Chapter 15
Serra
If Noah’s dour tone hadn’t caused my brow to furrow, the hundreds of notifications and text messages on my phone the second I turned it on were.
I guess a part of me was glad I’d silenced my phone while we were at the bar.
Between the music and the crowd, I wasn’t likely to hear it anyway and I wasn’t supposed to be checking notifications and messages…
which of course, I still ended up doing.
But, dammit, my heart sank at the sight.
With shaking fingers and a ball of dread growing in my stomach, I opened my text messages only to see multiple ones from Zora, Freddie, Michaela, and even Camy.
“Breathe,” Noah said from somewhere in the room.
I’d done as he said and rolled over to grab my phone.
When I did so, he was still propped up on his elbow behind me, but when I looked up it was to see that he’d climbed off the bed and was now coming to sit on the side closer to me.
He still held his phone in one hand but he placed his other one on my shoulder. “Just breathe.”
I was breathing. My heart thudded so loudly he could probably hear it so that was at least working. My vocal chords on the other hand, were a different matter entirely. I never responded to him; just dropped my gaze to my phone again. With shaking fingers, I opened Freddie’s text thread first.
5:20 AM
If I don’t hear from you in the next hour I’m hopping on a plane and coming to you
5:03 AM
Call Zora. Call me!
4:47 AM
I know you think this is bad. Call me before you do anything.
4:31 AM
Shit! Just saw the posts. Call me!
Everything was shaking now—my fingers, my head. Something had happened and it wasn’t good. Freddie was an early riser, so I wasn’t at all surprised to see the time of the messages. No, it was the urgency in them which had a wave of nausea rolling through me.
Zora’s text thread was longer and more persistent with a string of “call me!” messages beginning at 4:17 a.m. up to about five minutes ago.
I didn’t bother opening the ones from Michaela or Camy, but, like way too many people did these days, went to social media for the information I needed. My DMs were a catastrophe.
“What the fuck?” I kept scrolling down my timeline trying to figure out what the hell happened, but by now I was shaking so hard I dropped my phone.
“Shit,” Noah cursed, and instead of letting me retrieve my phone, he took both my hands in his. “Look at me.”
“I’ve gotta see what happened.” My voice hitched and I continued to stare down at where my phone rested on the bed.
It was still dim in the room with the blinds closed, but it wasn’t the pitch dark of night, so everything was on a grayscale that did nothing to make me feel better.
Noah’s hands tightened over mine as he yanked me to him. “Look at me, Serra!”
I did because where else was I going to look?
He had my hands so I couldn’t reach for my phone to continue scrolling.
“What? You told me to get my phone and call my publicist. How can I do that if you’re holding my hands?
” I sounded hysterical and I didn’t even know why.
But I felt it in every corner of my body, the heaviness of trepidation.
Heat seared my cheeks as embarrassment over this entire situation soared to the surface. “What happened?”
“I’ll show you the screenshots Rock sent me,” he said. “But I just need you to breathe for me. Just a couple of deep breaths, baby.”
Pressing my lips together, I tried to square my shoulders and do what he said. By the third breath I didn’t feel totally better, but I was a little steadier when I asked, “Can you turn on the light?”
He nodded. “Yeah.” After releasing my hands, he leaned over to the nightstand to turn on the lamp. The clicking sound of that action seemed as loud as my heartbeat, and I reached for my phone again.
“Here.” He thrust his phone in front of me. “This is what Rock sent.”
My heart sank the moment I glanced at his screen. There was a picture of me and Noah from last night at the bar…when I straddled his lap.
Looks like sports agent Serra Ward isn’t wasting any time moving on, this time with the sexy bad boy stunt legend who left Hollywood for a stint in rehab.
Those were the first few lines of text beneath the picture.
The post was on the page of a notorious gossip outlet.
Several paragraphs followed the headlines but I never got the chance to read them because Noah’s phone chimed with an incoming call from Rock.
I extended the phone to him, and before he could say another word I crawled to the other side of the bed and ran to the bathroom.
I felt sick and exposed and angry as fuck!
My head throbbed after I slammed the bathroom door.
Dropping my forehead to the wood, I stood there for a few seconds, trying to find the breath that Noah insisted I take.
But there were too many emotions going through me at this moment, too many words floating through my mind, questions battering at my brain.
I knew I should do something besides this weak ass locking myself in the bathroom shit, but what?
For real, what the fuck was I supposed to do now?
All I wanted was my career. Then a good-looking man came along, wining and dining me, giving me good sex and saying all the right things.
Was it my fault I fell for that shit? That I believed that for once in my lonely ass life I could really have love and happiness?
What was it about me that nobody could ever love me the way I needed to be loved?
That they either wanted me to conform to their will or that I was simply expendable.
My family hated me because I wasn’t like them, and Adrian…
well, I don’t know why the fuck he did what he did.
Maybe I didn’t fuck him enough, didn’t suck his dick well enough?
So, he went to Lindsey Loren to get the deed done right.
Did he think I wasn’t good enough to carry his child?
We were supposed to get married, dammit!
And now this! Now, I was being painted as what…some type of trick bouncing from one man’s dick to the other. What the hell did I do to deserve all this fuckin’ trauma in my life?
In the silence of the bathroom no answers came, only the sobs that finally wrenched from my throat. I slid to the floor, pressing my back to the door this time, and dropped my head.
“Open the door, Serra.”
Noah’s deep voice reverberated through the wood to settle in my chest. I knew he was out there, knew he and Rock had probably been talking about me and all my drama but I didn’t care. For the moment this was my safe place. In this bathroom, alone. I was always better off alone.
“Come on, sweetness,” he said. “Open the door so I can see that you’re alright.”
“I’m not,” I replied before the strong part of me that was always forced to take centerstage could appear.
“Okay. Let me in so I can help make it better.”
I shook my head as if he could see me. “You can’t.”
“I will.”
“Noah,” I sighed. “I’m sorry I got you involved in this mess. Sorry I even came here. Sorry I thought we could…just—”
“Stop!” his voice boomed, and I jumped. “You’ve got three seconds to open this door or I’m kicking it in.”
I scrambled to my feet because I knew from the anger in his voice that his three seconds really meant one and I didn’t want to be sitting against the door when it came crashing down.
I was never afraid of Noah, never felt anything but love and caring from him, but I knew he had a temper and a past peppered with predicaments he found himself in because of that temper.
My family thought he was dangerous because, of course, they’d looked into his background, but Noah had always been honest with me, so I already knew the type of man he was.
At this moment, he sounded like the man with the temper.
I disengaged the lock, and seconds after the light clicking sound echoed, he turned the knob from the other side.
Yanking my hand away from the door, I took a few steps back and watched as he entered the bathroom.
His cinnamon brown skin was on full display as my gaze dropped to his bare chest ripped with muscle.
He held me with those strong arms last night and I’d wrapped my legs around his waist.
“Baby,” he said, his voice much softer now.
My gaze lifted to his face, to his furrowed brow and eyes that burned with barely banked rage and concern. To his thick lips and the barest hint of beard stubble forming on the sides of the goatee he preferred.
It wasn’t until he took another step to close the short space between us that I realized I was naked.
I asked for one of his T-shirts after our shower last night and he’d only laughed.
He preferred we both sleep naked. At some point this morning he’d pulled on a pair of basketball shorts, and now held a T-shirt in his hand as he approached me.
Before I could speak, he was close enough to drop the shirt over my head.
I lifted my arms to push through the sleeves, and he smoothed it down until it fell almost to my knees.
The shirt smelled like him. Or was that because I was in his bathroom, just inches from the man? Basically, surrounded by him.
“First,” he said, settling his hands on my shoulders as he stared down at me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you to go to your phone like that. I should’ve just told you what was happening.” He sighed. “This is a lot for you, and I didn’t think about that first.”
Now, I saw it. I hadn’t in the moment when he told me to grab my phone or the minutes after that when I’d been too consumed by my own distress to acknowledge anything else.
But, right this second, in this bathroom flooded with morning light from the narrow windows that bordered the top of one of the walls, I could see it.
The tenseness in his jaw, the way his nostrils flared on each inhale, and the stiffness of his shoulders.
He was just as angry as I was. And why shouldn’t he be?
That picture and part of the headline was about him, too.
“No.” It was my turn to sigh now. “I apologize.” Closing my eyes momentarily, I shook my head, then opened them to look at him again.
“I was only thinking about how this affected me. How much it pissed me off, and I didn’t pay enough attention to how it might’ve made you feel.
” Not that it didn’t cross my mind, the fact that I’d brought a spotlight into this new life he’d created for himself.
“I know it’s been a while since you’ve been in the line of cameras, and the movies you did definitely didn’t garner you this type of negative attention.
I hate that I brought this to your doorstep.
I’ll deal with it though. I just need to get dressed and head back to the lake house.
Then I’ll call my publicist, and we’ll figure out what to do.
This won’t touch you anymore, Noah, I promise.
I’ll make sure that from this point on this chaos only surrounds me. ”
His fingers tightened on my shoulders as he gave them a little shake. “Stop it,” he said. “Stop talking nonsense. You are not going to run out of here and deal with this by yourself. Like you said, I was mentioned in that headline and featured in that picture, too.”
“But—” I started, only to be quickly cut off by his raised brow and insistent voice.
“Nah, no buts.” His hands slid from my shoulders, down my arms. Instant warmth moved through me.
“We’re going to shower and order some breakfast. You’ll call your publicist while we wait for the food, then you and I will discuss what she says.
What you are definitely not going to do is go on social media and read any of the foolishness that’s going on there. Got it?”
He posed it as a question, but I knew there was only one right answer.
I could argue that I was an adult and capable of deciding what my next steps were without him outlining them like my guardian or another title I definitely did not want to explore.
But that would be counterproductive since what he said made perfect sense.
Besides, I planned to go back to the lake house and do the exact same thing, without him, of course.
Maybe that was the part that had my mind looping at the moment.
“Got it?” he asked again, this time snaking his arms around my waist and pulling me into him.
I nodded.
“Nope. I need the words.” One corner of his mouth tilted and the wrinkles in his brow smoothed out.
“Got it,” I replied.
“Good.” He leaned in closer. “Now, I need those lips.”
I didn’t wait as long to reply this time, didn’t need to because my body already knew what it wanted. “Got it,” I said before tilting my head so my lips could meet his.