Page 49 of Your Fault

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Grason, but Nicholas has repeatedly said there is no discussing this.”

“Then meet me on your own, just the two of us. Nicholas doesn’t need to know. Just pick a place.”

What? I couldn’t do that. Nicholas would kill me. He would feel betrayed if I talked about him to the woman he hated most in the world, the woman who had hurt him more than anyone had… No way.

“You don’t understand. He doesn’t want to see you, and there’s no way I’m going to lie to Nicholas.”

I was being firm. I guess all that stress from recent days was rising to the surface. Plus, I needed to defend my boyfriend, keep anyone from harming him, including me.

I heard Anabel take a deep breath. Then she went on.

“Here’s the deal,” she said, changing her tone to a more strident one. “My six-year-old daughter has a father who spends half his time traveling all over the world. I can’t be with her all day, and I know Nicholas wants her to spend some time at his apartment. It’s fine with me, but my husband refuses to talk about it. If you do what I ask, if you meet with me and help me find a way to recover my relationship with my son, I’ll let Nicholas visit with Madison when my husband is away. But if you don’t, I’ll do whatever I can to make sure Nicholas doesn’t see his sister again.”

Damn. Maddie was everything to Nicholas. I couldn’t believe that woman would threaten such a thing. Was that the kind of relationship she wanted with her son? One based on deceit and blackmail? I felt my blood boiling with rage. I wanted to hang up on her and let her know very clearly what I thought of her proposal, but it was Maddie we were talking about. If Nicholas had his way, she’d be living with him. He’d talked to lawyers, his father had tried to find a way to let him have her for a few weeks, but it was impossible: if her mother didn’t agree, there was nothing to be done… I knew I was treading dangerous ground, but I couldn’t let that woman come between Nick and his sister.

“Where do you want to meet?” I asked, hating myself for letting her manipulate me.

I could almost hear her smile on the other line.

“I’ll let Nicholas know he can have Maddie next week. We will meet when I bring her. Don’t worry, it’ll be our secret. No one will have to know.”

“I don’t want to lie to him, and eventually I’ll tell him. I promise you he won’t like it. What you’re doing, extorting me, is going to have the opposite result of the one you want. Nicholas doesn’t forgive easily, and you are the person who’s hurt him more than anyone else in his life.”

“You haven’t heard every side of the story, Noah. Things aren’t always the way you believe or the way you’ve been told.”

I didn’t want to hear another word from her. “Send me the address of the place you want to meet.”

I hung up without waiting for a response and lay down on the bed, looking at the roof and feeling guiltier than I ever had.

Eventually, my mother came to tell me she and Will were going to a charity ball on the other end of town and that they wouldn’t be staying at home that night. She said I should invite Jenna over, and I agreed without really thinking about it. Nick was the one I wanted to have sleep over, but a part of me was scared to call him and for him to realize I was hiding something. I spent the rest of the day torn, but when I saw he hadn’t called me either, I went back to bed, determined to spend the night alone with my nightmares.

20

Nick

After what Raffaella had said, plus the conversation with Jenna and the call from my mom, I spent a few days in a fog. What scared me was that they might be right. I wasn’t the perfect boyfriend. Till recently, I hadn’t even been anyone’s boyfriend! When my mother had abandoned me, I’d sworn I was never going to give anyone the power to hurt me again. No way I was going to leave myself open to rejection after that.

But with Noah, everything had changed, and I felt like I was dying inside when I thought something might go wrong, that I might not be good for her, that she would end up leaving me the way my mother had.

Her not calling me didn’t exactly help ease my mind. I didn’t understand why Noah hadn’t wanted me to come see her. My boss told me my father was going to the other end of town, and all it took was one phone call to verify that and to figure out that Raffaella was going with him. That meant Noah was at home alone. I was pissed for a moment, but as night fell, I remembered Jenna’s words:Noah is not okay. She has nightmares.All I could do to stop thinking about this was show her they weren’t real. So I got my keys and left.

It was pitch-black when I stepped out of the car. My father’s house was barely visible—no one had thought to turn on the porch light. That irritated me. After turning the key in the lock, I hurried upstairs. For a moment, I thought Noah wasn’t there because I didn’t see the light under her door. But then I heard her. She was crying. I opened the door, my chest tight with apprehension. It couldn’t be. It was dark in her room, and she was twisting in the sheets. I hit the light switch, but it didn’t turn on. Goddammit. The power was off.

When I saw Noah up close, her face was streaked with tears, and her fingernails had dug so deep into her palms that one of them was bleeding where the skin had broken. I was at a loss. Ignoring the alarms going off inside me, I sat down next to her.

“Noah, wake up,” I said, pushing aside the hair that her tears had made stick to her face.

It was pointless. She was still asleep but stirring, as if hoping to look away from whatever she was dreaming about, whatever had put her in that state of desolation and fear.

I shook her, softly at first, and then insistently. But she didn’t seem to want to wake up.

“Noah,” I whispered in her ear. “It’s Nicholas. Wake up, I’m here.”

She made a noise, and I saw her hands ball even tighter into tiny fists. She was really hurting herself.

“Noah!” I shouted now.

Then her eyes opened. She was horrified. The only time I’d ever seen her like that was when those assholes from her school had locked her in a closet. She looked around the bedroom before seeming to locate me, and then she must have realized that everything she had dreamed was just that—a dream, a nightmare, and nothing more. She threw herself into my arms, and I felt her heart racing.

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