10. Noelle
— ? —
Noelle
Sebastian drives me home himself after another Sterling family event where we all have to perform like trained seals.
No driver tonight. Just the two of us in the sealed dark of his car, where the masks can finally come off and we can be something closer to ourselves.
The city slides past the windows, all blurred lights and late-night shadows.
My feet ache from four hours in heels. My face aches from four hours of smiling.
My soul aches from four hours of pretending I don’t notice Cordelia’s pointed comments about gold diggers and social climbers and women who attach themselves to wealthy families like parasites.
Nancy’s empty apartment has become home now, ever since I packed a single bag and walked out of the Sterling estate for good.
It’s the first place in months that doesn’t belong to anyone trying to control me.
Cramped, smelling faintly of someone else’s laundry detergent, a twin bed and a window that looks onto a brick wall, every day of it funded by a black card I can’t wait to pay back.
Not exactly the penthouse I used to call home.
It’s better. It’s mine, even if it’s borrowed. No Sterlings. No leash.
Sebastian didn’t comment on the address when I gave it to him. Didn’t raise an eyebrow or make a snide remark about the neighborhood. Just plugged it into his GPS and started driving.
I’m not sure why that matters, but it does.
“You were good tonight,” he says, breaking the comfortable silence.
“At what? Smiling while your mother implied I was a gold digger?”
“At not stabbing her with a salad fork. I was impressed.”
A real laugh gets out of me, surprised and rusty, the kind I haven’t made in weeks.
“I considered it,” I admit. “Somewhere between the appetizers and the main course, I had a very detailed fantasy about the tines going right through her hand.”
“Violent.”
“She brings it out in me.”
The car moves through the city, passing from the well-lit avenues of the Upper East Side into neighborhoods that get progressively less polished. Neither of us reaches for the radio. The silence is comfortable now, which terrifies me more than the tension ever did.
Tension I know how to handle. Comfort is dangerous.
“Can I ask you something?” The question’s out before I can talk myself out of it.
“You’re going to anyway.”
“Why hasn’t anyone ever hurt you?” My body turns in the seat to look at him, at the sharp profile illuminated by passing streetlights. “You walk through the world like you’re untouchable. Like nothing can get to you.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. The only sound is the hum of the engine and the soft swish of tires on wet pavement.
“Who said nothing has?”
“Have they?”
“Everyone has something.” His eyes stay fixed on the road, but something in his voice shifts. Gets quieter. More honest. “I just don’t let it show.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
My gaze stays on him. Really looking. The sharp jaw that always seems clenched. The tension he carries in his shoulders like a permanent weight. The way his hands grip the wheel like he’s holding something together, himself, maybe, or everything around him.
He’s not the cold, unfeeling machine I thought he was when we first met. He’s something more complicated than that. Someone who’s learned to hide the soft parts so well that everyone forgot they existed.
Including, maybe, himself.
“What’s the thing?” I ask. “The thing that gets to you?”
“Noelle.”
“Tell me.”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, the car pulls over to the curb, the engine dies. We’re on a quiet side street, somewhere between his world and mine, streetlights painting orange stripes across the dashboard.
The silence stretches, elastic and charged.
“My father,” he says finally. The words come out rough, like they’ve been stored somewhere deep and rarely touched.
“He was like Dorian. Charming. Reckless. Everyone loved him. Everyone forgave him. My mother spent their whole marriage cleaning up after him, the affairs, the bad investments, the promises he couldn’t keep. ”
His stare stays fixed straight ahead, not looking at me.
“And when he died, I thought it would stop. I thought the chaos would end, and we could finally be... stable. Normal. But then Dorian started making the same mistakes, and she started covering for him too, and I realized-”
He stops. His hands tighten on the steering wheel.
“I realized nothing was ever going to change. The golden boys win. They always win. And people like me just... manage the wreckage. Clean up the messes. Keep everything running while they get the credit and the love and the benefit of every doubt.”
The words hit somewhere deep in my chest.
“People like us,” I say quietly.
He turns to look at me then, and the rawness in his eyes pulls the air out of me.
“I was the dependable sister,” I continue.
“The one who never caused problems. The one who could be married off to fix someone else’s scandal because I wouldn’t make waves.
My whole life has been managing other people’s wreckage.
Cleaning up after Celeste. Smiling through situations I never chose. Being useful instead of wanted.”
“That’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it?”
The car is very quiet. The space between us feels smaller than it should, like the air itself is pressing us together. His face is half in shadow, half in light, and I can see the pulse jumping in his throat.
This is not the Sebastian Sterling I thought I knew. Not the cold corporate machine who chose me to fix his family’s reputation and handed me to his brother without a second thought. This is someone wounded and weary and so much more human than he wants anyone to see.
My chest aches with the weight of understanding him.
“I should take you home,” he says, but instead of turning back to the wheel, his body shifts toward me. His eyes drop to my mouth for just a second before returning to meet my gaze.
“You should.”
Neither of us moves.
The streetlight flickers, casting his features in shifting shadows.
The rise and fall of his chest is faster than it should be.
The heat of him radiates across the space between us, warming the cool air of the car.
My pulse is going so hard I can feel it in my throat, in my wrists, low in my belly.
I watch his throat work when he swallows.
I watch his hand flex on his thigh, the same hand I keep thinking about for no reason I’ll admit to.
My underwear is already ruined and he hasn’t even touched me.
“This is a terrible idea,” I whisper.
“I know.”
He leans in slowly, giving me time to pull back. To stop this. To be the sensible one, the dependable one, the one who doesn’t make mistakes.
I’m so fucking tired of being that person.
I meet him halfway.
The first kiss is tentative. Testing. His lips brush mine so softly it’s almost a question, and I answer by pressing closer, by opening to him, by making a sound in my throat that I don’t recognize.
It’s not soft after that. It’s not careful.
He groans, low and desperate, the sound of his control giving way, and then it’s consuming. His hand comes up to cup my jaw, tilting my head to deepen the kiss. His other hand finds my waist, pulling me closer across the center console.
He pulls back, breathing ragged.
“Noelle-”
“Don’t.” My fingers fist in his collar, dragging him back toward me. “Don’t apologize. Don’t rationalize. Just-”
He kisses me again, harder this time, and my brain goes completely offline.
Somehow, I’m not sure how, I end up in his lap. His hands grip my hips, settling me over him, and I can feel how hard he is through his dress pants. The evidence of how much he wants this, wants me, sends a bolt of heat straight through my core.
My fingers rake through his hair, destroying the careful styling. His mouth trails down my neck, teeth grazing my pulse point, and I grind down against him without thinking. He groans into my skin, his hips jerking up to meet mine.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “Noelle, we should-”
In the rearview mirror, headlights flare.
A car pulls alongside us, sleek and black and horribly familiar.
The window slides down.
Dorian.
He’s staring at us with an expression I can’t read. Shock. Anger. Worse than either, an expression that looks almost like betrayal, which is rich coming from him.
“Well,” he says, his voice deceptively casual. “Isn’t this interesting.”
The moment shatters.
I scramble off Sebastian’s lap, back into the passenger seat, trying to smooth my hair and straighten my dress and look like I wasn’t just grinding on his brother in the front seat of a parked car, both of us acting sixteen.
“Dorian.” Sebastian’s voice is ice. Controlled. Like he didn’t just have his hands all over me three seconds ago. “Is there something you need?”
“I was driving by. Saw the car.” Dorian’s eyes slide to me, and the look in them makes my skin crawl. “Didn’t realize you two were... busy.”
“We’re not.” The lie tastes bitter in my mouth.
“Really? Because from where I’m sitting, it looked like my brother had his tongue down my wife’s throat.”
“Soon-to-be ex-wife,” I snap. “A distinction you seemed very clear about when you were fucking my sister in our bed.”
Dorian’s expression flickers. “That’s different.”
“How? How is it different, Dorian?” The anger feels good. Clean. Better than the shame trying to claw its way up my throat. “You had a whole secret family. A child. Five years of lies. And you want to sit there and act scandalized because I kissed someone?”
“I want to understand what’s happening here.” His eyes narrow. “Is this about the company? Are you two plotting something?”
“What happens between me and Noelle is none of your concern,” Sebastian says coldly. “She’s not your wife anymore. She’s not your property. She never was.”
“She’s still a Sterling by name.”
“Not for long.” My gaze meets Dorian’s and holds it. “The divorce papers are almost ready. And once they’re signed, I never have to see you again. So I suggest you drive away and forget whatever you think you saw here.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll remember all the things I haven’t told the lawyers yet.” The threat comes out smooth and steady, surprising even me. “All those late nights. All those business trips. All those expenses that don’t quite add up. I’ve been very cooperative so far, Dorian. Don’t make me reconsider.”
His face changes. Fear, maybe. Or maybe he’s just doing the math, realizing he has more to lose here than I do.
“This isn’t over,” he says finally.
“Yes, it is.” My voice doesn’t waver. “Goodbye, Dorian.”
He stares at me for a long moment. Then the window slides up, and his car pulls away, disappearing into the night.
The quiet he leaves behind presses in from every side.
Sebastian starts the car without a word. His jaw is tight. His hands are steady on the wheel. He drives the rest of the way to my friend’s apartment without looking at me.
When he pulls up to the building, neither of us moves.
“Noelle-”
“Don’t.” The word comes out tired. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“We probably should.”
“Probably.” My hand reaches for the door handle. “But not tonight. I can’t... I can’t do that tonight.”
He nods, once.
The door opens. Cold air rushes in, breaking whatever spell had held us together in the warm dark of the car.
“Goodnight, Sebastian.”
“Goodnight.”
I don’t look back as I walk inside. But I can feel his eyes on me the whole way, and I can still taste him on my lips, and I know, I know, that whatever just happened changed everything.
We’re both pretending it didn’t.
But we both know the truth.