Page 72 of Poor Little Rich Girl

Noah.

He limps up to the window and knocks on the glass, then jabs his thumb in the direction of the front door. My mind flicks back to the police officer who came to the door all those weeks ago and started this whole nightmare. I glare at Noah through the glass. Why’s he come here like this?

I take my time getting to the front door. I don’t want him to think I’m desperate to know why he didn’t answer my call or wasn’t at school today or why he’s shown up, here, on enemy territory.

As I crack the door, Noah’s already halfway back down the driveway, a trail of cactus spines scattered in his wake. He turns and runs back, pressing his face in the narrow gap.

“Hello.”

“Just open the damn door so we can talk like normal people,” he growls.

“We are not normal people, Noah. I’m not in the habit of opening this door to anyone, most especially people who hate me.”

“I want to not hate you.” He searches my face with those intense eyes of his. It’s as though in those dark depths is a museum of locked rooms and dark spells – all Noah’s past hurts and present rage painted bright across his soul, but he’s got the lights off so all I can see are the edges. “Tell me something that makes me not hate you.”

I raise an eyebrow. “So this is the wrong time to show you my ‘Hitler is my Homeboy’ T-shirt.”

The corner of Noah’s mouth tugs up. It’s not quite a smile, but it’s the start of one.

It looks good on him.

Damn good.

“I came to talk about Eli. And… other stuff. But mostly Eli. He saw you guys at the club on Friday.” Noah’s shoulders rise and fall. “You and Gabe. Heading upstairs to the bedrooms.”

I nod.

“He’s not taking it well.”

“Does he want me to kiss it better?”

“This isn’t funny.” Noah’s eyes flare with fire. “I’ve just come from his place. He’s… I haven’t seen him this bad since you left. Don’t you see? This is you deserting him all over again. I know you’re a stone-cold bitch with ice for a heart, but I thought you at least cared about Eli—”

“I do care.” I glare at Noah. “Eli doesn’t have a right to be pissed at me. He has no claim over me. If you want the truth, Noah Marlowe, I slept with Gabriel and it was brilliant. But I’m not his girlfriend.” I open my hands. “The truth is I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”

Noah’s jaw is so tight I’m worried it might snap. “Why him?”

“Why not him?” I shoot back. “And while we’re on the topic, why you?”

“What the fuck do you mean?” he growls.

“I know why this matters to Eli. He thinks we have a connection because we were friends when we were kids, but so what? A lot has happened since then. I’m not the same person, and he needs to stop believing I am. I’ll only end up hurting him worse, and I don’t want to do that to him. What I want to know is why it matters to you.”

“I’m here for Eli.”

I fold my arms and fix him with my Ice Queen glare. “As Gabriel would say, bollocks.”

Noah turns away. I sense a hundred unanswered questions rolling through his head. Finally, he decides on one. “Eli says you don’t remember what happened four years ago. He says you’ve got some specific type of amnesia. Is that true?”

I buckle under the severity of his gaze. My hand flies to the locket at my throat. Right now I really, really don’t want to lie to Noah. “I remember some things. I know your brother died because my father gave him experimental supplements that caused his heart to fail. But I don’t know what I did specifically to make you hate me, beyond the fact that I wear the surname Malloy. I know that doesn’t excuse your pain, but that’s the truth. I don’t fucking remember.”

Noah looks back at me then. The anguish in his eyes is so raw, so primal, it draws me toward him. The two of us are magnets drawn together by wrath. “My brother never would have taken those pills if it weren’t for you.”

I unlock the door and hold it open, not wide enough that he feels as though it’s an invitation, but enough that the two of us breathe the same air. I sense the tension coiling around him, wrapping his body in a cocoon of hostility that’s supposed to repel me but draws me like a Valley Girl to a designer shoe sale.

“I don’t know if you ever met him – he was four years older than us. Top of his class every year, star athlete with a shot at the Olympic team, but he wasn’t full of himself. He was the nicest fucking guy you could ever hope to meet, so much nicer than I could—” Noah stops himself. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows once, twice. “One day at school, Eli was out sick and you sat with me at lunch. You told me that your father was looking for athletes to trial a new performance-enhancing drug. All-natural, developed from an ancient remedy, won’t show up on a drug test. You set up a meeting with our families. You—”

A sound explodes between us, like the pop of a Champagne bottle being opened, only louder. Chips of concrete blast off the side of the house and rain down on me and Noah.

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