Chapter Twenty-four #2
“We’ve told you everything, Dad.”
“Then I’m not really sure why you both seem so upset about having gone hiking together.
” He looks at me. “It sounds like your mother was pretty specific in her requirements, and she never said you couldn’t go to the waterfall, so I don’t have an issue with it.
But she also said you weren’t to bring Noah here.
You did, and I’m afraid that’s not going to sit well with her. ”
“But you understand why we thought it was necessary, don’t you, sir?”
“Can’t say that I—” Dad is interrupted by the ringing phone. “Can you grab that, Faith?”
I do. And that’s when everything falls apart.
“Faith, I told you I didn’t want that boy at our house.”
“Mom? How did you—?”
“Put your father on the phone.”
Panic grips my chest. “It’s Mom.” I hold out the phone to my dad. “She wants to talk to you.”
Once he says hello, Dad doesn’t utter another word for a good minute. Finally, he says, “Okay,” and hits the end button on the handset, expelling a long sigh. “Faith, your mother is in the garage. I guess she recognized Noah’s car from the last time he was here.”
Dad stands up. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave, Noah. Janet says she will not come in the house until you’re gone.”
“She won’t—” Noah blinks. “She won’t even talk to me?”
Dad shakes his head. “I think it would be best if you go now.” He holds out his hand awkwardly. “I’ll pass on what you said, but . . . I wouldn’t hold your breath for an invitation to come back. Once Janet makes up her mind, there’s no changing it.”
Noah shakes Dad’s offered hand, his face wreathed in puzzlement. “What about you? Do you understand now that I truly care for your daughter? That I want to do the right thing by her and by you, as her parents?”
“Er, well . . . I suppose you, uh, made the effort to, er . . .” Dad hems and haws, not really saying anything.
“Okay, I get it.” Noah’s eyes narrow, and his tone darkens. “Will you at least admit that I’m not the big bad wolf your wife seems to think I am?”
“Well, I, uh, think that is, perhaps a little bit, uh—”
When it becomes clear Dad doesn’t know how to respond, something shifts in Noah’s expression. It’s a subtle change, one I doubt my dad notices, but in that moment, I know that a good portion of the respect Noah has tried to show my Dad has vaporized.
“Mr. Prescott, sir,” he says, standing a little taller, “you’ve heard the truth from us today. Faith and I—”
The phone rings again. Dad reaches for the handset and looks at the caller I.D. but doesn’t answer the call. “Faith, your mother is waiting. I think it’s time you show your friend out.”
I put a hand on Noah’s arm. “Come on.”
Noah stares at my dad for another few seconds. His brow furrows on an exhale. He shakes his head and then lets me lead him down the hall.
“Noah, I-I’m sorry.”
“You have to put up with this all the time. You have nothing to be sorry about.” His jaw moves, grinding his teeth. “I don’t think I have ever been so, so—”
“Angry? Frustrated? Hurt? Disgusted?” I supply words reflecting my own emotions.
“Yeah. All that and then some.” He presses the balls of his hands on the sides of his head. “She won’t even come in the house? What am I, a leper?”
“Actor, leper, musician . . . It’s all the same to her. Take your pick.” My words exit through teeth air can barely fit between. I am so angry right now. So. Angry.
“I think I finally understand the term righteous indignation.” He drops his hands. “Yes, we messed up. But we recognized it, and we did the right thing. We confessed. We apologized. We tried to make it right.” He winces. “Well, until I got snarky with your dad.”
“You call that snarky?” My laugh is short, tight. “You barely glared at him.”
“Okay, okay.” The corner of his mouth twitches.
“But you have to admit, I wasn’t one hundred percent respectful there at the end.
Not to mention that I’m still in the house.
” His half-grin disappears. “But I just don’t get it.
How do they justify—? I mean, we came clean.
We apologized. We laid it all out there.
And in return, we get this . . . this total disregard from your mom. ”
“I know. She’s acting like a four-year-old.”
“I wasn’t going to say it, but . . . yeah. Kind of. And what’s with your dad? He acts like he’s some sort of supplicant to her whims.”
“I don’t know. He’s always been that way.” I shrug. “It’s how their relationship operates.”
“That’s messed up.”
I nod. “Dad avoids conflict by letting her have her way.”
“She won’t even meet me.” He shakes his head.
Noah gives a growl of frustration. His arms shake from the force of his hands, fisting at his sides.
Our gazes lock for a charged moment. I see the internal battle waging behind Noah’s eyes—a battle I suspect is mirrored in my own.
His breath comes faster, and his lips press together. He looks up at the ceiling and then down to the floor. And then, with one final glance down the hall, likely aimed further, toward my parents, a short, uncharacteristically belligerent phrase breaks from between his lips.
“Screw it.”
A silent glance is our split second agreement. He pulls me to him.
The crush of his lips is a culmination of longing, vexation, and hope . . . all bathed in fire, igniting a sense of destiny within the beautiful mystery of who we are, together, alongside the deepest dreams of what we could become someday.
There is strength in this kiss. Passion, with honor. It’s almost as if the power of this one concentrated moment of connection is the key to thwarting every threat against all we know to be true between us.
I cling to Noah—my Noah—returning his kiss, matching every flame of his desperate, passionate frustration and his full, unquenchable love with my own.
“Just friends?”
Mom’s voice drops like a sheet of ice between us. We break apart, breathless.
“You expect me to walk in on something like that and believe, for even one second, that you two have been behaving as ‘just friends’ for the past few weeks?”
No-no-no-no-no-no! I grip Noah’s hand, trying to catch my breath, slow my pulse, and cool my cheeks while panic screams inside my brain.
“If you’re finished mauling your friend, Mr. Spencer, you can remove yourself from my property.”
Noah’s breath is as ragged as mine. “I’m sorry,” he whispers and squeezes my hand. “I shouldn’t have . . . Faith, I’m so sorry.”
The sincerity, the anguish in his eyes melts me—frees me.
“Don’t be,” I whisper back. “I’m not.”
She is wrong about us. Even about that kiss, regardless of its heat. She is wrong to treat Noah like this.
My muscles tremble. Not from the kiss, not from the adrenaline of being caught in such an inopportune moment with the boy I love. No, this trembling is the release of a soul-deep anger, one caused by a grievous wrong. This must be what Noah meant by righteous indignation.
“I said, get out,” my mother growls.
I ignore her. Placing a hand to my heart, I spread my fingers apart and then clasp them into a fist. Pressing that fist over Noah’s heart, I open my hand. “Love never fails.”
“It always hopes,” he whispers back, nodding. “Always perseveres.”
With one hand on the doorknob, Noah pauses, turns, and meets the cold fury in my mother’s eyes. “I doubt you will believe me, Mrs. Prescott, but I have never and will never mean any harm toward your daughter. I hope someday you’ll see that.”
“Get. Out.” The pitch of Mom’s voice rises with each word. It’s almost painful. “Get out of my house!”
Meeting my eyes one last time, Noah presses a kiss in my hair and goes out the door.
It’s a good thing we decided to drive here from the waterfall. Even though it’s the end of May, Noah would suffer a cold hike back through the nature preserve with that much ice clinging to his ears.
Mom is talking—shouting, really—but her words are senseless syllables, dulled in my ears.
Turning my back on her verbal tirade, I press my hand to my throat, watching out the sidelight window until Noah’s car is out of sight.
When I finally turn to face her, she is silent, her lips a thin line, her face a purple shade of red.
She’s shaking. In a movement so fast it makes me jump, she pivots and storms off, but as she passes the side table, she expels a curse word I’ve only heard her use during major sporting events, and slams her hand across an eye-level shelf, taking an object from it with the same force she probably used as a volleyball star, spiking the kill.
The hand-blown vase, a Christmas gift from Aunt Becca, flies off its shelf, shattering against the closed door to Dad’s study.
Mouth open, I’m frozen. So is she, for a moment.
“Janet?” Dad calls from the living room.
“It’s nothing,” she hollers back. “Everything’s fine.”
No. No, it’s not. My throat is dry. I can barely swallow. My gaze is riveted on the fractured evidence of a moment of violent rage.
“Clean that up,” Mom tosses the cold words over her shoulders. “When you’ve made certain you’ve found every last sliver, go to your room. Don’t even think about coming downstairs again until morning.”
It’s spring, but the bitter winds of a hard winter could not be colder than the silent promises sweeping toward me on my mother’s glare.