth time in the past four years, he asked himself what his life would’ve been like if only he’d minded his own business and kept his fucking mouth shut. Would he be normal?

He’d wanted to be a veterinarian since he was six years old, and if he’d kept on the path he’d planned, he would be close to opening his own clinic by now. Would his parents finally be proud of him? Would he know the kiss of the sun against his skin while he swam in the ocean or walked on a beach? Would he have a lover? Thanks to online classes, he possessed several degrees and could speak six languages. Thanks to hisillness, he couldn’t use his degrees and didn’t have anybody to talk to, regardless of what language they spoke.

He opened his eyes and looked around the steamy room, assuring himself he remained alone. Most folks avoided him like the plague. It didn’t take long for people to realize he was…different.

Odd.

Strange.

Pathetic.

He made people just as uncomfortable as they made him, so when people saw him enter the sauna, they suddenly decided a prostate exam would be more enjoyable than a relaxing date with the steam room. Sure, he could be stretching the reality or just having himself a grand ole pity party, but facts were facts. He walked in; people walked out.

His ability to clear a room hadn’t really bothered him all that much until his new neighbor moved in. Zachary. Last night might have been a colossal fuck-up of epic proportions, but he’d at least finally learned his neighbor’s name. He liked it. Zachary. It fit. Zachary was hotter than fuck and managed to wake up a part of him he’d feared had deserted his body without planning on returning. His sex drive had been virtually dormant since the attack and his ensuing illness, and the meds he required to keep a weak grip on his sanity didn’t help. Zachary woke his defunct sex drive the fuck up. The lust was dormant no longer!

Okay, so his body whispered that sex might be back on the menu. Why, oh why, did he have to be attracted to someone who disliked him so damned much? An even better question was why the man found him so…repulsive. Yeah, that was the best word he could come up with to describe the look in Zachary’s eyes on the few occasions where they’d made eye contact. Sure, every other person in the apartment complex avoided him, but they didn’t have revulsion dancing around in their eyes. It usually resembled something closer topity. They knew something was wrong with him, but they couldn’t quite figure out what it was, so maybe they just felt sorry for him. Oh, and avoided him.

He shook his head and tried to make his mind focus on some sort of plan for his future instead of worrying about all the shit that was wrong with him because of his past. Zachary. How could he make the man look past all the red flags surrounding him and see that beneath all of it, he was…

Shit. The wordokaydidn’t fit. Hell, he wasn’t even surenice guywould work. There wasn’t anybody to practice his nice-guy skills on, so as far as he knew, he was a complete douche. He had Cameron—his one and only friend. Cameron took care of him and made sure he got what he needed to survive. Then again, Cameron worked for the district attorney’s office and FBI, so a heavy chance existed he wasn’t really Noah’s friend at all. They probably paid Cameron to keep their ex-star witness on a tight leash in case Donovan Moretti ever decided to show his face again.

Noah shook his head and frowned. No, Cameron was actually nice to him, appeared to worry about him, and made sure Noah found a way to make money without ever leaving his apartment building. Hell, the man bought his groceries. He loaded him down with delicious chocolates and all those naughty goodies that were bad for a body. Surely that was true friendship love, right?

Cameron didn’t like Zachary. No, he didn’t care for Noah’s obsession with Zachary. After Noah had spent a good thirty minutes trying to guess what his neighbor did for a living—anything from an MMA fighter to a porn star to a former Navy SEAL—Cameron sat him down and calmly explained why dwelling on the man who lived next door wouldn’t behealthyfor someone with no future and a past he couldn’t forget.

Hell, Cameron was probably right to be worried. Noah possessed an unhealthy infatuation, and he suspected, with now one hundred percent certainty after their run-in last night, that the muscle-god who lived next door disliked him immensely. Where exactly could this boy-crush raging through him lead? No-the-fuck-where. Zachary, with all his bulging muscles and hot tattoos, wasn’t interested. End of story.

That might be the end of the story, but clearly not the end of his fantasizing. For ninety-four days, he’d thought of nothing except how fucking hot the guy looked every time he saw him. Every. Damn. Time. How did somebody look good all the time? Even when he left in the mornings to go to work, wherever he worked. Noah knew this because he watched him through the peephole in his door. He looked good when he came home from work, tired but fucking good. When he worked out in the gym? Holy motherfucking son of all that was holy. Intimidating didn’t cover it. Muscular. Dominant. Confident. Powerful. He was the opposite of everything Noah was…and Noah wanted to taste it.

Just once.

Maybe more than once.

Definitely more than once.

The first time he’d watched Zachary work out in their gym, Noah’s cock had shown some signs of life all by itself. No Viagra needed to wake that bad boy up when Zachary, hot neighbor, was around. Being twenty-two and getting a hard-on shouldn’t be that big of a deal, right? Being twenty-two and on six antidepressants made getting an erection about as easy as winning the lottery.

But Zachary somehow overrode all those pharmaceutical impediments.

Mysterious vibe? Check.

Enough muscles and tattoos to make Noah’s mouth water? Check.

Gray eyes that smoldered when he looked at anybody except Noah? Check.

Sexy voice? Check.

He checked all the get-Noah-hot boxes, but then when you added the dog into the mix, Noah’s lust level soared off the charts. He loved animals—all animals. Though there were quite a few he’d rather not cuddle up to or watch take down prey in the wild, they all pulled at his heartstrings. He wanted to cuddle them, squeeze them, hug them, and pet them.

But he couldn’t want those things. Not when he was afraid of his own shadow and couldn’t leave the apartment building. He pushed the damp hair off his face as he considered what pet might be a good fit for him. He’d considered a cat. Since they used litterboxes, he wouldn’t have to take it outside to use the bathroom. But all animals needed sunshine, even if only from a window. He wouldn’t be able to share that with them thanks to the thick black curtains that covered every single damned window. And what about medical attention on a regular basis? Yeah, he couldn’t add an extra job onto Cameron’s already long list of babysitting duties. The extra burden wasn’t fair. So, he’d decided long ago he’d have no pets until he finally learned to put on his big boy britches and step back out into the big, bad world.

So…no pets for Noah. Period.

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