Then the door opened and shut, leaving him alone with Felix and Zane.
He attempted to sit up, but only made it to rising up on one elbow. “Let me guess, Adam called you?”
“Duh,” Felix said with an eye roll, dropping the bags beside the bed before crawling in and flopping down behind him.
“I’m naked,” Noah warned, burrowing deeper beneath the sheet that covered him.
“We know. Adam told us all about his therapeutic dick down,” Felix said.
Noah wasn’t even facing him and he could hear his eye roll, which made Noah feel slightly better. Felix curled around him, sliding an arm around his chest. Noah tangled their fingers together with a sigh.
Zane laid down, rolling to face Noah, booping him on the nose, before saying, “Moms are the worst. Nobody knows that better than me.”
Noah’s heart squeezed as everything came clawing back to the surface. He did his best to tamp it back down. “It’s not her fault.”
“It’s one thousand percent her fault,” Felix said venomously.
“Do you blame her though?” Noah asked, choking on his words. “Who wants to constantly be reminded of the worst thing that ever happened to them.”
Zane audibly gasped at Noah’s words like he’d slapped him. “Don’t say that.”
“Zane’s right. You arenotthe worst thing that ever happened to her. Maybe losing you was, but that’s hardly your fault,” Zanesaid, clearly furious on Noah’s behalf. “Nothing that happened to you was your fault.”
And just like that, Adam’s eyes filled with tears, not from sadness, but from the overwhelming support the two gave him without question.
Felix had been Noah’s friend since Jericho and Atticus found each other, but Zane was new to the family. He was most definitely family, and Noah adored him. But he didn’t owe Noah any loyalty. He hadn’t earned it yet.
But Zane was like that with all the Mulvaneys. Maybe because, like Noah, he had a family who treated him like an inconvenience, who seemed hellbent on making his life miserable for no discernible reason. It was hard to say. But Noah was grateful he’d shown up anyway.
Noah swallowed the lump in his throat. “In my head, I know that. I just feel stupid for putting off the biggest day of my life for someone who I knew, deep down, had no intention of showing up for me.”
It was true. Every time he’d spoken to his mother and she’d made yet another excuse, his feeling of foreboding had increased until any communication had filled him with this sick feeling deep down inside. Sometimes, he’d avoided her calls altogether just so he could listen to her excuses and cry without her hearing him.
“Was she really the only reason you were holding off on setting the date, babe?” Felix asked, squeezing his hand.
Noah opened his mouth to say yes, but couldn’t. He couldn’t lie to them. But the truth was too pitiful, too pathetic. He didn’t want to say it out loud, but Zane was studying him like he often did and Noah knew deep down neither of them would let this go.
“What’s the real reason?” Zane asked, not waiting for Noah to deny it.
“I don’t want… I keep having this dream…”
“What dream?” Zane said, scooting closer like Noah was about to tell a spooky story.
He supposed he was. “It’s not just one dream, but the same…premise, I guess.”
“Which is?” Zane prompted.
Noah steeled himself, doing that thing he did whenever he had to confront the demons of his past, detaching himself from the memory. “In one of the dreams, Holt is trying to walk me down the aisle and the only people who show up for me…are the men who…hurt me when I was little.”
“Jesus,” Zane whispered.
Noah nodded, hot tears making his eyes sting. “My therapist says it's my trauma. Like, duh. I know that. It doesn’t make it any less scary. But that’s not even the one—like that’s not the reason…or the only reason, I keep putting it off.”
“Then tell us, babe,” Felix said, resting his head on Noah’s. “Tell us so we can fix it.”
They couldn’t fix it. There was no way to fix this problem. “I just can’t handle that…”
“That what?” Zane pushed.
