And what would she be willing to do if the answer was a single dimple and a lock of dark hair curling over green eyes?
She knew it wasn’t only up to her. She could do everything in her power to make it possible, and it still might never be enough. Noah might not want her back.
But suddenly, it felt harder to throw up her hands and walk away from this. To let him walk away without taking one last look back at what he was leaving.
She took a deep breath. “Maybe I ended things too early,” she admitted sadly. “Maybe I should have told him how I felt.”
Even if he hadn’t said I love you first. Did that mean she shouldn’t say it, either?
She looked at her friends circled around her and thought about how each one of them had chosen love. Not had it fall into their laps but chosen it. She knew because she’d been at brunches just like this one, where Jessie, Talia, and Rose had all thought things were over. And she’d looked at them and it had seemed so obvious that it wasn’t—that it was worth one more shot. One more risk. One more chance to put their hearts on the line.
Didn’t she deserve the same chances? Shouldn’t she, too, say yes?
There were two different lives she could lead. One where she was safe and protected and never got hurt. Because she stayed alone and never risked her heart.
And another life where she said fuck it and threw everything to the wind.
It could fail spectacularly. She could wind up with nothing—vulnerable and alone.
But no more alone than she’d be if she didn’t try anything.
And what if she didn’t fail? What if she didn’t lose? What if opening her heart to all those risks and terrors was the only way to let someone in?
She couldn’t make Noah stay. She didn’t want to make him.
But she could show him what she wanted. She could live a life that let love in.
Whether he walked through that door would be up to him. But she could show him it was open. She could show him she didn’t just want to move on.
How, she had no idea.
But just knowing she was ready to love him felt like a pretty huge start.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Noah stood in the kitchen, staring at the coffeemaker. It had stopped dripping, but he hadn’t poured a cup. He couldn’t seem to make his arm obey him. Even after he drank the cup, what next? The idea that he could make his legs move enough to get him through the day seemed impossible. The thought of running was downright insane.
But he didn’t have that much today, he reminded himself. His half marathon runners were resting before tomorrow’s big race, so he only had to hit the gym for cross-training with his recuperating client. Totally doable.
This was his life, and he needed to focus on what was important. The future, not the past. Finishing up his last week in New York, his last rounds of coaching, his last time pacing a major race. Packing, being here for the movers, getting on that plane.
The tickets were right there in front of him, attached to the fridge with a Statue of Liberty magnet. He’d printed them out and put them there as soon as they’d bought them—before Amanda was anyone other than his brother’s annoying colleague and friend.
It was the proof that he’d made his decision, and now he had to follow through. There was nothing for him in New York anymore—no steady job, no reliable income, and obviously no girlfriend who loved him. Soon, there wouldn’t even be a brother who shared his apartment and always had his back.
So he’d better stop thinking, “What if?” He’d better pour his coffee, tie his sneakers, and get moving. By this time next week, his whole life would be in L.A. He’d better be there with it.
He heard his brother shuffling down the hall, yawning as he entered the kitchen. Finally, he reached for the coffee pot, realizing he’d better look like he was doing something instead of zoning out and losing his mind.
“What are you doing up this early?” he asked, trying to sound fine and normal and sure of himself and not like his heart didn’t have any blood left. Like his whole life was eating him from the inside.
“Early?” Luke echoed. “I was going to ask what you’re doing here so late.”
Shit. How long had he been standing there, doing nothing?
“Did you get any sleep?” Luke asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Come on, you’ve been like this for days.”
Noah shrugged half-heartedly as he filled their mugs. Had it been that long since Amanda had kicked him out of her apartment? He couldn’t tell. Things had a way of blurring together. He’d thought he’d been doing pretty well, all things considered. He was upright, at least.
“I’ve never seen you so blah,” Luke said warily, taking his mug and blowing on the steam. “No one about to move to California should look this depressed.”
Noah shrugged again. He hadn’t expected Luke to understand.
Although the truth was Luke was right. Noah had never felt like this before. This sluggish, this slow. Like he was constantly wearing sunglasses inside and everything was two shades darker than it should have been. Only there was no quick fix, no, “Oops!” that could lift the glasses and make him laugh over his mistake. It was just dark wherever he went.
It was like the time his coaches had put him in a weighted vest for training, and every move he made became ten times harder, the vest a constant force he had to push against. In the end, when the vest came off, he’d felt buoyant and lighter than ever, shaving seconds off his time. His muscles had strengthened. His lungs. Most of all, his willpower.
But this time, the vest wasn’t coming off. There was no buoyancy coming. Everything was heavy, dark, and miserable. All the goddamn time.
Yet he had to keep pushing through. Didn’t he survive after Kristina left him? Didn’t that mean he could do it again?
It’s not the same, a voice inside him hinted.
And then another voice, louder, told that whisper of doubt to shut up.
Luke clapped him on the back as he walked around him to get to the fridge. “You’ve been around more these last few days than you’ve been in weeks,” he said. “So I guess that means no more Amanda. And look, I’m sorry. I know it sucks. But think about the big picture.” He spread his palms. “Next week. You and me. California.” He whistled. “Everything here? It’s going to feel so far away.”
But that’s exactly the problem, Noah wanted to shout as his brother’s words added another twenty pounds to the imaginary vest weighing him down.
It didn’t seem possible, but the thought of this being part of some distant past made him feel even worse. Like he’d never find anyone, ever, who made him laugh the way Amanda had. Like no matter what he wanted, he was always going to wind up alone.
He knew his brother was right. L.A. was calling. There was no telling what the future would hold. That was why he’d wanted to go.
But that didn’t mean he could turn off his heart and stop thinking about short bleached hair, Doc Martens, a laugh that sang right through him.
Luke came and rested his arm on Noah’s shoulder, interrupting his thoughts. “You’ll meet plenty of other girls. After you’ve had time to settle in. Once you’re ready again.”
Noah’s mouth said: “I know.”
But it was someone else saying that, someone else standing there. Pretending his brother’s words were comforting. Pretending something sharp and painful hadn’t just exploded inside him, cutting through all the blood and guts and gunk of his life to stab at the blood red center of his heart.
Plenty of other girls.
Luke had said it about his own dates lots of times. When it was someone he didn’t care about much or he didn’t see a future with. He’d said it after Kristina left him, too. “Other fish in the sea.” “Get back in the saddle.” The clichés were as endless as the Tinder swipes. Like the world was
one never-ending string of interchangeable dates. Like he never for one second stopped to pull his head out of his own ass long enough to look around to see that someone could be special.
So goddamn special, Noah never wanted to let her go.
Amanda wasn’t just some girl. He didn’t want to find other dates. He didn’t want to be with anyone else.
How come he wasn’t screaming this from every New York rooftop? How could it have taken his brother—his funny, creative, energetic, and utterly callous, insensitive brother to make him realize how special she was? Just by acting as if Noah should be able to buck up and move on. Keep going with his life as though nothing had happened to derail him completely.
Only now, as he moved out from under his brother’s arm and tried very, very hard not to clock the insolent bastard in the face, did he realize he might have been wrong.
Amanda hadn’t been in the plans. Love hadn’t been in the plans. But life had a way of changing when he wasn’t looking. Maybe even especially then.
He looked at his brother, at his own face staring back at him. With an extra dimple. And without the overgrown scruff days of not shaving had left on his face, from being too worn out and depleted to bother.
From being too sick of himself and his own bad decisions to look himself in the mirror and meet his own eyes.
Plenty of relationships would come and go. That was part of dating. It was part of life. He’d had to come to terms with that when Kristina had left him—that no matter how many years they’d spent together or how much he’d thought she was “the one,” there was no telling what the future might hold or how drastically it might change. Every relationship ended—except, perhaps, for one.
But that didn’t mean he should stand by and do nothing. Letting Amanda get away. Pushing her away was more like it. Afraid that if it wasn’t perfect every step of the way that somehow meant it was wrong.
Like the fact that it had started with an accident meant it would always be a mistake. Like he could still kid himself that she saw him as her second choice, the second best, the one she was settling for.
If only she still wanted him the way he knew he wanted her. If only it wasn’t too late to change what had happened.
If only there was anything he could do besides nod at his brother and say, “Yeah, of course you’re right. Everything will be better as soon as we get on that plane.”
He looked at the ticket on the fridge, the one with his name, and knew he was lying as he said the words. Without Amanda, he would never be okay.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Amanda’s alarm went off way too early on Sunday morning. For half a second, as she went to silence the fake-cheerful music, all she wanted was to go back to sleep and forget all about this stupid plan.
What had she been thinking? Why was she even pretending she had a chance? Let alone doing it this way.
She’d called Noah three times last night, but his phone had been off the whole time. She knew that was his pre-race routine. Go to bed early, get plenty of sleep, and stay focused on what he had to do.
She should just call him some other time if she wanted to talk to him so badly. She should do literally anything other than this.
But she forced herself out of bed. Noah was getting on a plane, and she might never see him again. The least she could do was be a sleep-deprived, under-caffeinated zombie so she could see him now.
Maybe it would be for the last time.
But it’d be better than knowing the last time was when she slammed the door in his face.
She got dressed in the darkness, stumbling over her own two feet. Leggings, sports bra, tank top, long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt she could ditch if she had to. Her running shoes that barely got any attention.
And then, the final piece of her outfit. Also known as the official sign she’d lost her mind.
A race bib for the New York Half Marathon, with “NYC Half” and the number 3974 printed on the front. Thank God for Facebook, cesspit that it usually was. Alix had registered and been training for months, until she strained her IT band and couldn’t make the race. When she’d posted, hoping someone would take her spot and cover the entry cost, Amanda had jumped on it—avoiding Alix’s questions about why the hell she wanted it when she’d never trained for a race in her life.
Transferring a bib wasn’t technically allowed…but Amanda hoped this was one of those morally gray areas Noah would forgive. And Amanda wasn’t going to actually run the thing and risk getting injured. She just needed to get into the racing corral to see Noah before it started. Afterward would be too chaotic. A million people would be around—including Luke.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see Luke ever.
She just wanted a chance to talk to Noah without his brother around.
Not like showing up before a half marathon counted as privacy. But it was the best she could think of on so little sleep and with so much adrenaline and heartache and longing coursing through her all week.
“Here goes nothing,” she muttered to herself as she downed not nearly enough coffee, a piece of toast, and shoved a few of those sports gel thingies into her pocket that Noah had left at her place.
I’m not going to kill myself, she reminded herself as she quietly slipped out without waking her roommates and locked the door behind her. She wasn’t racing. She just needed to see him. She had no idea what it would be like there. But how hard could it be to find him, take two seconds to say they needed to talk, and then get her ass to a diner for more coffee and a plate full of eggs?
Impossible, it turned out.
She should have known. If she were anything like Noah, she’d have thought this through. Come to the logical and entirely correct decision that showing up at the New York City Half Marathon corral before the race began was not a good idea. No wonder he didn’t want her. No wonder he didn’t think she was worth breaking his plans for and changing his life.
The place was mobbed. She looked everywhere for him, trying to catch a glimpse of anyone she recognized from his group. All she saw were tons of people clad head to toe in neon, doing warm-up stretches and bouncing on their toes to stay ready.
She pushed through the crowd as best she could, but she got nowhere. Fuck. Where was he?
If only she could call him. But of course he didn’t have his phone on now. She could try Luke, but that wouldn’t help. The whole point of this harebrained scheme was to avoid using Luke as an intermediary. This was their lives, their relationship, and they needed to tackle it on their own.
She blew on her cold hands and tried to keep moving. If she couldn’t find him here, she wasn’t sure what to do next. Wait for him at the finish line?
But then he’d be tired, and Luke would probably be there, and she’d be stuck with the same problems all over again.
No. She balled her fists and tightened her resolve. This had to work. She had to find him.
I can’t control what he does, she reminded herself. But that didn’t mean she had to go home. She could decide, right here, right now, surrounded by thousands of eager, jittery runners twitching as they waited for the gun to go off, that she wasn’t going to be the kind of person who slunk away. Who gave up and left when the first roadblock appeared. She could stick with things. She could stick with Noah.
There were so many parts of her life she hadn’t had a say over. She couldn’t bring her father home or make her mother stop living in the past. She couldn’t prevent some guy from ghosting her or deciding she wasn’t what he wanted.
But Noah wasn’t “some guy.” He wasn’t like anyone she’d ever met. She’d been afraid of saying too much and leaving herself vulnerable to rejection. But protecting herself had only made things worse. She didn’t want to live like that, safe and shielded…and just as heartbroken anyway.
Maybe he wouldn’t love her back. Maybe this was hopeless. She was stil
l determined to try.
And then she saw him.
He was just ahead, surrounded by the group. She saw him run his hands through his hair, over the curls that refused to stay down. She’d recognize those hands anywhere, that hair, the tilt of his shoulders. The way he stood. The way it felt like she knew every part of him. How he fit with every part of her.
She called his name, but everything was so loud and he was so intent on his coaching that he didn’t hear. She tried to push through the crowd, but there were too many people. There was too much going on, and the next thing she knew the starting gun sounded and everyone surged around her. They were running, everyone was running, and Noah was running away.
She panicked, seeing her moment slip away forever.
I can do this.
Fists clenched. Shoulders back. She ran after him.
She pushed ahead as best she could, trying to break out of the mass of people and get to him. He was a million times faster than she’d ever be, and his trainees had been working toward this for months. But she knew one of the things he practiced in pacing the race was to make sure they didn’t go out too hard at the beginning. The faster she sprinted, the closer she was to catching up.
“Noah!” she gasped, trying to keep her legs moving and her arms doing that thing they were supposed to that he’d showed her on the run around the reservoir. Trying to keep her heart in her chest as it pounded and pounded, protesting what she was making her body do right now. Her legs were already aching. Her lungs had knives in them. But still she called out his name, as loud as she could: “Noah!”
Finally, he turned in surprise, looking frantically at his trainees with a crease in his brow as though afraid something was wrong. She tried again, and that was when he saw her.
For a moment, he almost faltered. She was afraid he was going to trip and fall. She was afraid this was the biggest mistake of her life. Not, it turned out, that she’d let him go, but that she was coming after him. That she was stupid enough to think she had a chance.
Then she saw something else in his face. Something she couldn’t describe…only that it made her run even faster to him.
Wrong Bed, Right Brother (Accidental Love) Page 17