26. Queenie
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
QUEENIE
RECOMMENDED LISTENING ‘DON’T I HOLD YOU’ BY WHEAT
We play video games that night. As in, I watch Noah scream obscenities at Ares while Fox just provides murmured instructions to me, so I don’t get blown up in some death-by-sword game. I get blown up anyway because I’m laughing so hard.
Once everyone retires for the night, Noah kisses me goodnight while Ares pretends to puke on his shoes. Noah pushes his face away with one hand while kissing me with the other.
I hide my face in his chest because he won’t let me go.
The next night, they have a match to prep for. So, I wisely keep to my room and Noah sneaks in to kiss me goodnight again. My toes curl each time he tips my face up and kisses my nose first before the good stuff. It’s cute and sweet and so him.
The next match – a five-day test match – ends in a draw. Noah’s exhausted each night, and staying back with the coaches to watch the day’s match tapes. Taking notes and prepping strategies.
It’s awe-inspiring. And makes me infinitely proud, when I cheer for him every time he makes runs, or the one time he dives, and gets a set batter out.
I send fresh pies for my boys, as I think of them, to the locker room. For their lunch breaks.
We’ve been kissing breathlessly for more than week and finding no time for more.
And each night, Noah sleeps on a mattress on of the floor of the house he owns.
Each night, my resolve to keep my distance from him erodes bit by bit.
I have never met a man who keeps his word like Noah Calvin Dumaine.
We do movie night again a week later. I fall asleep curled up next to Noah before the movie’s over. Fox’s choice is a rockstar documentary.
I’m woken up by Noah’s lips on mine.
“Time for bed, love,” he whispers.
I linger over his mouth for a moment. It’s tasty and delicious. All mine. I sigh against his lips and run my fingers over his hair. He clenches his fingers over my midriff.
“You’re tempting me no end, woman.”
“I’m just doing my job.” I bite his lower lip slightly.
We sit up after a minute of necking. It’s all very teenage hormones.
And, like he does every night, he takes my hand and leads me up the stairs.
I’m ahead of Noah, half-asleep but wholly aware of the man walking with me. It strikes me for the first time that I think of Fox and Ares as boys and Noah as a man. A gentleman. A gentle man. Obviously, he was angry the night we ‘negotiated’ our weird arrangement, but he is not an asshole.
He’s no saint either with his hard edges and unhealed wounds.
I have had to recalibrate who he is. In my head.
I spy the makeshift mattress and mound of pillows in the family room. Noah’s new bed.
A gamut of emotions runs through me. As do scenes from the last week. Noah carrying me to the bathroom. Noah holding me so tight as he told me something so intensely personal and meaningful. Noah kneeling in front of me, careful of my personal space.
Noah kissing me, making me come so hard. Noah hugging me. Noah telling me, he wants things with me.
I make a decision then. It’s easy but oh-so-complicated.
I stop at the foot of the stairs. “Don’t sleep on the mattress.”
“Do you suggest I sleep standing up?”
I peek at him, a little rumpled and grumpy from sitting in one position. “I meant, we can share the bed. My bed. The bed in my room,” I ramble on.
He stills, uncertainty sliding into his pretty eyes.
“Just, do it, okay?” I snap out. Already aware of how complicated this could become. How easily it could change everything between us. “Before I change my mind.”
“Fine.” He nods shortly. “I’m too exhausted to argue with you, Hellcat. I’ll change and come.”
I bound up the stairs and straighten the room a bit before he shows up. I am not a slob, but I don’t want Noah seeing my home bra (the one with fraying straps and a blobby color) or my textbooks with question doodles on them.
I also climb quickly into bed before he comes and pull the sheet to my neck. It’s too hot so I push it down. That brings my tits into view. I don’t want him thinking this is a seduction thing so…
I look at the pillows I threw on the floor. I pick them up and start piling them in the middle of the bed, like soldiers.
I’m almost finished when Noah knocks and enters the room.
“We’re not having sex, and I still think I should go back to the mattress.” He talks from under the tee shirt.
“Stop arguing.” I get a mouthwatering glimpse of his stomach and abs and the Adonis Dimples I’m obsessed with. I can’t help imagining running my fingers over those V-shaped muscles on his hips. They are so taut and firm and I’m only human.
He pulls the shirt down over his sweatpants. “Are you okay? Your mouth’s open.”
“I’m fine, I—” I stop mid-sentence and stare at him again.
“What? What is it?” he demands.
“Your tee shirt—” I lick my lips. “You’re wearing it backwards.”
“Am I?” Noah looks down, frowning. “Shit. I always do this,” he mutters, almost to himself. He pulls the tee off by the neck and gives me his back as he wears it again.
I don’t do the decent thing and turn around. I shamelessly ogle the striated muscles of his back and his vertebra shifting with the movement.
Even as my logical mind throws me back to our catastrophic morning after. I was in my tee shirt, worn backwards. Exactly like this…
I gather one of the pillows to myself and ask him quietly, “What happened between us…that night at the drive-in? Just tell me the truth, please.” My voice shakes at the end.
He tugs the tee shirt on and replies gruffly, “You were super drunk and almost passed out before I ended the kiss. Then you had the bright idea of swimming in the ocean.”
He gives me a lopsided smile. It knocks my heart off-kilter. “You took off your clothes and jumped into the water. I followed you, tried to keep you from drowning. I couldn’t dry you, no towels, so I made you wear your shirt. Your pants were too sandy so?—”
“So, nothing happened between us?” I ask, because I need to hear the words.
He sits on the edge of the bed. And places his large, capable hand on the wall of pillows. “Nothing ever happened between us, Queenie.”
I lie down and pull the sheets up over me.
Noah sits and watches me for a long moment and then picks up a pillow. He places it in the center with utmost care. “Good idea with the wall of pillows.” The mattress dips with his height.
I instantly go hot and cold from his proximity. In my bed. Right next to me. This man who just has to kiss me to make me lose my mind. Who does the nicest things for me, without ever telling me about it. Who’s proved himself to be a decent man with actions more than his words.
Who I can’t help but trust. But trust demands action too.
I clench the sheets tight and talk to the ceiling. Because I can’t bring myself to face him. “Last year, on Halloween, my roommate came back to the dorm. She wouldn’t stop crying. Her shirt was on backwards and she had scratch marks on her neck.”
“Queenie—” he exhales.
I take a shaky breath before continuing. “I forced her to go to the student health center with me. The nurse examined her where Dolly, my roommate, admitted she was assaulted. Sexually.”
“Fucking hell,” Noah swears.
A tear runs down my eye to my hairline. “She wouldn’t tell me or the nurse who did this to her. But a month later, she dropped out of college and went back home to Montana. When?—”
My voice breaks before I swallow the ball of tears down and finish my confession in broken pauses. “Before I woke up that morning, I thought I was dreaming. When we…fooled around. It’s why I was so uninhibited. Then, when I woke up…and you…were naked and I saw my tee shirt was on backwards…. I was thrown back to what happened to Dolly. So, I freaked out on you, Noah.”
I slide up and eye him over the wall of pillows. He’s in shock. His eyes are wide, and it looks like he’s not even breathing.
I offer him my hand. He doesn’t take it. “I’m sorry. I thought…It doesn’t matter what I thought. I was just in a bad place, Noah. And you were not to blame for it.”
“Did they catch the motherfucker who touched her?” His voice is so quiet. Almost murderously quiet. His eyes are obsidian.
I shake my head. “No. No, it never came to that.”
“ Fucking hell !” The words are quiet, heartfelt.
I shrug. “Now you know, why I am the way I am.” Prickly and mouthy and untrusting.
I lie down on my side of the bed when Noah says my name.
I turn toward him, even though the pillows hide him. “Yes?”
“Do you want me to hug you?”
I nod so hard, my plait flies into my mouth. I dislodge it and take two pillows away from the wall. I slide into his arms. They fit around me like I was always meant for them.
“I’m so sorry you went through that, love.”
“I didn’t go through anything, Dolly did.” I sniffle.
He kisses the top of my head. “I’m sorry anyway.”
“I—” I try and put into words things I’d repressed for months now. “After the Dolly thing, sex is not…not that it was before. I’ve only done it a few times with guys in their dorm rooms. And I just…” I stumble over my words. “One of them said, my arms are too fat, and he would get smothered between my thighs.”
Noah growls in his chest.
I raise my head up to look at him. “I don’t…” I swallow. “I don’t want to disappoint you too.” I tell him my shameful fear.
He sighs. And rubs a comforting hand on my back. “Will you give me the idiot’s address? I’d like to introduce his mouth to my fist.”
I giggle between my tears. “That’s funny.”
“I’m serious.”
“It’s okay. I’m okay.” And, strangely, after telling him and watching his dramatic reaction, I do feel okay. Not so broken. So… destroyed.
“Do you promise to tell me the second you feel unsafe or uncomfortable with me?”
“I promise,” I answer solemnly.
Noah kisses my temple. “You’re brave and impossibly perfect. And I don’t know what I did to deserve you.” His next words are almost guttural. “Thank you for trusting me with yourself anyway.”
A second tear runs down my nose. Both at what he said and how he said it. Noah is a gentleman. Period. I don’t ask myself why I’m so relieved.
I sniff loudly. “Goodnight, Aussie boy,” I whisper. And close my eyes before the tears drown me and I get attacked by the past.
I think I imagine his whispered, “Goodnight, pretty desi girl.”
But it echoes in my head as I drift off to sleep. With my Aussie boy and a wall of pillows separating us.