Chapter 18
CHAPTER 18
NOAH (PRESENT)
We weaved through the bustling chaos, dodging locals and tourists alike left and right. The hot and humid air was thick around us, mixed with the aroma of sizzling meat and fragrant spices at every turn.
I hadn’t gone to a market like this since I was a child and the sudden nostalgia of coming to a place like this with my mother washed over me.
I didn’t have time to dwell on the feeling when Amalia stopped short in front of a store nestled in the far corner of an alley, her grip on my hand suddenly gone.
Startled, I looked over at Amalia, only to find her already pushing the curtains of the store apart and disappearing into its depth.
With a heavy sigh, I shook off the feeling of the loss of her hand in mine and followed right after her.
Once inside, a strong wool scent and the faint hint of incense greeted me, soft notes of Arabic music drifting in the space. Colorful and patterned rugs covered every inch of the store.
At first sight, you’d think the place was tiny, but it seemed endless as I kept walking the long corridor. I moved farther into the store until I noticed the back of Amalia’s head.
She was standing in front of Nassim and another woman, who I assumed to be his wife. She was about the same build as Amalia but slightly shorter than her, with long, curly brown hair that was pulled back into a ponytail.
The three of them were exchanging greetings as I made my way over to them. Nassim glanced at me over Amalia’s head with a smile on his face. “Glad to see she hasn’t murdered you in your sleep,” he said, winking at Amalia.
I huffed out a laugh and returned his smile with a small one of my own. “I wouldn’t speak too soon,” I replied as I reached them and stood right behind Amalia.
I heard her groan at my comment and the woman next to Nassim looked between him and me, shaking her head.
“Hey,” I said, brandishing my hand forward to shake Nassim’s. My front brushed against Amalia’s back in the process, but she didn’t move despite her stiff posture. It probably didn’t mean anything, but I’d be delusional and take it as a win.
“Hello to you too,” Nassim began, shaking my hand once before letting it go. He looked at the woman next to him with a soft expression on his face as he put his hand on the small of her back. “This is my beautiful wife, Daniela. Daniela, this is Noah, my cousin I told you about last night.”
Cousin? I didn’t bother correcting him and looked over at his wife with a courteous smile, giving her a small nod. “It’s nice to meet you, Daniela.”
“Same to you too,” she replied, reaching for her husband’s hand behind her and letting her hand rest over his. The small gesture sent a pang straight into my chest, wishing I could reach for Amalia that effortlessly. “Nassim told me you knew Reda.” An appreciative look washed over her features at the mention of my uncle’s name.
“Yeah, I did a long time ago,” I responded, my voice growing tight.
“He was a good man,” Daniela added, glancing up at her husband. Nassim placed a kiss on top of her head.
“He was,” I managed to get out despite the feeling of my throat swelling up from him being gone.
Amalia’s body grew closer to mine as if she was subconsciously trying to comfort me with her proximity, but I must have imagined it because the feel of her body against mine disappeared in the same instant.
“All right, let’s get to work,” Amalia said, breaking the growing silence.
Nassim gave a nod of agreement and led us farther back to a small table with leather poufs surrounding it. An older man, the merchant I presume, was sat there, cross-legged, amidst a sea of his products, working on them.
Nassim slipped a stack of bills in his hand and without another word, the man swiftly got up and left his store.
Without wasting any other time, we all settled around the table and got started.
The sun was setting by the time we were heading back to the safe house.
We’d spent the last few hours going over the layout of my father’s property while I added details about the surrounding grounds we could use to our advantage.
I hadn’t visited the place in a little over thirty years, but based on both what little I’d seen when we left the premises yesterday and Amalia’s recollections of the house, I knew my father hadn’t changed much except for expanding the garage to host more cars and make his bedroom bigger at the request of his new wife.
I’d learned a few years ago that while he’d still been married to my mother, he’d had a whole other illegitimate family that we’d known nothing about.
Matheo had been born a few years after me, and when my mother and I had left, he’d moved them in like we’d never been there in the first place.
Amalia’s grip tightened around my middle as I turned the corner street that led to where we were staying. We’d abandoned her car behind to avoid being traceable and instead used Nassim’s motorcycle to get back home while his men took care of getting rid of the car we’d left behind.
Daniela had driven a separate motorcycle on their way to the market this morning, so they’d used that one to get back to their place where some of Nassim’s men were staying with them.
Amalia had initially refused to climb behind me, saying she’d rather walk, but eventually, she’d relented, knowing there were no other options.
The second her arms had wrapped around my waist, the oxygen in my lungs had stammered and for the rest of the ride, all I could focus on was memorizing the feeling of her against me because it might be the last time I’d have her this close no matter how hard I tried to win her back.
I’d never relent from trying, but in the very far back of my mind, there were whispers of there being a chance she wouldn’t take me back, but I didn’t want to think about the possibility.
I turned the corner of the alley that housed the place we were staying at and parked the motorbike in front of the building. I expected her to jump off the moment my feet landed on the pavement, but neither of us moved.
I closed my eyes and felt her chest rise up and down against my back. One of my hands traveled to rest against her thigh and I heard her breath hitch behind me at the gesture.
But the sound of a kid screaming as they ran out of the house in front of us had us breaking apart.
With the moment broken, she swung her leg over the seat and headed for the front door without sparing me another look.
With a sigh, I turned off the ignition and went to stand behind her as she unlocked the front door. She pushed it open and I braced my hands over the frame, watching her retreat inside.
I was trying to tell myself that I needed to leave her alone, to give her some time to adjust, but I was failing at it.
I was tired of having her walk away from me. Tired of her not talking to me. I was losing my fucking mind over the fact—albeit I’d deserved it.
“Amalia,” I called out, stepping under the mantle and into the house and closing the door behind me. To no one’s surprise, she didn’t give me her attention.
“Amalia,” I said louder this time, walking toward the living room to find her heading for the kitchen.
She peered at me over her shoulder, her hand on the refrigerator’s door handle. “What is it?” she asked, irritation flashing in her eyes. “What do you want?”
I stared at her and said what I’d been holding in without hesitation. “You.”
A hoarse laugh left her lips as if my previous statement was a mere joke. She sighed a frustrated breath and opened the refrigerator to grab a water bottle.
I stood rooted at the outskirts of the entry hallway, her back to me. “Amalia, come here.”
Her fingers tightened around the bottle. “No,” she replied sharply, still not looking at me as she walked toward the back door.
“I said come here, Amalia.”
She whipped around, the anger that I knew was brewing deeper inside finally coming out. She dropped the plastic bottle on the counter and took a step toward me, pointing an accusing finger in my direction.
“You do not get to tell me what to do,” she snapped.
There’s my girl.
My gaze didn’t falter from hers. “We have to talk.”
She laughed, but there was no humor in her tone. “Talk? About what? More lies? You know, every time I learn something new about you, I think to myself, “That’s it, there can’t be any more secrets between us.” And then something else pops up and I’m reminded that I don’t know you at all. That all the time we spent together was just a lie.”
I winced at her words but didn’t back away. I deserved it and I would face every ounce of her anger if it meant she talked to me.
I ran a hand through my hair. “I never lied to you about who I was or how I felt about you. How I still feel about you.”
Her fists tightened at her sides, her knuckles turning white. “Don’t you dare do that. Don’t you dare fucking pretend you felt anything for me,” she snarled.
How could she ever think that? I’d messed up, badly , but never did I think she thought I’d never cared for her, never loved her. I hadn’t said the words, but she must have known.
My brows furrowed. “Do you really believe that?”
She crossed her arms on her chest. “Why would I believe anything else you say when you left without so much as a goodbye? No warning, no note… nothing. ”
“I didn’t?—”
“You didn’t what?” she said, her words low and bitter. “Please just spare both of us from more of your lies.”
She moved in my direction and brushed past me, heading for the front door.
I wrapped my fingers around her forearm. My grasp was gentle, but it didn’t stop the feel of her skin from burning through mine. “Do not walk away from me,” I warned.
She jerked her head up to look at me and tugged her arm out of my grip, putting distance between us. “No,” she hissed. “You do not get to tell me that. You walked away from me.”
She shook her head, huffing out in disbelief. “You know I waited for hours all alone in your apartment for you to return with ‘breakfast.’ I waited as long as I could before I had to leave and return to the dorms before anyone grew suspicious. Then on Monday morning, I walked into the training room to learn from a complete fucking stranger that you took an unexpected leave of absence with no known date for your return and that they would be replacing you until further notice.”
“I’m sorry,” I started, taking a tentative step toward her.
She took a step back. “I don’t care. Your apology doesn’t matter to me. Not anymore.” She headed for the front door again.
My heart pounded furiously in my chest, my mind a chaotic whirlwind of emotions. Watching her walk away from me felt as if everything I cared about was slipping through my fingers again.
But this time, I wouldn’t let it happen.
It’d been almost ten years and I still felt like I was fucking things up despite carefully trying to find the right words to say. So fuck it, no more thinking. I needed to lay it all out on the table and stop walking on eggshells, trying to find a balance between telling her everything while trying not to further enrage her.
“You changed things for me, Amalia.”
She turned to face me again. “Oh, spare me with your bullshit. You left me. I fell in love with you and you skipped town without a goodbye.”
“I couldn’t stay. I wanted to, but I just… I couldn’t. I needed to leave.”
“And somehow you couldn’t say goodbye or give me the decency of an explanation.”
I took a deep breath, ignoring the ache in my chest. “When my mother died, I was lost and I just…”
“You just what? You could sleep with me, make me fall in love with you, but you couldn’t tell me you lost the most important person in your life and needed some time to process.”
“I didn’t know how,” I said truthfully. “I loved you. I still?—”
She cut me off, her eyes blazing. “Don’t you dare say you love me. When you love someone, you stay. You talk . You don’t just vanish into thin air and break them, leaving them to pick up the pieces of a mess you left behind. You know what, I’d thought so long about what I would say to you if I ever saw you again, and now I realize I don’t want to talk.”
“Amalia, please,” I said, pleading. My fingers reached to grasp her wrist again.
“Just let me go, Noah,” she said in a near whisper, her voice trembling with emotion she was trying to conceal as she pulled her hand away. She shook her head, her features morphing into anguish as if the more I spoke, the more hurt I was causing her. “We’re over. We’ve been over for the last ten years.”
Her words lit a fire inside me, making it burn even brighter in my resolve. “I fucked up, but we are not over. We were never over. How could I ever get over you?”
She opened her mouth, but I held up a hand, silently asking her to let me finish.
“I never thought I was worthy of love.” My words were barely audible as if they’d been dragged from my throat, but I pushed against the ache in my chest and continued.
“My mom always tried her best to show me that she loved me, but deep inside, there was this voice, this nagging feeling that she only did it because she was trying to undo everything my father did to me, to erase in her own way how he made me feel and the stain he left on my heart.”
I paused for a moment, my heart thundering as I realized how close we were now standing. Her back was now to the wall, her eyes flickering between mine, a conflicting ocean of emotions swarming in hers.
But she didn’t move, which meant there was a chance she’d let me back in. If she was over me, if she truly believed we were over, she wouldn’t let me stop her from leaving.
I leaned my head down, slowly enough so as to not startle her, and pressed my forehead against hers. Her breath hitched as I stared into her eyes, noting that buried deep under her hard exterior, what I’d done weighed on her.
“You breathed life back into me, Amalia. You showed me that I don’t have to be or do anything to be loved. That I can just exist and be loved. That’s what you did for me, what you’ve shown me, what you’ve always shown me. I was just too fucking stupid, too hurt to see it before, so I ran away.
“I ran because that’s all I knew how to do, but I don’t want to run anymore. I want to stay and love you.” My fingertips grazed her wrist. “I made mistakes and I regret hurting you, but I would go through it all again if it means me ending up here telling you that I love you.”
“Noah,” she whispered, her eyes drifting closed.
The air between us grew heavy, time passing at a snail’s speed as I waited.
Fuck waiting.
I hovered my lips a mere inch away from her mouth. “I love you, Amalia,” I murmured before dropping my lips in a whispered kiss over her jaw. Her throat bobbed down with a swallow, but she kept her eyes closed.
I moved down to her neck. “Baby, I always have,” I mumbled against the skin right below her ear before pressing my lips there too.
Her arm rose to settle on my stomach and I held my breath, afraid she’d push me away. But she merely just left it there as if to brace herself.
“And always will.” My mouth hovered down to her collarbone. “Come back to me,” I muttered against her now blazing skin before dropping another featherlight kiss there.
Her breath quickened when I bent my legs and pressed another one at the top of her breasts. Then I placed my mouth on the skin between her breasts. I kept my eyes on her to study her reactions as my fingers lightly touched her on her waist to steady myself as I kept making my way down.
I dragged my lips down the front of her top until I reached the hem of her shirt that had slightly ridden up. I held her hips more firmly this time and her hand dropped to my shoulder.
I looked up at her just as her eyes fluttered open to find me on my knees. My breath fanned across the skin right below her navel.
“Forgive me,” I said against her skin before moving slightly down and hovering over her front.
“Amalia,” I whispered against the fabric of her pants. “Please let me earn your forgiveness.”
Every part of me screamed to move, to grab her and kiss her and remind her of who we were together. But this was her call and I’d take her however she wanted. I just needed her to say yes, to let me absolve myself from the hurt I’d caused her.
Please, I said over and over again in my head, hoping the message was being conveyed in the way I looked at her.