Chapter 14
Nora
Jordan knows. I saw the change in him this morning, and despite understanding the consequences, I still allowed myself to hope the pin in that damn truth grenade hadn’t been pulled while he slept.
But the second he awoke, I felt it coming.
“I need a break,” I announce, interrupting Jackson and Sydney’s discussion. Their heads whip to me in unison, startled by my voice. I’d been stuck in my head since Jackson recounted his conversation with Jordan to us, but I can’t listen to their concerns anymore. I’ve already got all of them covered. “Thank you for your help.”
“Nora,” Sydney calls to my back as I storm out of VETS. When I reach the street, I keep going, turning onto the sidewalk with the sole purpose of walking until I can confidently hold my shit together.
What I did warrants being left behind. I shouldn’t be rescued by a phone call and given a chance at forgiveness. I thrusted us both into a destructive situation that could have been avoided. Thinking about the endless emotions he must be experiencing, I’m grateful he’s at least with someone who can help if they trigger another blackout or seizure.
At that disturbing vision, panic rises into my throat, making the busy street blur and coil around me. I lower to the first bench I see and wait for the maddening merry-go-round my life has become to slow to a stop.
Talking to him and hearing he’s safe would go a long way in hitting the brakes on this carnival ride. Then again, are there adequate words to express my regret? To help him hate me less than I hate myself?
Glaring at my silent phone again, I plead with the universe to make him respond. I never should have gotten involved, and I hadn’t been thinking when I let my guard down. Letting him in and sleeping together only made things so much harder than they needed to be. Endless black hole kind of complicated.
There are no good explanations for why I did what I did. Sydney would say something about my heart getting in the way, and she’d be right. That whole fuck-it conversation my heart had with my good judgment on the mountain is to blame, along with dangerous and stupid wishful thinking.
Wishful thinking had me anticipating a buildup before an explosive ending to our arrangement—casual hints, fragments of history coming up randomly in conversations, and a meandering situation that eventually led him to the truth. A gentle lead-in to a confession and subsequent breakup. A loud, messy one because what I did doesn’t deserve careful control.
I never expected all the horrible ways I’ve hurt him to come crashing down at once, snapping our mending connection and me into a million jagged and irreconcilable pieces.
I shouldn’t have let Josie and Sydney talk me into this.
Shit. Josie. I need to tell her.
Opening the contacts app on my phone, I search for her number. Hurried footsteps sound on the concrete nearby, but I’m too distracted, frantically pulling words together in my jumbled brain that might prepare Josie for her brother’s wrath, to pay attention.
The determined heels stop by the bench. “Are you okay?” Sydney asks, sitting beside me.
“No.” My voice strains under the pressure of the honest answer as hot air burns in my lungs.
I grasp at my slippery control, begging for something to ground me, and that’s when it hits me. I’m tired of lying. Tired of running from my feelings. And so damn tired of pretending—for Jordan, for Sydney, for the world. I’m not who they think I am, and I can’t go another minute cloaked by this fake persona.
“You look like you could use a friend,” she says, placing a hand on my back. She means to comfort me, but her friendly touch sends a tangible reminder that I don’t deserve her sympathy. I’ve been lying to her, too.
“I need more than a friend. I need therapy.”
“All right. You’ve offered me that service for years. Let me return the favor. What’s got you upset? Other than the obvious,” she adds.
When I don’t answer, she continues. “But don’t forget why you entered this arrangement. You did it for his wellbeing. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“Easier said than done.”
“We’re always hardest on ourselves. Women are strong but notorious for taking the blame, soaking in everyone else’s emotions as our own, and apologizing when we’ve done nothing wrong.”
I puff out a breath and check my phone for messages. Still nothing. “I’ve done plenty wrong. This is just the latest.”
“What are you talking about? I know you, Nora Jean, and you—”
“You don’t know everything about me, Sydney.” I shake my head, disgusted that it’s taken this long to tell her. “No one does.”
“Then, tell me.”
Dropping the phone to the weathered bench, I lean my elbows on my thighs and attempt to ignore how exposed I feel. My entire adult life, I’ve run from the hopelessness the truth always invokes.
“My real name is Roan. I changed it to Nora after high school graduation when I escaped the hell my life had become.”
Sydney sat motionless, stunned into silence, but her hand still rests on my back, providing the encouragement I need to continue.
“The summer after tenth grade, I discovered my mother’s boyfriend of the month was drugging her. He’d sneak a little cocaine into her food or drink, more and more until she got addicted. Once that happened, she would give him whatever he wanted. It was like he ripped her soul from her body. She’d never been perfect—fickle, scatter-brained, and disorganized with backwards judgment, especially with men. But nothing I said or did brought her back from that. All her focus was on keeping him happy and getting her next hit.” Lost in the terrifying past, tears fall undetected. “While she was passed out one day, he chained me to my bed.”
“Nora, no.” Her other hand flies to her mouth as tears pool on her eyelids, afraid for me. But shame and embarrassment turn my focus to the pavement below.
“He intended to do some terrible things, but my boyfriend Tristan had suspected something was up when I didn’t respond to his texts. The police arrived before the first customer did. When Tristan came over the next day, he admitted to knowing what that asshole was doing to my mother, even though I tried to hide it.” Story of my life.
“Thank goodness.”
“After that, my mother entered rehab in Pennsylvania, and she stayed clean for the next two years. Guilt from having to look at me every day after she got me back from the system kept the demons at bay for a while. But she eventually turned to other things to make her happy. Booze, gambling, men—her main vice. She really knew how to pick ’em. My senior year, the guy she was sleeping with moved in. As man of the house, he enjoyed displaying his dominance. He was verbally and physically abusive toward my mother, even though she did everything for him. He didn’t lay a hand on me until I cracked and tried to stop him from touching her.”
Sydney sucks in a sharp breath. “What happened?”
“Guess it was more fun to manipulate my mother by using me as his punching bag. And when that wasn’t satisfying enough, he added weapons.” Emotion lodges in my throat, choking me until I have no other option but to let it out. It burst from my chest with such force, several people slow their pace to stare.
Wrapping me in a hug, she soaks in my pain as if it’s her own. Her tears wet the back of my shirt, but I can’t reach for her. My body, my heart, it all hurts too fucking much.
“This is why I can’t be with Jordan.”
“What?” she asks, straightening. “I don’t understand. He’d do anything to keep you safe or help you heal. Nothing in your past could make him not love you. If anything, he’d love you more for how you’ve overcome it.”
My head shakes, spilling more tears over my cheeks. “I can’t have kids, Sydney.”
“Because of the…of the…” she stutters, struggling to put a label on the abuse I survived.
I sniff, falling back against the bench to face her. “Plastic surgery fixed most of the external evidence. But the internal damage to my uterus was too extensive. He wants a big family, Sydney. A picket fence, a big yard, the fairy tale. I can’t give him that.”
“You haven’t told him, have you?”
“I haven’t told anyone. Everyone knows me as Nora—the confident, carefree, sassy persona I adopted when I changed my name. Pretending to be someone I’m not helped me cope and forget. It’s like jumping into a book and becoming that character. I’m a damn good actress.”
“Had me convinced.” She meant it as a joke to lighten the mood, but it made the guilt weighing me down sting even more. I’ve been lying to her the longest.
We met our sophomore year in college when she answered my ad for a roommate. I wasn’t the easiest person to live with at first. While I didn’t want to let anyone in, lack of money created a need. I’d grown accustomed to keeping my distance, but over time, I found a kindred spirit in Sydney and came to trust, love, and lean on her. We’d drop anything to be by each other’s side whenever required—as she is doing now.
“What will you do now that he knows?” she asks, taking my hand.
“No clue. Josie won’t be back for several days. I doubt he’ll want me anywhere near him, but he needs constant observation.”
“Do you want to continue helping him?”
Considering the question, it doesn’t take long to decide where I stand. “Yes.”
“I have to say, I didn’t expect that. Did something change your mind about all this?”
“I still don’t like the deception involved, but at least it removed my blinders. He’s amazing. How did I not realize?”
My eyes plead with Sydney, who smiles, smug in the all-knowing answer she’s about to deliver. “I remember telling you on multiple occasions how good you two were together—how good you could have it with him again—but you were too stubborn to listen.”
“Yeah, yeah. I remember.”
“After the marathon,” she continues. “After that crazy girls’ night last fall. And many other times in between. You should listen to your best friend occasionally. She’s quite brilliant.”
“You still want to keep that title? Even after I lied to you all this time?”
“Nora, you were doing what you thought you had to do to protect yourself. I don’t blame you. I’d have done the same.”
Feeling the metaphorical multi-ton truck lift off my shoulders, I tug her into an embrace. “Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You, Nora Jean slash Roan…” She pulls back to meet my gaze. “What was your old middle name?”
“Nope.” Shaking my head, I draw a proverbial line in the sand between us. Some things are better left in the twisted past.
“Come on,” she urges. “Best friends are good at keeping each other’s secrets. It’s in the code.”
I study her, wondering if I can even mutter it. It’s a part of me I despise and have fought so hard to bury. But she’s right. After hiding the real me from her for so long, everything needs to be dug out and exposed. Even if it is ridiculous.
She watches me expectantly, and I sigh, resigning to enduring further embarrassment.
“Jolene.”
“Jolene? Like in Dolly Parton’s song?”
I can’t help the cringe that wrinkles my face. “Yeah.”
“What’s wrong with that? It’s a pretty name.”
“Not when it was the dog’s name first, thanks to my mother’s classic country music obsession and lack of creativity.”
“Yikes. Okay. You’re right.”
“Thank you.”
We sit in silence for a moment, Sydney’s arm around my shoulders, our heads tipped and resting together. As the city goes on around us, memories play out in front of me like home movie clips. The sweet, loving way Jordan’s gaze blazes into mine and burrows within my soul. His unwavering acceptance of my growing list of flaws. The way he’s always been there, waiting for me to come to my senses. Well, at least he was before the rude, heartless way I discarded his second marriage proposal. And now this. His laugh, which is always at the ready. His goofy jokes, and over-the-top reactions to plays and referee calls during football games. I don’t understand half of it, but his intensity is adorable. The sly way he takes care of me without my noticing, because he knows I’ll stubbornly protest. The sexy V shape of his torso and the ridges of muscle filling every inch as though an artist sculpted them into his skin. How he can make just about any place, any moment into something hot and sexy. His glorious pride in being mine.
“I love him,” I blurt out, causing Sydney to sit up and toss up her arms in celebration.
“Hallelujah.”
“I love him,” I say again, laughing. It feels good to admit my heart’s full for the first time in my life.
“Great. So, what are you going to do about it?”
A wave of excitement rolls through me, and I shoot off the bench, only to lower again as trepidation sinks back in. “Nothing.”
“What? Why?”
“Because nothing’s changed.”
“What are you talking about? Of course, it has. You’ve finally come to your senses, and—”
“Sydney.” I let out a long breath, as exasperated with myself as she is. “I still can’t give him the family he wants. Hell, I’m not even sure I want to be a parent. I didn’t exactly have the best role models growing up.” I hold up a hand when I notice her pulling together a protest. “I need to do some soul-searching in that department first.”
“Fair enough.”
“And there’s the matter of me breaking his heart three separate times and lying to him. That’s hard to come back from.”
“But—”
“No, buts. I need to figure out my life—come to terms with the things I’ve kept locked away and the decisions I’ve made. In the meantime, while he’s stuck with me, I’ll do what I can to give him back his life. He deserves that and so much more. But if I give myself to him and he doesn’t want me, then I’ll make sure he’s free of me with his heart intact when this ordeal is over.”
“What about you and your heart?” she asks carefully. “You matter, too.”
“I’ll be fine, so long as he is.”