“What about?” she snaps. Her arse is swinging around, and legs striding off again before I catch up with the move. “There is nothing to think about because you don’t care,” she continues. I catch up, rounding in front of her to stop her. “What, Noah? What? What do you want?”
I grab her shoulders, push her back to the gate. “I don’t want you getting yourself in trouble. You’re acting hysterical again and-”
She moves around me, rolling her fucking eyes. “As you’ve made clear, you don’t care, so your opinion on that means nothing to me.”
This time I grab her harshly, stopping her from taking another step away from me. “I didn’t fucking say that shit. At no point did I say I didn‘t care.”
“But you don’t, do you?” I’m physically fucking shaking now. Don’t know why, but all I can feel is pressure building up in me. “If you did, you’d understand. I can’t go back. I don’t want to, and I'm certainly not going to try defending myself when I’ve got nothing to defend myself with.”
“You just explain it. They’ll understand-”
“Are you serious? You know Landon. He won’t give me an inch, and then where will I be? In a family that doesn’t trust me? They’ll doubt and cast assumptions, and I won’t have any proof.”
“But you’ll be safe with them.”
She tries sucking up tears that want to fall, pulls her arm away from me to scrub at her cheeks. “I’m not going back, Noah. I … If I have to get Lewis on my own, then I will. I’ll do it without you. I’ll … find some way to chase him down, and then I’ll go home.” She shrugs the backpack on again, eyes looking anywhere but at me. “It’s fine, Noah. Just leave me to it, and I’ll …”
“You’ll what? Go get yourself fucking killed to prove a point?”
“I don’t know … But I need to prove this to them. Maybe then I can …” I don’t listen to the rest. I watch her lips move, watch the tears still trying to fall. I’m not happy about any of it. Not happy she’s being pressured, not happy she's crying, not happy she’s thinking about getting herself into something unsafe again, but mostly, I’m not happy she’s going anywhere other than back inside my house.
I frown and back up a step, eyes flicking between her still talking and my own door. Don’t even like the sound of the crack in her voice, the defeat or sense of loss in it, as she begs me to understand. Throw in the fact that she looks about ready to drop to the ground and just plain give up, and I’m thinking about saying something fucking stupid.
“Stop talking. Take a breath, Neve.” She looks up at me, wipes under her eyes again and gives me a chance to think. Seconds go by, all of them filled with my own indecision and internal argument. “Alright. What if there was another option?”
She looks as confused as I'm feeling. “What do you mean?”
“Stay here. With me.” Her eyes widen, clear fucking shock embedded.
“What?”
“You need it repeated?”
She stares, almost fucking lost for words. Which is a first. “Are you saying with you, as inwith you?”
“Don’t know what that is yet, but yes, if that’s what you want. But if you stay, you stay under the radar, like I do. No contact with them. New life. I’ll say I lost you, and we can see where we go with that freedom.”
“But … but you don’t care, Noah. You said that ….”
The words drift off as she keeps staring and trying to work out what the hell is happening.
“Never said I didn’t care, Neve. I shouldn’t, but I do. I care a lot.”
That mouth’s moving again. No words, though. I don’t have any either unless she’s got a direct question to ask me. Don’t even know what the fuck I’ve just done, in all honesty. But worry, concern, and sheer physical need seems to have made me offer a relationship of some kind. Sounds like it, anyway.
Chapter Eighteen
NEVE
I search his eyes for the truth I didn’t know I needed to hear.
“Are you saying this so that I won’t storm off?” Doubt plagues my mind because, after everything, there’s a part of this that doesn’t make sense.
“If I wanted to stop you, I’d physically stop you.” He steps closer towards me, pushing my body against the gate to make his point. “I wouldn’t say something to trick you.”
“So, you’re not making this up?”
“I don’t lie. Like I said.”
