CHAPTER 14
NOAH
My jaw ticks in irritation at her answer.
In other words, she was hoping to marry and settle down with him.
It bothers me.
From day one, he didn’t deserve her. He didn’t deserve the two years she spent with him. He didn’t deserve the heart nor the body she trusted him with. And he most certainly does not deserve her future.
“You don’t think you’ll move on and settle down with somebody else?” I ask, despite the fact I know I won’t like the answer.
Bella laughs, it’s dry and lacking humour. “Move on? In this town? There are hardly many options.”
There’s me.
The thought comes from nowhere and it twists my stomach into knots.
“We get plenty of tourists each year. You never know, one of them might be the love of your life.” Two sentences have never tasted more like acid.
She scoffs, tucking a loose blonde curl behind her ear as she dismounts from Chance and leads him to the stream.
I follow suit listening as she continues.
“Yeah, right. Half of them probably already have a wife and kids at home and are ‘letting loose’ at their buddy’s bachelor weekend.
” She emphasises the letting loose with air quotes.
I laugh. “You’re probably right. But c’mon, Bells. Anyone would be lucky to have you as their wife.”
I really don’t know why I’m pushing this subject. I don’t want her to be anyone’s wife. Just the thought of it makes me sick to my stomach.
When she asked me not even five minutes ago if I ever saw myself dropping the facade and I replied, if I met the right woman, the first face that flashed in my mind was hers.
Always hers.
The truth is, since the night of Killian’s birthday party, I never planned to settle down with anyone. Because from the very first second I touched Bella, I knew nothing and no one would compare to her. But I also knew I could never have her.
When she started dating Justin, I hated it.
I hated the fact that Killian would step back and allow that vile piece of shit to have his sister but forbid me to go near her.
I acted out of pure desperation when I practically begged her not to date him.
Every time she asked me why I cared who she dated, I wanted to scream all the reasons why.
I wanted to tell her that I remembered everything about that night.
That every inch of her skin is burned into my memory.
That I’ve been in love with her ever since.
But I didn’t.
Because I knew that in doing that, I’d not only lose Killian, but I’d lose her anyway. She’d never forgive me for pretending as though I didn’t remember the night we shared together.
I hate myself every day for that.
There is not an explanation on earth that is good enough for why I chose to make that decision. I woke up, the memories hit me and I panicked. I was just a dumb teenager who was afraid of losing his best friend.
“Tell that to the man that just cheated on me,” Bella scoffs and her voice startles me out of my thoughts.
“He’s a piece of shit who didn’t deserve you in the first place.” I voice my earlier thought.
“Yeah. I’m coming to realise that,” she says in a quiet voice and turns away from me to watch Chance and Nugget as they drink from the stream.
I move in front of her, forcing her to look at me. “Are you?” I lift her chin with my forefinger. “Do you realise how special you are, Bella?”
Her grey eyes flit between mine as she nods up at me, her chin trembling. “Do you understand that someone out there will love you so fiercely… so all-consumingly that you will never have to question if it’s real or not? Do you understand that you deserve absolutely nothing less than that?”
She nods again as the first tear rolls down her face. I catch it with my thumb and wipe it away. “Don’t waste these on him, Bells,” I say quietly, swiping away each tear as it falls.
“He never deserved you,” I tell her again, begging her to believe me.
She nods a final time before I pull her into my chest and wrap my arms around her, much like I did last night when she showed up at my door.
We stand there for a long time, just me holding her while she cries and I continue to hold her long after her sobs quiet, her body becomes still and the shadows become thicker around us.
When she finally pulls back, I notch her chin up with my forefinger. “Do you want to talk about what happened last night?”
Bella shakes her head, her eyes blood shot and puffy. “Not if I don’t have to.”
“I’ll never make you do anything you don’t want to do, but I have to ask, do you want to go to the police?”
My question must surprise her because her eyes widen, face dropping in fear as she takes a step away from me. “No.” She shakes her head frantically. “You’ve seen what happened to the women that reported his father. I’m not putting myself through that.”
She’s referring to the women Justin’s father was accused of sexually harassing at work and how they all lost their cases against him and now work in retail because no publishing company in a two-hundred-mile radius will hire them.
My jaw clenches, frustration bubbling inside of me. “But he can’t get away with this, Bells.”
“No, Noah.” She shakes her head again, her voice firm. “I’m already going to be the talk of the town; I’m not going to add more to the gossip mill.”
I look away from her in annoyance. Why should he get away with it? If she hadn’t stopped him, God only knows what he would have done to her.
It’s something that’s been playing on my mind since the moment she showed up at my house. Would he have gone as far as raping her? Beating her when she didn’t comply? Has he ever done something like that to her in the past?
Just the thought of it fills me with an anger so overwhelming that I worry about how I’ll react when I do come face to face with this fucker.