He manages to chuckle. “For all your speeches about not wanting to get married, you seem to have some pretty set ideas on marriage and children.” He comes back to sit in front of the fire.
Taking a steadying breath, I answer, “The upside of being single. You have time to observe others. How they mess up their life when they’re trying to make it complete.” I make air quotesaround the last word, realizing what a hypocrite I am. I’ve never felt socompleteas in this moment, talking about life with Noah.
“I didn’t take you for such a cynic,” he says, squinting again as he seems to try and pierce my soul with his gaze. There’s a chance he might succeed, so I look away. “I see lots of alt plus enter for you in that column about people who effed you over,” he says.
Damn him.
“Effedme over?” I laugh. “You don’t do curse words?”Atta girl, Willow, bring this convo back to surface-level and take a breath.
“Oh, I do curse words alright, though not in daily conversation.” His gaze grows darker, in a way that makes me feel deliciously dirty.
“Really,” I say on a breath. Did the all-American girl with her ponytail and her cap like his dirty talk?I bet she did. I know I would.I clear my throat. “What do you mean by not in daily…?” Damn, that drink is making me more than chatty. It’s making me brash. Even I can tell.
“I don’t think anyone will ask you…” There’s fire in his eyes, and it’s not just the reflection of the flames three feet from us.
“Will ask me what?” I’ll stop at nothing to make Noah, master of Lilyvale, Emerald Creek royalty, and nerd extraordinaire in the body of a mountain man, squirm under my indecent questions.
“You like playing with fire, don’t you,” he states—not a question.
My heartbeat picks up wildly. “You always knew that.”
“True. It’s what… attracted me to you.” He takes a long sip. What is he saying? Is this for real or for the spreadsheet?
He’s definitely not squirming—I am. Under his stare, under his confidence. He breaks the silence. “We’re going to be living here, together, for the next few months. Playing house. Sleepingin the same bedroom. I’m not sure opening up to each other about our sexual habits is the safe way to go about it. And it certainly won’t be brought up in whatever legal inquiry your curious little mind dreamed up we might get entangled into.”
My heart hammers in my chest. “I’m sorry,” I say, not feeling sorry at all. I’d do anything to hear him say again that for the next few months, we’ll be living together, playing house, sleeping in the same bedroom. “You’re right,” I concede. He’sabsolutelyright that no one will ask us about S.E.X.
He twirls his whiskey in his glass, the quickly melting cubes clinking softly. “There’s one thing my wife should know. Something that never comes up in conversation, so you might have missed it.” He tips his head back and downs the rest of his drink, then adds, “My birth mother left me and Dad when I was four years old.”
A cold shiver takes hold of me as I stay speechless. I didn’t know there was abirthmother. “I… I thought…” I only ever thought of Amy as his mother, and it’s bad enough that she died years ago. “Noah, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” Sitting up in my chair, I place a comforting hand on his forearm—such a meager attempt to compensate for the unthinkable.
He shrugs. “I just didn’t know under what category to put that on the spreadsheet. Childhood memory?”
I take a beat to process that, then harp on his self-deprecation. “That would be perfect under the People Who Fucked Us Over.”
twenty-three
Noah
Willow seems positively horrified. The way she looks at me right now is not what I was going for. It’s not pity, thank god. It’s worse than that. It’s compassion, and a connection. Willingness to know more. To understand me. I can shrug off pity. But this? This is dangerous—way more than trading sex secrets. This might actually endear her to me on a deeper level. I should resist this at all cost.
Yet I crave it. Need it. Need to talk to someone who might actually understand it. She removes her cool hand from my forearm as I start talking, and suddenly I wish I’d stayed quiet. I’d take her touch over the sound of my voice any day. “I’m not sure she really screwed me over, at the time. After that, Dad met Mom, married her, and they gave me three siblings I adore. Mom always treated me as her child.” For the most part, but Willow doesn’t need to know that.
And it was nothing Mom did, really. It was just that I knew I was not hers. Seeing her cradle my infant siblings, I told myself the bond between a mother and child were formed during those precious months. I would never have this with Mom. And at times it made me wonder, what had I done to my birth mother for her to leave me?
“What is it?” Willow asks me.
“Hmm?”
“Where did you go?” She sits back in her chair, crossing her legs. “You don’t need to tell me,” she says, looking away, toward the fire. “I can be really nosy.” Then her gaze comes back on me, and I want to tell her. I really do. I just don’t know what or how, exactly.
“I sought her out, years later. When I was in college. I found her.”
Willow takes a sharp breath. “And?”
“And she wanted nothing to do with me.”
Willow sets her hand back on my forearm. She seems ready to cry. “Noah, I’m so sorry. That’s terrible.”
