Chapter 14
Noah had had the semblance of an apology worked out in his head. Something simple and heartfelt, without any excuses, just a straight-up “I suck and I’m sorry” because Grace deserved at least that much, and in any case, that was probably all he had to give.
Instead, as he slowly turned around, everything in him leaden, he heard himself say, his voice close to breaking, “He’s so much like Jem.”
Grace blinked at him, the hardness in her face that had seemed so unlike her softening into uncertainty. “Jem?” she asked hesitantly. “Isn’t that… your brother?”
He nodded and then found he had to wipe his eyes. Heaven help him, he was such a mess. “Yes. He was…” He let out a rusty, broken laugh. “He was a weird little kid.”
Grace stiffened for a second and then he saw her willfully relax before she shook her head slowly. “Noah,” she said quietly, “I’m very sorry for the loss of your brother, of course I am, but I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.”
“I don’t know, either,” he confessed raggedly.
He sank into a chair, his elbows braced on his thighs, his head hanging down.
He was not handling this the way he’d meant to, offering a quick, effective apology, the end and they could both move on.
“I really don’t,” he told her in a low voice as he glanced up at her, trying for wryness and failing utterly. He wasn’t sure what else he could say.
“Okay.” Grace perched on the edge of the chair opposite, her hands tucked between her knees, a look of confusion on her face.
Her eyes were the color of a storm, her forehead furrowed as she waited for him to say more.
The silence stretched between them, and Noah didn’t know how to fill it.
He felt empty and old, crumpled up and tossed away.
And he didn’t know how to feel any other way.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said, shaking his head. He wasn’t even sure what he was apologizing for. If it was for what he’d said earlier, it was a pretty lousy apology.
Grace was quiet for a moment, and when Noah risked a look up he saw she seemed thoughtful, a little sad, her head cocked to one side, her lashes sweeping downward. “Why don’t you tell me,” she suggested as she looked back up at him, “about Jem?”
The words blazed through him like streaks of lightning.
He never talked about Jem anymore, and yet he was the one who had brought him up.
And, he realized, he wanted to talk about him now, to Grace, in a way that felt as painful as it did potentially healing…
if anything could heal him. In truth, he didn’t think anything could.
“He was my twin,” he began haltingly, his head lowered once more as he stared at the space of worn carpet between his knees.
“Fraternal. We were totally different, and yet… we were like two halves of a whole. He didn’t speak until he was four.
” He paused, realizing how scattered he sounded.
He needed to back up. “Jem was born eight minutes after I was. There was some trouble at the birth… my mother never really went into it, but I think his foot got stuck and sort of twisted, and so he ended up walking with a little limp. You could barely notice it, most people didn’t, but…
it was there.” He heard Grace draw her breath in sharply and he looked up. “What?”
She shook her head, her golden hair flying out in tousled waves, her eyes wide. “Nothing… it’s just… something similar happened with Jacob.”
Noah sat back, surprised. “He walks with a limp?”
She nodded. “A tiny one, because his right foot is turned inward just a little. It’s why he’ll probably never be really athletic, much to my ex-husband’s disappointment.” She pressed her lips together, her expression darkening. “Never mind. You were talking about Jem.”
Another way in which his brother and Jacob were similar, then.
It was uncanny, almost unbelievable. Serendipitous?
Noah shook his head slowly, raking his hand through his hair.
“I don’t even know what I’m trying to say,” he confessed.
“Just explain, maybe, how… Jem and I learned chess when we were four. From Isaiah, actually. We both loved it, we played each other constantly. He was better than I was.” He paused.
“Jem was better than I was at pretty much everything, but he was very quiet, very shy, very gentle… so I started speaking for him. To teachers, to friends, whoever. I always, always knew what he was thinking.” He felt his throat start to ache, and it hurt to swallow.
“At least I thought I did.” He fell silent, trying to feel his way through the maze of his own words.
What was he trying to explain to Grace? To himself?
How much did he want to tell her? Not all of it, he already knew that for sure. Definitely not all of it.
“How did he die?” she asked quietly, and he tensed, amazed and yet unsurprised at the same time that she’d got there so quickly.
He shook his head, more to keep from answering than anything else.
That was the part he really didn’t want to go into.
She already thought he was a jerk. She didn’t need the ultimate and incontrovertible proof.
“We played a lot of tournaments, growing up,” he said, resuming his halting story.
“Traveled the world, it was pretty much our thing. Then we both went to MIT and after that we worked for an investment firm for a while… learned the ropes.” In some ways, Noah reflected, that time had been the sweetest—they’d been away from the pressure of the chess circuit, of a high-performance college, but had relished the challenge of working hard.
Everything had felt like it was still before them.
Jem, who had often had an inclination to depression, had been happy.
“Then,” he resumed, clearing his throat, “in our late twenties we started our own venture capitalist firm, Grob Investments.” It had felt time, at least to Noah.
He’d pushed the idea, had wanted the glory.
Jem would have been happier to continue quietly working, keeping his head down.
He’d always been that way. Noah had always wanted more.
“Grob…?” Grace repeated with a look of confusion.
“We named it after one of the most unconventional chess openings. It’s considered unreliable, weak, and unnecessarily aggressive. Some people call it masochistic.” Kind of like him, maybe. The irony was hardly lost on him.
Her delicate eyebrows rose, her mouth curving faintly. “And you named your company after this because…?”
“Because that’s what we wanted to be.” At least that’s what he wanted to be.
Jem had just gone along with it, as he always did, his sidekick, his soulmate, at least in some ways.
But it had worked for Jem too, at least Noah had believed it had.
“What other people saw as weak,” he tried to explain to Grace, “but we knew could be strong. Kind of like Jem himself.” His voice choked a little, and he had to look down, blinking rapidly.
Grief was such a bitch. Plus, he was tired of feeling it.
Really, really tired. Grief and guilt, twined together, forever. For the rest of his life.
“Okay,” Grace said after a moment. “I guess that kind of makes sense.”
“It did to us. Anyway.” He scrubbed his face, already tired of talking about Jem, of feeling the old wounds, never healed over, bleed fresh again. Why had he started this stupid conversation, anyway? Why hadn’t he just let his comments about Grace and her son land where they would and moved on?
The way he once would have.
“I don’t know what I’m trying to say,” he resumed, a spike of restless irritation sharpening his voice.
“Only through all those years, I got used to speaking for Jem. And I also was a showoff, to make up for his quietness, to be different. And the quieter he became, the louder I did. To make up for it, but also because I could. Because I knew Jem would never outshine me in that way.” She looked confused and he clarified, “Everyone loved Jem. Adored him. He didn’t say much, it’s true, but he was so kind and thoughtful, and people just sensed it.
You could always tell he was listening, really listening.
And he was smart, like, wicked smart. But not at all arrogant.
Unlike me.” A sigh escaped him, a small, defeated sound.
“So when I started with the wisecracks, something Jem would never do, I began to believe I was a lot funnier than I was, and I thought everyone else thought so, too, and I just… went with it.”
She cocked her head, her mouth twisting with what he feared was derision. “And you thought you were being funny, calling me a broken Barbie and Jacob…” She stopped, clearly unwilling to finish that sentence, and he didn’t blame her.
“No, of course I didn’t.” He sighed and scrubbed his face again.
“I don’t know what I’m trying to say,” he told her yet again, even though by now that had to be painfully obvious.
“Maybe just that I’m a jerk. I turned into a jerk when I was speaking for Jem, and I let myself become an even bigger one, high on the success of Grob and life in New York and feeling like I was the big guy around town.
And for the last eighteen months, since I’ve been on this island, I’ve tried not to be a jerk.
But it slips out sometimes, because I’m not spending much time around anyone and Isaiah keeps wanting to…
fix me. And frankly, I can’t be fixed.” He dropped his hands to stare at her openly.
“So I am sorry, very sorry, that I said those things. I didn’t mean them, at least not…
not the way you probably took them, understandably so.
Jacob’s a great kid. And he’s an amazing chess player.
If he ever wanted to play competitively, he totally could. ”
Grace notched her chin an inch higher, her eyes sparkling like silver. “And am I a broken Barbie?” she asked, her tone a mix of challenge and curiosity.
Noah decided he had no choice but to be completely honest. “I don’t know what you are, because I don’t know you,” he said frankly.
“But from what I’ve seen, you’ve been through some stuff.
And if you’re a broken Barbie, well… then I’m Ken with a hammer taken to him.
” His lips curved in a small, sorrowful smile.
“Nothing more than a handful of shattered plastic.”
What, Grace wondered, was she meant to say to that?
Her mind was jumbled with everything Noah had said, as well as all the things he hadn’t.
He hadn’t told her how Jem had died. He hadn’t said what exactly had made him come here and act like a hermit.
He hadn’t even really explained why he’d turned into such a jerk, if he really was one, although there was certainly some considerable evidence to back up his claim.
Because he might have saved their lives earlier in the week, but what he’d said had been so very hurtful. But maybe that was on her, at least a little bit.
“You know,” she said quietly, staring down at her laced fingers, “the reason why what you said hurt so much was because it’s…
it’s sometimes what I’ve thought myself.
” She forced herself to look up at him, even though it was hard.
“I know I’m broken. I spent twelve years in a marriage that was slowly suffocating me, and I didn’t even realize it until I actually was.
” She drew a hitched breath, semi-surprised that she’d admitted even that much when she hadn’t been willing to tell anyone what had happened between her and Brad. And yet there was more to confess.
“And Jacob…” Her voice tore, because this part was even harder.
“I love him so much that sometimes it hurts to breathe. He’s everything to me.
” She stared at Noah hard, willing him to believe her because it was true.
It was the truest thing she’d said so far.
“And yet,” she continued slowly, each word confessed with painful reluctance, “sometimes I’m scared that I look at him through Brad’s—my ex-husband’s—eyes.
” She’d never admitted this to anyone, so why on earth was she telling it to Noah Lawrence?
Grace had no idea, only that some part of her felt compelled to.
“That I sometimes see him as… as a weird little kid,” she whispered, “and it both appalls and worries me, because how does that kind of kid get through life?”
She saw Noah flinch at the reminder of what he’d said, and she felt badly for him, because she wasn’t trying to make him feel guilty. She was just trying to explain her own guilt.
“I really am so sorry I ever said that,” he told her in a low voice.
“I don’t blame you, not really. Especially if you hadn’t invited us.
” But she didn’t really want to rehash it, either.
Maybe it was time to end this unexpected heart-to-heart.
“Anyway, we won’t trouble you again. I’ll go get Jacob.
” Grace started to rise from her chair, only to pause as Noah flung out a hand.
“Grace… I enjoyed teaching Jacob today. I’d… I’d like it if you came again.” He swallowed audibly, his navy gaze scanning her face. “If you’re up for it. If Jacob is. I’d really like that. Honestly.”
Grace hesitated, unsure how to respond. He sounded sincere and she was pretty sure she believed him, but Noah had already said he was broken, and so was she.
That was a lot of damage to be dealing with, and she certainly didn’t want to put Jacob at any kind of emotional risk.
What if he’d heard what Noah had said about him?
“I’ll talk to Jacob about it,” she finally said, which was a somewhat stretching of the truth considering her son didn’t speak, but she was pretty sure he’d make his feelings known about his chess lessons.
Noah nodded, accepting. “Okay. And if he’s up for it how about the day after tomorrow, same time?
I’ll be ready this time, I promise.” His navy eyes glinted, his mouth curving slightly, and Grace was jolted by just how handsome he was.
Somehow, when he’d been being so honest, she’d almost forgotten, but now it came back to her in full force, and it made her feel even more jumbled up inside.
“Okay,” she said after a pause, tearing her gaze away from his. “I’ll… I’ll let you know.”