I swallow. “Dad wouldn’t let up. He kept pushing, watching, and telling me to fall into line. Hannah agreed to be my fake girlfriend so he’d leave me alone.” My chest tightens. “I can’t breathe, Grandad. This life, the pretending, it’s suffocating me. I can’t do it anymore.”
“Nor should you have to,” he says without hesitation.
“Why is it so bad?” I whisper, rubbing my hands over my face, my frustration and grief tangling together. “Why is loving a man treated like it’s something shameful? Like I’m broken?”
He steps forward, and this time, I don’t stop him. I fall into his embrace like a little kid, my shoulders trembling. “It isn’t bad,” he says firmly, squeezing the back of my neck as I cling to him. “You love who you love. There’s nothing wrong with that. There never has been.”
A sob tears out of me before I can stop it.
“Then why can’t Dad accept me? Why does he hate the idea of me being with a man so much?”
Grandad’s shoulders sag as he sighs. “I have my suspicions, but that’s something you’ll need to talk to him about. The important thing is that you hear this, and you believe it.” He pulls away, resting his hands on my shoulders and cupping the back of my neck. Tears shine in his eyes ashe meets my gaze. “You have my full support, Noah. Always.”
My heart pounds, but for the first time, it isn’t fear driving it. It’s courage.
“There’s someone else,” I say softly. “Back home in Beckford. His name’s Zac. He?—”
“Noah!”
Hannah’s voice is sharp with panic as she sprints towards us, phone clenched in her hand.
Dread blooms fast and violently in my chest.
“It’s Zac,” she says, breathless. “There’s been a car accident. He’s in hospital.”
The world tilts.
I reach into the breast pocket for my phone, almost dropping it. The screen lights up with numerous missed calls from Zac’s dad and Jasper, dozens of text messages from Milly, and one from Zac about two hours ago. I click on it, my breath catching in my throat when I see the selfie of him sitting on my bed, that sexy, lop-sided smile pasted on his face that makes my pulse pick up every time I see it.
Zac: Miss you.
Grandad’s hand clamps onto my shoulder, grounding me.
“Go,” he says, pulling his phone from his pocket. “I’ll have a car take you to the airfield. The jet will be ready and waiting for you.”
“But Dad?—”
“Don’t worry about your father,” Grandad says, his voice steady as he motions for Hannah to lead me through the back gate and down the side of the property, away from the prying eyes of his guests. “We can talk later. You need to be there for him. Go.”
Chapter 33
Noah
Icall Adam on the way to the airfield. He tells me Zac was hit by a drunk driver who’d left the Beckford High formal after getting into a fight with his girlfriend. He crashed into a tree after clipping the front of Zac’s car and died on impact. Zac had slammed on his brakes, so the crash hadn’t been as catastrophic as it could’ve been—his car spun and hit a parked car—but he’d smashed his head hard enough to knock himself out.
He was rushed to hospital and straight into a CT scan. There’s swelling on his brain. Not enough to operate, but enough that they’re keeping him sedated and under close observation in the ICU.
“He’s lucky,” Adam says, his voice shaking. “They keep saying that. He’s lucky it wasn’t worse.”
Lucky doesn’t feel like the right word when my chest is caving in and all I can think about is Zac lying hurt in a hospital bed, while I’m halfway across the country desperate to get back to him.
It takes four hours to get back to Beckford, and my nerves are shot by the time Hannah and I enter the ICU waiting room.
Adam gets to his feet the second I walk in, his eyes red and hollow. Hannah murmurs something beside me, but all I hear is the blood rushing in my ears as I head straight for Zac’s dad.
“How is he?” The words tear out of me, raw and unfiltered. “Can I see him?”
“They’re still stabilising him,” Adam says, pulling me in for a hug that squeezes the air from my lungs. “He’s still sedated, and they’re monitoring the swelling.”
