Page 35 of Noah
“Well, that was a long time ago. These days you don’t need anyone to save you. Besides, I can’t beat guys up for you anymore. I’m supposed to be acting more responsible. You’ve got this big magazine job. We’re not supposed to be seen together, even if we wanted to. No hero would put you in that situation.”
I shrugged. “True. But I’ve never thought of you as a normal sort of hero.”
The kiss he gave me was slow and deep. Suggestive. Intoxicating.
“What kind of hero am I, then?”
“My kind,” I whispered, knowing we should be working on a plan to get him back to his room.
And not giving a single fuck.
It turned out my sense of self-preservation was what really needed saving in that moment. But I was too busy giving in—again—to that light in his eyes to remember that.
22
NOAH
Iwoke up in a panic, the way you do when you know something’s wrong. Then I lay very still, trying to remember where I was. This wasn’t my room. It was way too clean.
Oh, right. I wasn’t in my room because I was in Molly’s. We’d come here last night after jumping each other on the roof, and then spent the whole night...
Oh my God, we’d been so tangled up with each other that we’d spent the whole night here, pretending the rest of the world didn’t exist. And she’d been here this morning. I remembered her presence. I thought we might have even talked, so I hadn’t been hallucinating it. But where was she now? I looked toward the bathroom, wondering if maybe she was having a shower, but the water wasn’t running and the door was open. She didn’t have a suite like I did, so she wasn’t in the other room working. She wasn’t in the sitting area by the window.
Then I heard the sound of voices. Not just any voices, either. They were shouting questions and comments, people talking over each other like each of them was more important than the last, until it was a complete mash of voices.
I knew that sound. I’d been attacked by that sound far too many times. The press was out there, and they had someone cornered. Someone they found interesting.
“Molly!” someone suddenly shouted. “Didn’t you used to work for this band? Do you know anything about where Noah Michael is right now? Everyone seems to have lost him.”
Shit.
I was out of bed and searching for my clothes before I could think, and then I realized that I had a problem. I’d come here in the same clothes I’d worn to the meeting yesterday, which meant I only had a business suit. Not exactly something most rock stars wore this early in the morning. If anyone had been at that meeting yesterday, they’d know that this was what I was wearing the last time they saw me.
Yesterday.
And they’d see that I was coming out of Molly’s room.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Molly!” someone else shouted, and that made my decision for me. I rushed for the door, pulling my slacks up and trying to button my shirt at the same time. I didn’t care what they thought of me. I needed to get her out of there before she had a panic attack from them shouting at her.
I burst through the door into the hall and looked right and left, trying to find them. Then I saw her. They had her cornered in the elevator banks, about ten of them shooting photos and shouting questions, and I nearly ran in that direction. They were so intent on Molly that they hadn’t seen me come out of her room, and that was something.
I hoped.
Because I was remembering what she’d said that first night, now, about her magazine giving her rules. She was forbidden from messing with anyone she was covering, if I was remembering correctly, and that meant me. And I was supposedto be cleaning up my act, not sleeping with girls who used to be roadies for the band and were now part of the press.
Wait a minute.
Molly was part of the press. Why were they attacking her like this? Weren’t they supposed to protect their own or something? This didn’t make any sense.
Unless she was still too new to be part of that crowd, a voice in my head told me. Maybe she didn’t know the rest of the gaggle well enough to be able to count on them. Or maybe they just saw a story juicy enough that they didn’t care about protecting her.
She was backed into a corner, holding them off with one hand while her eyes flashed to the right and left. She looked completely panicked, like she knew this was all going sideways on her, and I saw, to my horror, that she was still in her pajamas. What had she thought she was doing, going down for coffee or something? Out here in her pajamas, while I was in the suit I’d worn yesterday...
God, this just kept getting worse.
I plowed right through the reporters, knocking them out of my way to get to her, and found her nearly in tears on the other side of them.
