48. Queenie
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
QUEENIE
RECOMMENDED LISTENING ‘OVER’ BY LINDSEY LOHAN
I have my panic attack under control by the time we reach the cottage. Noah’s preternaturally quiet next to me, when he opens the door and lets me walk ahead of him. The heat from his proximity blisters me.
I concentrate on not crying. On breathing evenly.
He takes off his jacket and lays it on the mantelpiece. “Do you want some water? Something stronger?”
His practical questions snap me out of my stupor. “I’m good. I’m fine.” I attempt a smile. It’s like stretching taffy but I do it. “I’m sorry your night is ruined. Maybe we can?—”
“Fuck my night,” he says roughly. “Talk to me.”
My breath trips up again. “I—” I shake my head.
“Please.” Noah touches my arm. The barest brush of fingertips.
“I have a headache, I think.” I touch a shaking hand to my aching forehead. “I don’t…”
“Are you really not going to tell me who that man is and what happened between you?” He is rough again. Almost barbaric, with the muscle ticking in his jaw. The crinkles on his lovely, unmarred forehead.
“Please, don’t,” I try feebly.
I’m so hot. I want to tear the dress off. I want to burn it and throw the ashes in the trash. It’s not a pretty dress. It’s ugly. Ugly.
Noah drops his hand when I jerk away from him. “ Talk to me, please.”
I walk up the stairs quickly and he follows me. I want to tell him to stop. To not come after me. I’m trying too hard not to cry.
We enter the bedroom, his bedroom… that he let me have. So generously. With his power and wealth and privilege.
Tears come. I knuckle them away.
Noah says my name in a small voice. So low. Despondent. “Is he…is he the professor who attacked your friend and threatened you?”
My face crumples. I bury it in my hands as sobs shake my shoulders.
Noah puts his arms around me, holding me, surrounding me. A warm shelter for me to lean into. But he’s a man of wealth and power and privilege. Untouched by the ugliness of my real life.
I break away from him.
He lets me go.
“I’m going to kill the bastard.” He is murderous. Dangerous. Lethal.
I shake my head and finally face him. “He?—”
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” Noah repeats. His fists are clenched.
He is fairly vibrating with emotion. I’m falling apart with mine.
We’re a hopeless, doomed pair.
“I tried,” I whisper. “I told him what I knew of the assault. He laughed and threatened me with dire consequences. I tried anyway. But Dolly didn’t leave a statement with me or the school authorities. And when I took what I knew to the Dean’s office, they were very sympathetic to my story. But he’s a tenured, prestigious professor and they weren’t going to…they weren’t going to…”
I cry again. Softly. Helplessly. Shattering all over again. And this time, the tears don’t stop. The emotions of the night, the past catching up with me, my admissions email, Noah’s request…it all becomes too much for me.
I sink to the bed and heave and sob and cry. Noah sits next to me and holds me. Tight. I keep struggling but he doesn’t let go. Finally, my sobs become sniffles and tears.
I am a snotty, messy mess.
“We’ll get proof,” he says, at last.
“Dolly won’t talk.” I’m so tired. So very tired. “And she has a right to her privacy. Her life.”
“What about your life?” He demands hotly. “You dropped out of college because of this monster.”
“That was my choice,” I respond. “I did that. I couldn’t take the sly taunts, the constant judgment anymore.”
And it was. I could be brave all I wanted, be tart and sassy and stand up for myself now…but the truth remains. When it mattered, I folded. I gave up.
I couldn’t fight anymore.
I am weak. A coward. A failure.
The thought brings on a fresh set of tears. They lodge in the back of my throat.
“Still.”
I shake my head. “It’s done, Noah. There’s nothing more to be done.”
“You’re coming with me,” he says grimly. “I’m taking you away from here. RMIT will be different. I’ll hire bodyguards for you and …”
I raise my tired, aching head from his shoulder. “What? Stop! What are you talking about?”
“What do you think I’m talking about, Queenie?” Noah is wild-eyed. “I want you to come with me. To move away from here. This place is hell for you. You don’t need to –”
“You can’t make that decision for me.” My heart starts hammering in my chest again.
“I wasn’t trying to?—”
“But you are.” I push away from him. Intense energy courses through me. Adrenalin. Fear. The shards of all my broken dreams. “You’re talking about hiring bodyguards for me!” I throw my hands up. “That’s…outrageous.”
“I want to protect you.” He is carefully blank. “Take care of you.”
“I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it all these years.”
“You were bullied out of college, Queenie.” Noah grits out. “And you couldn’t even stand up to your bully. Not even tonight, when you had the chance.”
The words strike me like a blow to the chest. A bullet entering my fragile skin, tearing it apart, bleeding through and through.
“I don’t mean it…” Noah rubs a hand over his face. And stands up. Looming over me. “Let’s try again, shall we? We’re both a little rattled, obviously.”
He tries to touch my shoulder, but I shake him off. “Don’t do that. Don’t fix me. You don’t get to do that. No one does.” My voice throbs with emotion, but I’m unwavering.
“I wasn’t trying to fix you.”
“It’s all you do,” I hurl at him. “You fix things. People. Problems. A porn video shows up and you threaten the videographer with a lawsuit. Your spot at cricket camp is in jeopardy and you make up a fake girlfriend to fix it.”
Noah flinches with each word out of my mouth. Venomous. Destructive.
“You blackmail me into being said fake girlfriend by fixing my homelessness problem. You even gave me your bed to sleep in. You want me to be in debt to you. Not just that.” I shake my head, as a fresh insight bursts out of me. “You fix things, you take care of things, because you want to control everything. Control me.”
“I don’t want to control you. I can’t do that even if I wanted to. You’re stubborn and prickly and you stand in your own way even you shouldn’t,” he replies in a low voice.
But there is something more than affection in his voice. There’s vindictiveness. The need to hurt.
“I don’t do that.”
“You dropped out of college and took up a minimum wage job in the same bloody town, so your oppressors see you every day. See what they did to you. You could have gone anywhere but you chose to stay here and be bullied every damn day.” I recoil at his stark words. But he’s not done yet. “You still haven’t told your parents why you dropped out of college.” He is so logical in his response. “Why you gave up on your future.”
It hits a little too close to home. “Yes, because…”
“Because you know what they’ll say,” Noah answers steadily. “They’ll ask you to reconsider. They’ll ask you to be reasonable and make a choice that does not involve being a bloody waitress and take this punishment.”
He’s so right. So bloodlessly, logically right. I see red. I see fucking crimson.
“Not all of us have absent millionaire dads to bail us out of life’s little problems,” I shoot back nastily. “We have to make our own way. We have to take up shitty jobs and do the best we can.”
“You think money makes life’s problems go away?”
“It certainly doesn’t hurt. You were even going to use money right now to get me fucking bodyguards at a school halfway across the world.”
“Yes, because, I didn’t want you to go through anything remotely like this ever again,” he bites out through clenched teeth.
“There you go.” I throw my hands up between us. “Fixing my life for me. You don’t have to do that.”
“Why not? Someone has to.” Noah throws his hands up. “You’re not doing it, are you?”
And because he says it like he doesn’t like me…like he wants to hurt me when I’m already aching and bleeding…I want to do the same to him. I want to make him ache and bleed. See him flayed open.
“I’m not your mom, Noah. Fixing me is not going to bring her back. She’s gone,” I say softly. Quietly. My words drop like a bomb between us.
Noah’s head snaps back. Like I physically hit him.
I take a step toward him as I realize what I just said. The awful, horrific, terrible gravity of it. It’s unforgivable.
It’s a death knell to whatever is there between us.
“Noah—”
He shakes his head. Once. A sharp, decisive cutting motion.
My heart slides to my stomach.
“I know you’re not my mom. I wasn’t trying to make you into her.” His ragged breath just destroys me completely. “I know she’s gone.” His words are black. Broken. Sad.
I take another step toward him. But Noah lunges out the door. And it snaps shut behind him with an audible snick.
My heart falls to my feet and crawls after him. While I cry and cry and cry and cry…