Chapter 11 Noah
Noah
It’s Friday night, and I’m certain I’ve lost my mind.
It was a good run.
I made it to the summer after junior year of college, and I had a pretty fun life until now, but my mental state is fraying to its edges and I’m seriously starting to think I’ve been placed under some kind of curse.
Today, Roman found me and let me know that he confirmed something about the guys who tried to kidnap me: they’re members of the Maletti family.
That name meant nothing to me, until today.
Until Roman specifically told me two sentences that shared more information than he’d ever shared with me in all the years I’ve known him.
“The Maletti family is stirring up problems that we thought we settled a long time ago,” Roman told me a few hours ago, sitting in the Onyx House living room. “They are brutal, and they need to be handled.”
Great.
Cool.
Roman Petrov, who could describe a knife fight as “no biggie,” is describing these Maletti people as brutal… and those are the people that are after me, following me, and apparently now know my full name.
Roman confirmed that the fact that they know my name means they probably are aware now of exactly where I live, and my involvement with Onyx House. But Roman also said that if they haven’t already kidnapped or killed me, there’s probably a reason for that.
“They’re scared,” Roman told me. “And the bullshit from the night at the loading dock was just a bluff for attention.”
And I hope to fucking hell that’s true.
Right now, it’s strip poker time.
Finally something I’ve been looking forward to all week, and my shot at thinking about something other than gunfights and crime and… Torin’s absence.
Not that I’m thinking about that.
I drum my fingertips over a knot in the patio table out back, trying to catch the same vibe that everyone else seems to be on tonight.
The string lights are on in the backyard.
Everyone’s gathered around the long table on the patio, as well as Bree, one of her friends, and a couple of guys that Rayne invited.
It still smells like the grill that Weston had fired up a couple of hours ago, and it’s the time of the evening where everybody around me is starting to get warm, happy, and tipsy.
“Holy shit. Noah, how do you say fuck the hell off in Latin?” Bree asks from the chair beside me, after pointing across the table and calling bullshit after a bad round.
“Direct translation?”
She tilts her head back and lets out a comical roar. “I don’t care. Any translation.”
Bree has the rest of the guys laughing their asses off right now. Everyone is relaxed, kicking back, and in various states of undress after a few rounds of strip poker have gone by.
“Futue te ipsum,” I tell her. “It means ‘go fuck yourself,’ so that should help.”
She starts repeating it over and over again to the guys around the poker table, smiling as she pushes back her chair, standing up. She bunches up the bottom of her dress, slowly beginning to slide it up and revealing inch after inch of smooth skin.
Typically I’d be buzzed right now, the world beginning to melt away into a hazy, soft cloud.
I’m still on edge, though.
It only takes a few rounds of strip poker to realize that it’s a very different experience when you’re the only one not drinking.
And I’m still unable to drop the image of Torin from my head.
Again… not that I’m still thinking about it.
Haven’t seen him in days.
I’ve already lost my shirt in the poker game.
I’m sitting here in only my dark denim, the warm air on my skin.
Oliver opted to take off his pants after his losing round, so he’s currently in black boxer briefs and a tank top.
And as I watch Bree peel off that tight dress in a frankly extremely sexy way, I should feel at least something.
She reveals a pretty pink bra and a thong.
Hot underwear on the gorgeous body of a girl I used to think I loved… yet I don’t even get a half-chub.
“Remember these?” Bree asks as she snaps the edge of her thong above her ass. “Cancun?”
“Right,” I say. “Cancun was fun.”
“Took them off with your teeth, last time,” Bree tells me before sitting back down on her chair.
“TMI,” Rayne protests.
“No such thing,” Oliver says, holding up a hand. “I might be in a happy relationship, but I’ll listen to sex stories every fucking day.”
“You want to know the craziest place Noah fucked me?” Bree asks Ollie.
He lights up, of course.
“Tell me everything, girl.”
Bree launches into a shameful story of when I got drunk and we had sex at an electronic music festival, literally behind the speaker as the DJ was playing his set.
We could feel the vibrations of the beat as we fucked, and while it was certainly an interesting experience, I can barely remember most of it.
“You haven’t lived until you’ve felt a cock inside you match the beat of a Tiesto song, let me tell you,” Bree says, grinning at Ollie.
Oliver grips Niko’s arm. “One word, Niko. Need. Fucking need.”
Bree laughs. I adjust myself on my chair, wishing I had any feeling about that memory other than shame about how drunk I was.
I look out at the blue glow that the pool makes in the night, and I hear the house doors open behind me.
Suddenly, a figure walks past my peripheral vision.
Somebody’s heading right past us toward the pool.
Torin.
Holy fuck.
It’s such a shock that for a second I wonder if I’m hallucinating him now, and that’s how bad my mind has gotten this week.
Except it’s real.
Torin’s blond hair reflects the warm glow from the string lights on the porch.
It’s like the air changes the moment he’s there.
The electric feeling before a thunderstorm.
I don’t move an inch in my chair.
If he’s going to act completely unaffected by this, then I am, too.
Asshole.
God, if only you were capable of feeling even a shred of what I felt this week.
But you don’t feel anything at all.
“Torin!” Rayne says, waving at him. “You’re back.”
Torin gives Rayne a nod and greets the table quickly, but he doesn’t meet my eyes once, and doesn’t stop as he continues on to the pool. He’s in his black swim shorts that hug his body like a glove.
“How is it possible that he looks better in person than he did in his Lumber Depot pics?” Bree says, leaning over to whisper in my ear. “That core. Those fucking biceps.”
“Yeah, and he has the vain ego to match,” I mutter. “Acting like he hasn’t been gone for days, then just waltzing back in.”
Bree hums. “That’s how he’s always been, right? Mr. I’m-so-independent, never telling anyone else his plans?”
“And he’ll never change.”
He dives into the pool on the deep end, the water splashing around him. He begins doing laps, as if nothing has changed and he hasn’t been missing in action for the past five days.
Like you haven’t ignored my goddamn text.
“Noah,” Roman says, tapping the table in front of me. “In or out?”
I look back over. “In. Definitely in.”
Rayne deals another round and I try my best to act unfazed by Torin’s return.
But as we play round after round, my eyes keep getting drawn to the pool.
Twenty minutes pass as he does lap after lap in the pool and we finish more rounds of poker.
When I next glance over, Torin’s bringing his arms up to rest on the pool deck behind him, staring over at our table for the first time.
Watching us.
His face is illuminated by the pool’s blue light. It makes his cheekbones look even more pronounced, and his soaked hair drips down onto his pecs.
He may as well be resting there smoking a goddamn cigarette for how removed he looks, like he’s chill, uncaring, and above it all.
I feel like he’s staring into my soul again.
And already, I had forgotten how much it fucks with me when he does.
“Still can’t believe he’s here,” Bree tells me. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
“Trust me, I didn’t think he’d ever be here, either.”
Bree’s run into Torin before a couple of times at Dad’s charity events, and I’ve never been quiet with her about my distaste for him.
“How is it having a stepbrother?” she asks me. “Have you two gotten any closer?”
Something clenches in my chest. “Fuck no.”
Liar.
Lying liar.
“Yo, Bree,” her cute friend calls out from over by the fire pit, where she’s been drinking with her buddy. “Are we busting out the foam when we get back?”
“Hell yes,” Bree says. “Noah, are you in?”
Luros Sorority has a foam machine that they’ve used at various parties in the past. They pour a shit ton of it into an inflatable pool out back and people wrestle, in various states of undress.
My instinct is to say hell no.
Foam fights at parties are the exact kind of shit that is way more fun when drunk.
But right now, any excuse to have even a tiny bit of fun and get the hell out of Torin’s field of vision sounds like a good idea to me.
“Yeah,” I call over to Bree’s friends. “I’ll come over later.”
Bree leans over to ruffle my hair and kiss my cheek like she did the other day in class. I don’t look over at Torin, but I know he saw it.
And a few moments later, Bree confirms that for me.
“He keeps looking at you,” she whispers in my ear. “Are you guys, like, fighting or something?”
He’s not just looking at me, though.
He’s looking at me and Bree as she leans over near my ear.
And there’s an intensity behind his eyes that I can’t quite read.
As if on cue, Torin pushes up with his arms and shoots out of the pool onto the deck. He stretches his arms high above his head and then strides over, dripping water as he walks.
Rayne nods at Torin, waving him over.
“Yo. Want me to deal you in, Torin? Not that you have that many clothes to strip off.”
Hunter snorts, and everyone’s suddenly looking at Torin’s body, out on display.
Torin doesn’t even seem to notice the attention.
Because his gaze is unflinchingly on me.
My chest is molten as he watches me, coming closer to the table until he’s standing behind me.
I can smell the chlorine on him, mixed with his own inescapable scent.
Nope.
You don’t get to affect me.
I’m staying right where I am, and I’m going to have a fun night with Bree, and pretend you don’t fucking exist.
“Nah, don’t deal me in,” Torin says to Rayne. “I think I’m just going to watch.”
He pulls up a chair behind me and reaches for his phone, which he left on a table before jumping in the pool.
I feel my phone buzz in my pocket a moment later and my veins zing with electricity.
I pull it out as everybody else starts to get distracted by the game again, and I glance down at the screen.
Don’t go home with her.
You don’t get a say in what I do.
I want you upstairs after this.
You’re gone all week then you suddenly want to talk with me on your terms? Fuck off.
Never said anything about talking.
“Quit staring at your phone and pick up those cards,” Ollie yells at me from across the table, grinning from ear to ear before he takes another drink of his cocktail. “Let’s get this poker game fired up again, Noah. Bree didn’t come over to see you with your clothes on.”
Bree giggles and reaches over to give Oliver a high-five.
And I wish I could sink deeper into my chair, to melt away into the fucking ground somewhere that I’d stop blushing, stop heating like this, and get Torin’s distracting scent away from me.
What the fuck does he want upstairs? Nothing is ever happening between us again.
And you should fucking know that, Torin.