Chapter 28
The trouble with a parting shot, Noah reflected, was that it was long after—hours, even days—when you were finally able to think of a good comeback. And in his case, even then he couldn’t come up with anything that countered what Grace had leveled at him so quietly.
This wasn’t about him being hurt. Was it?
He wasn’t that selfishly self-protective, surely?
Or maybe Isaiah was right, and he was punishing himself, because he didn’t think he deserved happiness anymore.
Life was safer within the dour walls of Grayhaven, and until recently, he hadn’t felt lonely there.
Now he did.
As Noah had headed back inside, thoroughly dissatisfied by how he and Grace had left things—really, how he’d left things—he realized he hadn’t told her he’d heard Jacob laugh, which had felt so important at the time, and still did.
He hadn’t said anything about their kiss except intimating that he regretted it.
If he was trying not to hurt her, well, he was doing a pretty poor job of it.
Which left him… where, exactly?
Over the next few days, he found no good answer to that question.
He immersed himself in work, which felt easier, but also cowardly.
He worked out a lot in the gym, too, and when the rain finally stopped, leaving everything bright green and lush, he walked the grounds of the estate, which gave him a little more perspective but still left him having no idea what to do.
He didn’t see Grace, or Jacob.
Over the last week or so, they’d stopped arranging chess lessons and she’d just showed up, nearly every day, around the same time—three o’clock, and after the lesson they’d stayed well into the evening, until it was time for Grace to put Jacob to bed.
Noah had gotten used to that. He’d gotten used to not being alone. He’d gotten used to feeling like he was part of a family, which was kind of ridiculous, since he’d only known them a couple of months, but still. He’d felt it. He missed it.
He didn’t like being alone anymore.
And yet… nothing had changed. He didn’t trust himself. He didn’t trust himself not to hurt Grace more than he already had.
That was what this was about, right? And not something stupid and self-absorbed, because if it was, then he really hadn’t changed, which meant he was right to stay away from Grace.
Right?
His mind spun in useless circles, going precisely nowhere.
On the fourth day after he’d kissed Grace, he found himself in Jem’s room. Again. It had blindsided him, going into that room, seeing Jacob there, reminding him so much of his brother. The sea glass collection on the windowsill… untouched but, he realized as he stepped in there again, dusted.
Isaiah had to be keeping the room clean. Why?
Slowly Noah walked into the room. He turned in a circle, taking it all in.
The books on chess and manga comics Jem had loved.
The model airplanes suspended above the bed; when they’d been about eight, they’d been obsessed with them one summer.
Noah had gotten rid of all his when he’d entered his teens, but Jem hadn’t.
His gaze rested on the sea glass, and he sighed. How many afternoons had he and Jem trawled the beach, looking for that glass? He’d always gotten bored; Jem had been utterly intent. It was how they’d operated, always, Jem the patient, steady one, Noah restless and yet responsible for his brother.
A sound escaped him; he wasn’t sure what it was. He lowered himself onto the bed and then simply stared into space.
Time passed. Noah had no idea how much—a minute? An hour? Maybe something in between. His mind was empty, completely empty, which should have been a relief but just felt sad.
And then the door opened. Noah looked up and saw Isaiah smiling at him sadly.
“I wondered when you would come in here.”
“You’ve been keeping it clean.” His voice sounded rusty. Maybe he’d been in here longer than he’d realized.
“It felt right.” Isaiah came into the room, gazing at the sea glass on the sill—green, blue, even purple, smooth and curved, each piece like a work of art. “I miss him, too,” he said quietly and Noah pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes.
“Do you blame me?” he asked, the words forced out through a throat that had become painfully tight. He dropped his hands to stare at Isaiah openly, knowing all the grief was there in his face for the other man to see. “Do you?”
“Noah, no. I never did.” Isaiah’s voice was gentle and full of sorrow.
“My mother did.”
“Briefly, maybe, yes. She’s like you, Noah. She feels things deeply, she acts on impulse. I’m sure she’s regretted what she’s said to you.”
Noah shook his head, resolute. “Why hasn’t she been in touch for the last year and a half then?”
“For the same reason you’ve shut yourself up here for the last year and a half,” Isaiah replied with a touch of wryness. “Because you’re both stubborn and believe you can’t be forgiven.”
Noah braced his elbows on his thighs, his head hanging down. “But it is my fault, Isaiah,” he said in a low voice. “I didn’t listen to him. I didn’t take care of him.”
“Maybe that wasn’t your job,” Isaiah replied gently.
Noah glanced up, a sudden surge of surprising anger firing through him. “That has always been my job!” he declared. “Always.”
“And is that really fair?” Isaiah countered. “We can’t be responsible for another person, Noah, not like that, and especially not when you’re just a boy.”
“But I wasn’t a boy,” Noah insisted. “Isaiah, I was thirty-five! And I still ignored him—”
“Jem was thirty-five, too,” Isaiah replied evenly. “A man, Noah. If he’d wanted to go, he could have.”
It was the first time Noah had heard anything like that, and for a second, it felt like a ray of light slanting through the tiniest crack in the dark door in his soul. But then the door slammed shut again.
“No.” He shook his head. “He never would have. He wouldn’t have given up Grob. He knew how it would have been too hard for me on my own.”
“And yet he did exactly that,” Isaiah stated quietly. “Noah, Jem’s death—it wasn’t your fault.”
Again Noah felt that surge of anger, inexplicable and overwhelming. “It was,” he insisted. “You know it was.”
“Do you want it to be?” Isaiah challenged. “Why are you holding onto all this guilt? What good does it do you? Do you think it’s what Jem would have wanted?”
The questions fell like hammer blows, one after the other, and they kept coming.
“Do you think it’s easier to feel guilt than grief?” Isaiah demanded, his voice rising, his gaze clashing with Noah’s in challenge. “Because as long as you feel guilty, you don’t have to grieve, and grieving is hard, Noah. Grieving hurts.”
“I have been grieving,” Noah protested, his voice rising too.
What did Isaiah think having nightmares most nights, or not being able to sleep, or spending hours staring into space, or feeling like his stomach was lined with lead was?
He’d been grieving for a year and a half, and it felt like there was no end in sight.
“No, you haven’t,” Isaiah replied succinctly. “You’ve been feeling guilty, and trying not to feel grief, which is why it spills out in inconvenient moments—like when you’re sleeping.”
Noah felt himself flush. “How do you—”
“I’ve heard you, sometimes.” Isaiah gentled his voice.
“I love you, Noah. I’ve loved you and Jem like my own sons since you were little.
I know there were a lot of years when we didn’t see each other, but that made no difference to me.
I’ve loved you both, and I’ve seen how different you were, and I loved Jem for being Jem and you for being you.
And it tears me apart inside to think that you’ve convinced yourself that being you is bad. It’s dangerous. Because it isn’t—”
“It is,” Noah insisted. He genuinely believed that, he had to believe that. “If I hadn’t been so—”
“Noah, you got a little full of yourself, all right?” Isaiah cut across him.
“You went to New York, and you became a hotshot venture capitalist and after a youth spent in hotel conference rooms around the world, playing chess, it went to your head.” Isaiah’s voice was kind but firm.
“I get it,” he told him. “You wouldn’t be the only one who let success go to your head. It’s a mistake, not a moral failure.”
Noah shook his head. It was all he could do; it was too hard to speak.
“If you let go of the guilt, the guilt you never should have felt in the first place, then maybe there will be the space to feel the grief,” Isaiah urged, his voice achingly gentle.
“And that won’t be easy. It will be hard.
But it needs to happen, Noah, because until it does, it’s like you’re frozen in time and space.
And you’ll end up hurting people you love, like Grace, without even meaning to.
” He paused while Noah simply stared at him miserably, still unable to speak.
“And you’ll hurt yourself even more than you already have, and I know, I absolutely know, that is not something Jem would have ever wanted. ”
Noah stared at him, his eyes watering with the need to blink, but if he’d blinked, the one frail thread that was holding his composure in place would snap, and then what? Then he’d be a torrent of emotion, a waterfall of grief that would rush and rush and never stop.
He was scared of that, but he realized some part of him also welcomed it. He was tired of holding himself in check, and it wasn’t working anyway. These last eighteen months had been nothing more than a way to stop time, stop everything, including feeling, and of course that hadn’t worked.
Isaiah was right.
And yet he still simply sat there, afraid to move. To breathe. To blink.
Because he was afraid of what would happen if he did.
“Noah,” Isaiah said gently, his voice aching with both sorrow and love, and somehow that word—his own name—was enough to crack the door open again, and let that faint stream of light in. It was also enough to make him blink.
And with that single blink the thread snapped, the walls crumbled, and suddenly Noah’s shoulders were shaking, and he was sobbing like he never had before, like he was being turned inside out, his heart and guts and everything inside him heaving.
Isaiah came over to the bed and put his arms around him, and Noah leaned into him, crying like a baby, like a little boy.
And he felt like a little boy—the little boy who had done life hand in hand with his twin brother, who couldn’t have ever imagined it otherwise.
The boy who hadn’t even had to look at Jem to know what he was thinking.
The boy who knew how sensitive and fragile Jem was, and that it was his job, as the older and stronger one, to protect him.
The boy who had ignored his brother’s cries for help because he was having too much fun, and he was too tired of being the one who had to be in charge, who had to make sure Jem was okay.
The boy who was now more alone than he’d known it was possible to feel, like you weren’t just missing another person, but yourself.
It was the kind of crying he couldn’t stop even if he tried, but he didn’t try.
He’d needed this, he realized. All those nightmares, the crying in the dark, the hours staring into space…
it had been nothing more than a holding mechanism, a desperate attempt to keep the grief—this—at bay.
And the longer it had gone on, the less and less it had worked.
More and more grief had welled up, slipped out.
And he needed it to. He needed to get it all out. He needed to feel it, and then to let it go.
Noah didn’t know how long he sobbed in Isaiah’s arms, only that at some point he was able to shakily ease himself back.
“I miss him,” he whispered as he wiped his face. “I miss him so much.”
“I know,” Isaiah replied, one hand on his shoulder. “Noah, I know.”
From somewhere Noah dredged up a watery smile. Astonishingly, he felt better. Just a little, and totally drained at the same time, but still.
“Thank you,” he whispered, and Isaiah smiled back as he squeezed his shoulder.