Page 36 of The Fallen
“Oh. Right, well, I’ll have the rump steak, rare. With chips.” I place the menu down and cross my arms.
He still wears the same expression, but I do hear a ‘huh’. “Something wrong?” I ask.
“No. Just wouldn’t have you down as a meat lover.”
“I like lots of different foods. Besides, it’s a country pub. The steak should be good. If we were at an Italian, I’d order pasta.” I hope to see where the conversation might go, but he doesn’t join in.
I take a deep breath and sigh, sitting back in my chair as he leaves. Presumably, he's going to order? Who knows with him. Regardless, what am I doing? Trying to make him talk seems pointless. And perhaps it is. That kiss, while overwhelming, might just be a kiss. Nothing more.
“I ordered you a white wine. Just the house one,” Noah says as he returns and places the glass in front of me. A pint of golden beer is his choice.
“Fine, thank you. I’m not much of a drinker.”
“No, I guessed. More of a tea drinker, right?” He raises his brow, and I have to wonder if he’s making a joke about the mint tea I served him in Morocco. Jokes don't seem like his style, though. Probably a dig at me.
“Do you visit your brother often?” I blurt out.
Now we're here, I can’t keep some of the questions I’ve been pondering from escaping. He takes a long sip of his drink, and I assume he’s going to ignore my question until he finally answers. “Sometimes. Not as much as I should.”
“Why do you say that?”
“If you were the reason one of your siblings was in prison, wouldn’t you visit as much as you could?” He looks up from his drink and holds my stare as if challenging me to answer.
“Maybe. But heisguilty,” I state. Does that make him less entitled to see his brother?
“I know,” he mutters quietly. His eyes are now filled with an angry warning, and I see the darker side to him again - the side that can kill a man in cold blood. “Doesn’t make it easier,” he adds, as if he's wrestling with his actions himself.
“Were you close?”
“As kids, yeah. I guess. He kept me out of trouble for a while, then roles reversed.” He shrugs and looks at his beer. “We didn’t have the same kind of childhood as you would have had. You come from where we did and life doesn't help you out. We were exactly where we were always gonna be.”
“Didn’t you want to be something or someone growing up?”
He drinks more beer, staring at me. “You mean, besides a criminal?”
I shake my head and pull back. “I didn’t mean that. When you were younger?” I want to know details, information, anything that will help me to solve the puzzle that is Noah Locke.
“Not everyone is destined to be a lawyer or a doctor or something else equally responsible in life. Some of us have to scrape by and deal with what we’ve been dealt. End of.”
There’s an undercurrent of anger and frustration in his words, like he doesn’t want to think of possibilities, certainly not anymore. Thankfully, our food is delivered, and I see he went for the steak as well. It shouldn’t surprise me.
We eat in comfortable silence for a while. Or rather, the succulent meat is enough of a distraction for my mind to pause with the questions. The abbreviated history of his and his brother’s childhood has me thinking about my own, wondering if we’d have been different if we didn’t have the Broderick name or money behind us. If we were the Davis’ and had to start from nothing, where would we be now? Was it all our privilege that delivered us to where we are? But Seffi was so determined to do it on her own. She didn’t have the Broderick name behind her, and she rose to the top of her career anyway, working for everything she got. Landon wanted to throw most of his responsibilities away.
And just because we have money, it’s never meant we all haven’t had to work for it. Like Daddy and Grandfather. Maybe our name opened doors, but surely there’s more to it? Maybe looking in from the outside, it doesn’t look that way, though.
I pause my eating for a moment and sit back. “I was always the one on the outside with my siblings, at least with Landon and Ivy. They bickered and fought all the time. They’re so similar. And then Seffi was born, and she was the centre of attention for my mother. Of course, Landon and Ivy were off doing their own thing, then. I often feel like I just blended into the background. Landon might have had all the pressure put on him, and Ivy was fighting to show Father that she was just as good. It didn’t matter to anyone what I did.” I pick up my wine and down the remainder, the reality of what’s at stake hitting me once again and souring my mood. “Do you regret anything you've done?” I change the subject back to Noah.
“Regret? No.”
“Nothing? Not even Stefan?”
He sighs and looks me over, and I feel his gaze on every part of my body. Perhaps he’s trying to decide whether talking is useful between us. It implies we have a connection. One that, for me, is only growing the longer we’re together. “Maybe. I had good grandparents, though. They taught me right from wrong, so I did what I did.”
I think right from wrong is a relative term with regard to Noah, but it’s the first time he’s given any glimpse of himself in response, so I smile and keep going in hope. “And your parents?”
“Drug addict and prostitute.” He swallows a gulp of his beer, but keeps his eyes on me. “Nothing to talk about as far as they’re concerned.”
The statement shocks me, and I look at my nearly empty plate rather than hold his gaze. “I’m sorry.”
