32. Noah
“We should give Lizzie some space,” Mom suggests, gesturing to us to get the hell out of the room. Dani gets off my lap, looking at my sister as she walks out.
Celia and Mom are the next ones to leave the room, leaving Dani and I alone with my sister.
This is all too much for me.
Dad.
My sister.
Mom.
The only good thing to come out of all this is Dani. I wouldn’t be able to get through any of this without her.
I need to get out of this hospital.
Home sounds good right about now, but I can’t drive in the current state of mind I’m in.
My head is spinning. Everything is blurry.
I try to sit down on one of the chairs in front of Lizzie’s room, but I miss it. I land hard on my ass. “Fuck,” I mutter to myself.
“Noah, are you okay?” Dani asks.
I’m unable to meet her gaze.
Her hand is on my back, moving in circular motions.
“I need to go…home to check on S-Sammy, b-but I don’t think I can d-drive,” I stammer.
Dani walks off to talk to Celia before she heads back over to me. “Alright, my mom is going to take my car home. I’ll drive you to your house so we can check on Sammy.” She slides her hand into mine.
The way her skin touches mine drives me wild, it’s sort of therapeutic. Her touch is healing me in ways I’ve never thought could be possible.
“Look at me.” She reaches her hands out and cups my cheeks, turning my face in her direction.
Her brown eyes are even bigger close-up.
“Tell me about the novel you’re writing.” She brings me back to reality.
“What?”
“You know. The book you’re writing and publishing,” she says to me as we’re walking to the elevators. “The book you’ve been working on since high school.”
I swallow. “I-it’s about a woman who moves to a small town. A-and she becomes the senior detective for the t-town’s police department. She g-gets assigned to solve a decades-old cold case.”
The elevator doors slide open.
We walk into it, standing side-by-side.
She meets my gaze so intensely it feels like this elevator could catch on fire at any given moment. “Tell me more.”
“Um…a man who’s a part of the prominent family she’s re-investigating willingly teams up with her to solve the case. He wants to find out who murdered his parents.”
Her distraction is working. My anxiety is subsiding like storm clouds disappearing when the sun comes out.
“There’s a slow burn romance involved,” I add.
Ding. Level 3.
Her eyes light up after I say that. “Noah Kaplan, did you just say romance?”
I roll my eyes. “Let’s not make a fuss about it, okay? Before they can even act on their feelings, she discovers a deadly secret that ruins any chance of them ever getting together…Or does it?”
“Well, I know one thing for sure.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“I’ll be one of your first readers,” she tells me all doe-eyed.
I smile. “Tell me about your book.”
“You really don’t care. It’s a romance. I?—”
I box her in, staring deep into her eyes. “Tell me about it,” I demand.
“O-okay. Um…it’s a college sports romance about a basketball captain and a gymnast. The basketball captain is the brother of the gymnast’s best friend. They cross paths at a party and she’s immediately turned off by him. He’s smitten with her from the get-go.”
Ding. Level 2.
I’m watching every part of her face move from her eyes to her lips. She’s fucking mesmerizing. The passion and dedication she has for the craft is attractive as hell.
“That’s all you get, Lover Boy.”
“Do you know how attractive you are when you talk about writing? The way passion radiates off your body, shooting straight through the person you’re talking to.”
Shut the fuck up, Noah. Why did I just say that? I’m just going to dig a hole, jump into it, and never come out of it.
She raises her eyebrows, looking around the elevator in disbelief.
When we arrive at the lobby of the hospital, we head straight for the sliding glass doors.
There’s this deafening silence, consuming the air around us. It’s making sweat drip down from my forehead to my chin.
My heart is beating so damn fast.
Please make it stop.
She opens her mouth to say something to me, slightly cocking her head. “You think I’m attractive?” she asks, smirking before she bites on her tongue to rile me up even more.
Consider me riled over the goddamn edge.
Fuck, the things I want to do to her.
I want to make her pay for torturing me this past month with those beautiful brown eyes of hers. The way her smile lights up every goddamn room she walks in. Her laugh has become my favorite sound. But most importantly, those full pink lips. It’s taken everything in my power not to push her up against one of these hospital walls and have our lips collide.
We make it out of the hospital and walk towards my car.
She has my arm slung around her neck, dangling at the level of her shoulder. I wait to answer her until we reach my car.
She digs for the key in my back pocket. I didn’t even tell her that’s where it is. Feeling her hand dig around back there is the closest I’m going to have her being intimately close to me.
God, she’s really digging in there.
If she keeps this up, I’m definitely not afraid to kiss the fucking shit out of her on top of my car until she’s unable to breathe like a normal human being.
How the hell am I going to answer her question? Don’t sound desperate, you idiot.
Maybe I’m the captain of The Idiot Club instead of Grayson.
“I said the way you talk about writing is attractive. I didn’t say you were.”
I can immediately see the hurt written all over her face. She huffs out a soft breath, walking ahead of me.
You blew that one, jackass.
I speak up again, hoping that more dumb shit doesn’t come spewing out of my mouth. “I’m sorry. None of that came out right.”
“Yeah, it didn’t.”
I don’t know how to respond to her. I’m frozen, wishing I could turn back time to steer this conversation in a more positive direction.
The original plan was to keep all this shit to myself until I found a time that was right to tell her how I feel about her.
I don’t know how much longer I can go through with this plan.