It’s too much. It’s too much, to have only Loren say the words I long to hear from Noah’s lips.
My phone vibrates at my side, and I glance at it.
Noah:
everything ok?
It’s been a while now since Noah’s last post; I left him hanging, and he’s probably wondering where I’ve disappeared to.
Biting my bottom lip, I text back immediately.
I need to see you.
Chapter
Thirty-Two
I twist the ring on my middle finger in tight, nervous circles until Noah opens the front door of his duplex.
Still damp from a shower, his hair hangs longer and darker around his face. He wears nothing but a pair of sweatpants, but I force myself to keep my eyes on his face—right where his brow is creased in concern.
After sending that text, I hadn’t looked at my phone again. I’d just hopped in the car and pressed on the gas.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” I say.
“By all means, come in.”
I follow Noah down a long hallway, and my heart leaps suddenly into my throat.
Deeper in the house, the living room is crowded with boxes. Dusty outlines where picture frames used to hang stamp each wall, and the only furniture that occupies the space is one lonely gray couch. Noah passes through without stopping, and I follow in his wake, trying to ignore the pressure building in my chest.
Although there are no boxes, Noah’s room is somehow worse. It looks like a hotel room, ascetically clean and completely bare of personality, with a dull blue bedspread and empty walls. The onlyreal signs that he lives here are the small closet full of clothes and his massive brick of a gaming laptop plugged into the outlet behind the desk. Within twenty minutes he could pack up every part of himself and no one would know he’d ever been here at all. Even my room at Liam’s, which I was meant to stay in for only a few months, has more personal touches.
Gingerly I sit on the edge of his bed. Noah’s desk chair creaks as he sinks into it and swivels to face me. He pulls one of my hands into both of his, tethering me.
I consider asking about the boxes, the empty room, the gutted house—and I will, before the night’s over. But it wasn’t my first intention, and it’s not what I’ll start with.
I didn’t come here to ask him questions or demand answers. I just came to tell him.
“I’m staying.”
It’s the first time I say it out loud, and I feel the rightness of it all the way down to my bones. It feels like staying up for days on end and finally allowing myself to sleep. It feels like crossing the finish line after a half-marathon.
“In Heller?”
I nod. “In Heller.”
Noah opens his mouth to speak again, but I touch my fingertips to the corner of his lips, settle my palm against his bearded cheek. “Just let me get this out”—while I’m still brave enough to say it—“and then I want to know. Okay?”
He leans into my hand and nods.
“After I finished the mural today, I called Paragon and declined their offer. I think they were…mystified, honestly, but they were kind about it. They asked whether I had a competing offer, or if my plans had changed, and—and that’s the thing. I have no plan. I don’t haveanyplans, Noah.” I let out a bewildered, wondering laugh. “I have no idea what I’ll do. All I knew was to make the nextright decision, and that’s what I did.” I drop my hands back into my lap and set to fiddling with my ring again.
“I don’t want it anymore,” I say quietly. If I’m honest with myself, that had been the hardest truth to come by. My career in New York felt like something I was supposed to hold on to, because all I’d done for the past decade was dream of that damn city, and changing my mind felt more like a betrayal of myself than I was ready to accept. For so long I’d convinced myself that I was avoiding New York because I just wasn’t ready to return yet, or I hadn’t healed enough, or I wasn’t good enough for it—when really, I just couldn’t come to terms with the fact that I wanted to let it go.
“What I do want,” I say slowly, “is what I have right now. What I don’t want is—” I steal the line directly from Loren. “I don’t want to miss you.”
Noah’s eyes widen in recognition, and he slides one hand along the outside of my thigh. “Sadie…”
