17. Noelle
SEVENTEEN
NOELLE
The sliding doors whoosh open as I step out of the hotel lobby, cool air blowing the way it does in November on the East Coast. I tug my wool coat tighter around me, scanning the street for the glowing Uber symbol on my phone screen.
Instead, I spot Joel, leaning against the sleek black SUV, hands in his pockets, eyes steady on me.
Of course.
“Joel,” I sigh, walking toward him. “You don’t have to do this. Really. I called a car. Go home, spend time with your family.”
He shakes his head, lips twitching like he’s heard this a hundred times before. “This is how I spend time with my family, Miss Pembrooke—by keeping my job, by making sure the boss man’s happy.”
“Dash wouldn’t even know,” I argue weakly.
Joel tips his head, grin just sharp enough to land. “He’d know if you disappeared on my watch. And let me tell you—pissed-off boss means no paycheck. No paycheck means no food on the table for my wife and kids. You don’t want that, do you?”
Damn him. He knows exactly which buttons to push. Sympathy, responsibility, guilt—my favorite cocktail.
I exhale hard through my nose. “Fine. But I really don’t need an escort.”
“And yet, here we are.” He opens the back door with a little bow. “After you.”
I slide in, clutching my bag tight to my chest, and stare out the tinted window as the SUV pulls away and I tell him the address.
Harbor Point is where the only family I have left lives, but it was never my home.
Twelve miles from Greenwich is the town of Harrington.
Wealthy, polished, almost too perfect—cedar-shingled colonials with big windows and wide porches, kids riding bikes with golden retrievers trotting behind them.
It’s the kind of town where every front yard looks staged for a magazine, and it’s deemed one of the best places to raise a family on the East Coast. My family’s home is situated just south of an area known as Harbor Point.
It’s waterfront property. The home is a colonial with porches that wrap around like open arms. I never lived there. Never unpacked a single box under that roof.
By the time they moved in, I was already gone.
Michigan feels like another life now, one I don’t talk about. Senior year, I was the it-girl, cheerleading, straight A’s, dating the football star who happened to be my stepfather’s best friend’s son. Perfect on paper. Until I found out he’d been cheating on me.
I still remember the party—sticky floors, beer pong, music rattling the walls. He wouldn’t let me leave, his grip too tight, drunk words slurred with anger and entitlement. I said no. He didn’t listen. After I could not fight anymore, I just closed my eyes and prayed for him to pass out.
After he passed out, I walked three miles home from the party at his home on the lake.
The next morning, I woke to Mom standing there, asking why I had come home, as I was supposed to stay.
I started to cry. Mom hugged me, held me, told me it would be okay, that boys are stupid, and some never do grow up.
She then told me Jimmy was here, and he said some girl lied to you, that he would never cheat on you.
When she asked me to just talk to him. I refused.
My stepfather brought him to my room, telling me to hear him out.
I had never been afraid of anyone before in my life, but that day, I found myself terrified to be in the same room with the boy I loved, spent more time with him there and as a result, less with my father.
I’d given Jimmy my virginity after junior prom.
I’d trusted him with my heart and body. My assailant.
I ran into my bathroom and locked the door.
Jimmy cried, said the same thing over and over, “I would never hurt you, Noelle. You know I would never hurt you.”
After several minutes, maybe an hour, Rick stood outside the door. “Noelle, enough. Your brothers do not need to hear this.”
Luckily, I had my phone and sent Dad a text.
Me
I need you now.
Twenty minutes later, I heard my mother say, “You can’t just walk in here and?—”
“Get the hell out of my way,” Dad had said.
Rick started in on him, and at that moment, I didn’t care if Jimmy was in the room—I knew Dad would get me out of there … and he did.
Elijah Pembrooke has never been the loudest man in the room. He’s a reader, a quiet thinker, someone who knows how to steady a storm without raising his voice. That’s what he did for me the night everything cracked.
He didn’t ask questions right away. Didn’t push. He just drove, one hand on the wheel, the other holding mine, thumb running back and forth over my hand. Calm and steady.
His house was waiting at the edge of the lake, the other side—three bedrooms, cedar siding, windows that caught the water like it was painted there for him alone.
Not big or flashy like Rick’s Harbor Point place.
It didn’t need to be. It was warm, lived-in, the kind of house where the bookshelves were full and the lamps cast golden light no matter the season.
When we walked inside, he didn’t say you’re safe now . He showed me.
He made dinner, something simple but grounding. Spaghetti and meatballs with too much garlic bread, because he knew carbs and warmth soothed the soul. He poured me a glass of ginger ale, put a stack of napkins beside my plate, and let me eat in silence until my chest loosened.
Afterward, he put a blanket on the couch, made sure my favorite, old, dog-eared paperback favorites were on the coffee table.
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, Night by Ellie Wiesel, and To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
He sat on one end of the couch and pulled my feet onto his lap.
Not watching me, not hovering— there . The room was filled with quiet companionship, the kind that only my dad could manage.
For the first time since Jimmy had assaulted me, raped me , I breathed without flinching.
And when I finally drifted off to sleep, it was to the smell of garlic still in the air, the soft scratch of his page turning steady in the background, and my feet on his lap.
The next morning, I woke in the same place, and Dad was in the kitchen. He never left my side all night. I knew this because I woke up to nightmares, and he was there.
“Earl Grey?” he asked, and I nodded.
I hadn’t even taken a sip when there was a knock on the door. Dad opened it, and Mom was there, Rick behind her; both of their eyes were red-rimmed. Her voice broke as she told me Jimmy had overdosed.
I wipe away a tear and notice Joel has passed the house. “Sorry, Miss Pembrooke, I must have missed my turn.”
I knew he did it on purpose.
“Thank you, Joel. And it’s Noelle.”
“Uh-huh.”
By the time Joel slows in front of the cedar-shingled colonial, I’ve wiped my eyes, smoothed my hair, and pasted on a smile I don’t quite feel.
The driveway curves toward the wide porch, and for a moment, the house looks like something from a postcard—white trim gleaming, bay windows catching the November sun, the scent of salt air floating in on the breeze.
I draw in a breath, let it out slowly, and then step out of the SUV.
Walking up to the house, I try to shake the feeling of not belonging as the door looms closer than I want it to, because I still hold on to the hope that one day I will no longer feel like a visitor in a house where my family lives.
I rap my knuckles lightly on the frame, and a second later, Mom swings it open, eyes brightening when she sees me.
“Oh, honey—why would you knock?” she scolds gently, pulling me into her arms before I can even answer. She smells like rosemary and flour, warm and familiar. “This is your house, too.”
I don’t argue that it isn’t, never has been. I just let her hug me, stiff at first, then softer, melting into the mother’s hug I have missed so much.
“Come on, come on,” she fusses, shuffling me inside. “Lunch is ready.”
The kitchen is a flurry of motion—sunlight slanting across the long oak table, dishes already spread out: roasted chicken, sweet potatoes with charred edges, green beans tossed in garlic. The Holland version of comfort food.
Rick is at the head of the table, standing to refill his iced tea, his smile tight but polite. My brothers sprawl at the other end, sneakers squeaking against the tile.
“Hey, Noelle!” Caleb waves, his hair still damp from a shower, cheeks flushed. “We had a scrimmage today. Coach says we’ve got a real shot at playoffs.”
Ethan perks up, too, smaller, leaner, eyes shining behind his glasses. “And I caught a pass. Like, a real one. Not pity yards.”
I can’t help it; I laugh. “That’s not pity, Ethan. That’s skill.”
He beams, and for a moment, it’s almost easy.
They keep chattering—about football, classes, Thanksgiving break coming up, and which teacher gives the hardest tests. It’s ordinary, and I let it wash over me, fork moving between bites of chicken and sweet potato.
And when my eyes slip to the window, where the harbor stretches wide and glittering beyond the lawn, I let myself believe, just for an afternoon, that maybe I really can belong again.
The room doesn’t feel like mine, because although it was mine, it never really was.
I’ve only spent a handful of nights here over the past five years since they moved here from Michigan.
Pale blue walls, a white quilt perfectly tucked at the corners, the kind of furniture you’d expect to see in a model home.
My name isn’t inside the books on the shelves, no posters taped up with curling edges.
I never unpacked here. Still, when I sit on the edge of the bed, the mattress dips under me, as if maybe it’s been waiting.
My phone buzzes. Dash.
Dash
I wanted you to feel me when I’m on the ice. If you feel the same, there’s a pair of my game day boxers in your bag. No pressure. No expectations.