by Becky Wicks
'What? No!' My drunken head is fighting the Advil already. I feel sick. I'm never drinking again. Ever. Why the fuck am I drinking here at all? I said I'd never do this... with him.
'It wasn't my fault you got sent home, Chloe. People just wanted the best for you. You're talking to me like I'm some kind of asshole when you know that's not true,'
'I'm an idiot, Noah. I'm sorry.'
'I fucking hate all that and you know it. Even if you're only being sarcastic I hate that you sound like them. It's not real, Chloe! What they see isn't even real!'
His voice is cracking. I crawl to the edge of the bed towards him. I watch him clenching his fists, the way his torso is like a ridge at the side of some goddam rocky mountain and it's all I can do not to throw my arms around him. Madeline's words fly back at me: Fame chases old friends away at the same time as it sends total strangers flocking towards you. He needs you to be you; to love him like you always have.
'I'm so sorry,' I blurt again, 'shit, Noah. I love you, I love you, you know I do. So much. I love you and you have no idea. It's me! I don't know what's wrong with me.'
I'm surprised to hear the words come from my mouth and embarrassment pounds me like a boxing glove when I see his eyes widen. Hot tears spring to my own eyes and I force myself to look away quickly, drop back onto the bed again. My head's spinning even more.
Noah's silent for a long time. I pull the sheets up around me. The wind hammers against the windows again and I sob, feeling my whole body start to shake. It still hasn't stopped by the time the covers move beside me and the warmth of him spreads over my body. He's radiating heat without touching me.
'Chloe?'
I say nothing but Noah puts a hand on my shoulder and turns me onto my back to face him. His hair falls into his eyes as he leans over me. I catch the smell of toothpaste on his breath. 'Don't cry,' he says. 'Please. This is stupid. You're drunk and so am I. I just don't want to feel like you're looking at me any differently, now. You know? I need you not to do that. Why did you say all that to me?'
The sobs are still making my chest heave sporadically. I don't know what to tell him. Instinctively I reach up, push his hair out of his eyes. He's so goddam perfect; he only gets more amazing, to me, to the world. 'I don't know.'
He catches my fingers. 'Yes you do, Chloe. Tell me.' He's searching my face. His gaze is like kryptonite. 'You're acting like you fucking hate me, like we're strangers. If you love me, why do you sound like you're trying to make me hate you?'
'Because I don't want to love you,' I blurt.
Noah takes a deep breath instantly and exhales through his nose. 'Chloe, look at me,' he says, holding my hand harder, pressing my palm to his cheek. I realize I've squeezed my eyes shut. I open them, feeling his stubble scratch my flesh, seeing his dark eyebrows knit together as he frowns. 'You'd rather hate me than love me? That makes no sense.'
'Yes it does,' I say. 'The whole world loves Noah Lockton. If I hate you, if you hate me, at least we're still something different.'
'That's the most ridiculous logic, Chloe.'
'It's really not in my head...'
He laughs. 'Your head is like no one else's. We're always gonna be something different. There's no one else like you in my life and that's why I need you! That's why I need you not to treat me like they do.' He scoots down the bed and lays his head right next to mine. Our hands are still locked. We're silent for a moment; it feels like a lifetime. Our noses are practically touching. His fingers start brushing the strands of hair away from my face.
'I just... I didn't want to feel so bad about losing you, you know?' I whisper.
'No, Chloe, I have no clue. You're not losing me. When did you lose me?'
My stomach turns just picturing him in the club... with her. I turn my head, stare up at the ceiling. He reaches a hand out to my face but I pull away. 'Chloe?'
'I don't know... it doesn't matter.'
He takes my shoulder and forces me to face him. 'Chloe, seriously, when the hell do you think you lost me? Tell me!'
'When you slept with Courtney!' I literally can't take him being so close. That's what fucks with my head. I push his hand away and fling back the covers, standing up. I've said too much.
'Chloe, wait,' Noah's off the bed now, striding towards me in the firelight.
'I should go to my own room,' I say, heaving through the sobs that won't stop. I'm a mess. I reach for my parka. I feel like a fucking idiot. I've said way, way too much. I spin around. Where the hell are my shoes?
'You can't go to your cabin, look at it out there!' Noah motions to the window. He's standing in front of me now, looking at me imploringly, the image of fucking rock star perfection in the low light. I stumble as I try to move away from him but he catches my arm, grabs the parka from me and throws it back onto the chair, blocking my path to the door. 'Chloe, listen,'
'I've got to go...'
'No you don't.'
'Noah!'
'I didn't sleep with Courtney.' He's holding me tight by the shoulders suddenly. I refuse to look up at him. 'I didn't sleep with Courtney, I never have,' he says again and a crash of thunder underlines his statement outside the window. 'She tries to, especially when she's drunk but we agreed to be friends. It's all a fucking show, Chloe, for the label! For the fans! You have to know that!'
I can't meet his eyes. I can't, I'm too embarrassed. I look at the floor, at his bare feet inches from my own, at my own pink toenails, the bottom of my Shamrock shirt. Is he serious? I fully expect him to question me. I mean, what's the big deal if he did sleep with her? Why would that mean I'd have lost him as a friend? That's what I wanted isn't it? That's why I went back to Cooper? Why do I care so much what he's done with Courtney, or anyone else for that matter?
But all he does is pull me hard against his hot, bare skin and wrap his arms around me tightly.
40
For a while, neither of us moves. Noah sighs heavily into my hair while I continue to shake with tears and total mortification. Eventually he steps backwards, takes my hands in his and sits down on the edge of the bed. The blanket is so big, white and fluffy it almost looks like the snow. He pulls me between his knees, locks me in the cage of his strong legs and reaches up to me so I can't move.
'Listen to me,' he says, wiping my tears with his thumbs as he cups my face. 'Listen. I don't know what's going on here, Chloe. And I know we're drunk but you haven't lost me and you never will. Denzel made me promise to make it look like I was with Courtney. I got her album back into the charts, we both made the headlines, win-win. I wanted to keep you out of it. I wanted to keep us sacred, Chloe. I also wanted to make sure you were safe.'
'You didn't call me, you didn't tell me this!'
Noah pulls me even closer. 'I know. I'm sorry. I fucked up. My head was messed up. We just... we never talk about this.'
'Talk about what?'
'You know what,' he replies, lacing his fingers through mine. He drops his head and pulls me closer, putting his hands on my waist and resting his forehead against my stomach. 'Chloe, you know what.'
My heart is now pounding so hard I'm sure he can not only hear it, but feel it. 'That night, in the tree house,' I hear myself croak. I drop his fingers and put my hands in his hair, softly, but they freeze on impact. I'm too afraid to move. Right now I'm terrified. I'm terrified of having him and terrified of not having him. I don't know what the hell I want.
'And the rest, Chloe,' he says. His voice is husky against my skin. My nipples are hard under my shirt; just feeling him. If I have him and I lose him, I'll lose everything. It will hurt more than seeing him with anyone else ever will. I'll never get over it. He'll have the world at his feet and I'll have nothing, because Noah Lockton is my world.
'I should go.' My voice barely comes out but he grips my waist so tight it could actually bruise. Then, without a word he shuffles backwards on the bed, pulling me with him with a strength that makes me gasp. He pulls me down, wraps his arms around me from behind and I can
feel him along the entire length of my body as he breathes in and out heavily, clamping one hand over one of mine. The air is crowded, thick with unsaid words and actions and he is everything I want.
'What are you afraid of?' he says eventually. His arms are like a vice around me now. His biceps are rocks that could crush me in a second and familiar tingles in my toes rush upwards, causing my soul to sing.
'Noah...'
'You're my shadow, Pan. We're stitched together forever, remember?'
'But we came undone, Noah. Everything did.'
'I won't let it happen again.'
I can feel his words on my skin and under it, his lips a millimeter from my neck. 'I want you, always. I need you, Chloe.'
'I can't,' I tell him as my body tells him otherwise. I arch willingly and equally unwillingly back into the curve of him and my shirt inches up way too high on my thighs. I pause but the butterflies flutter at every vital organ till they're suffocating me. I think of Ryder's words now: We're all just atoms, and rumors and earth in the end. That's what he said. What does it all matter?
'Turn around,' Noah orders and my heart ticks madly in my chest like a time bomb. I'm going to die. My heart is going to explode in my chest and I'm one hundred percent going to die like this.
But then again... to die would be an awfully big adventure.
Slowly, I turn around in his arms. His gray eyes are watery now, but fierce. I can almost see the stars his dad talked about, shooting across the sky of his irises, burning as he scans my face. The dizzying heat from his bare skin courses through me; the firecrackers sizzle and spit in my veins, waiting to explode.
'Surely you know what a kiss is?' he quotes.
'I shall know when you give it to me,' I quote back without even thinking.
He closes the gap in a second, his lips on mine, one hand in my hair, pulling me closer till Noah is kissing me with an intensity that stuns me. He grasps my face, then my hair and I can feel the stubble on his chin pressing into my skin as he rolls onto me and our tongues start to dance through forgotten territory. My blood runs hot, then cold, then I don't care. My head's still spinning, my hands are clawing at his belt buckle now, loosening it as he runs his hands under my T-shirt and up across my hips and stomach and I lose myself in his kiss again and again and again.
'Chloe,' he breathes, and I grab his head with both hands, lips stinging for more of him. Somehow his jeans are on the floor. I arch up into him as he pins one hand down behind me and a burst of new, raw animal power seems to come over him. He's scrunching up my T-shirt, pulling it over my head, planting fierce kisses down from my lips, to my neck, to my breasts, where he sucks, licks, twists each nipple individually, making me ache for him harder by the second. He feels the same. I can see it.
Holy shit. I shouldn't be doing this. I shouldn't be doing this drunk.
But I can't stop. Sweat and his sheer power are gluing me to him like we're magnets as I wrap myself around his torso. I'm seventeen again, quivering on the mattress, shaking with grief and clouded by vodka as I cling to him, wanting to disappear inside him.
I can feel, touch, see every inch of the incredible body the whole world only gets to see on TV, rippling and tensing against mine. I reach into his boxers to feel him, hard. Noah groans, slows his actions as I run my other hand up and down his cut torso, across the black guitar imprinted on his bicep; a branding. He's branding me with every kiss.
What the hell are we doing?
He shoves the thought out of my head, crashing his mouth to mine again, feeling for me with his fingers. I'm wet, trembling, moaning. I carry on, anything but numb. It feels like forever in a different place as we explore each other's bodies; a place we only hovered at the edges of before.
His breath is hot on my cheek. I move my hand to the back of his head; brush his hair from his face as he kisses downwards. It's different to back then, in the tree house, when I'd already lost my mind. Now I'm just losing my heart. Fuck. This is terrifying. I want him to make love to me in every way he can and as our lips meet again and he pulls me hard against him I can literally feel us binding together, mind, body, soul, shutting the world out. Falling. Crash landing.
This is the worst mistake. Ever.
Panic sears through me.
I roll out from under him suddenly, jump from the bed again, pulling myself back together with every gasp for breath. 'I can't do this again, Noah.'
'What? Chloe...' He stares at me stunned for a second, then bolts up, jumps to the floor after me, adjusting himself in his boxers as I throw the T-shirt back on and head to the bathroom. 'Chloe!'
'It's not right!'
He follows me, hands in his own hair, mortified. 'What do you mean it's not right? Of course it's fucking right!'
'No it's not, things aren't the same anymore. We shouldn't be doing this! What about Courtney?' This time I find my shoes, and my purse. I head to the bathroom, pull on my wet jeans, grab my parka from the chair.
'I told you it's not real with her!' he yells.
'She doesn't know that!'
'Yes she does! Chloe, why are you doing this?'
I catch his eyes; he looks distraught, but I shake my head. 'I have to, Noah, and so do you. We're from different worlds, look at us!'
'Bullshit!'
'It's not bullshit!' It's too much to lose, I want to say. I can't feel that kind of pain again; the pain that comes with losing someone who means so much, the guilt and self-loathing that comes with knowing you put your own fucking self in a stupid situation.
He's looking at me like I'm about to jump off a cliff. 'Chloe, you just told me you loved me...'
'I'm sorry,' I say. 'It's not enough! The world watches everything you do. Someone's been sending me death threats just because I know you! I don't want to live like that. People will always analyze us, people will...'
'Fuck other people, Chloe! This is about you and me. It's about us!'
'That's not how it works.' I'm totally sober now. Tears are streaming down my cheeks. I love him too much, it's not normal, it's not good for me.
'This is about more than you're telling me, isn't it?' He grasps the top of my arms, even as I pull away. 'Is it Zayne?'
I shake my head, but I can't meet his eyes. 'You have to let me go,' I say.
'Never. Chloe, that's just the thing!' He steps back again, clenches a fist in his curls for a second, brings his forehead to mine. He balls my hair in his hands at the back of my head so hard I can't even move. 'I've tried to let you go, Chloe, my whole life, and I can't, can I? I can't ever let you go. I think about you all the time, you're the one I want to talk to, you're the one I want to tell all my shit to and I fucking lose it when you're with other people, for fuck's sake, Chloe! I'm sick of pretending I don't love you. I'm in love with you! You. It's only ever been you.'
My stomach does a total loop-the-loop at his words. I can feel myself crumbling but I just stand rooted to the floor, biting my cheeks. Fighting it. He doesn't even know how strong he is. How he could break me.
'Listen to me,' he's saying now. His voice has softened but the heat from his hand is still searing into the back of my head. 'You're amazing. You're real, you're beautiful, you're talented. And you're not gonna let some asshole's death threats change anything! You haven't had any in a while, whoever it was probably got bored...'
'You don't know that Noah, what if they're just waiting till they see us together again?'
'No.' He moves his head away but tilts my chin up. He's forcing me to look at him. 'Listen. I won't let you think you shouldn't love me because of anything! I know you Chloe, I know there are a million reasons why you think you shouldn't love me, but there are a million fucking more why you should. What we did that night, I know you sent me away and I know we agreed to forget it but I never did, and I don't think you did either, did you?'
'Please, Noah...'
'I know you felt guilty baby, trust me, so did I, but you know what? We did it because we love each other and that's al
l that matters now.'
'Noah, stop...'
'Why? It's gonna eat both of us up if we don't do this, Chloe! I'll tell Courtney tomorrow. I'll tell everyone what I want...'
'Don't,' I say again.
He looks at me like I'm losing it. Maybe I am. 'What are you scared of? Tell me, for fuck's sake Pan, I don't get it!'
'I'm not scared,' I lie. 'Noah. I can love you as a friend, no hate, just love, I promise but...'
'That's the wrong kind of love for us now! That's not what you want!' He tries to grab my coat again. I snatch it back and hold on tight and he turns and slams a fist hard against the wall. 'That's not what you want, is it? Chloe?'
'It's all I can afford!' I shout. I hate myself more with every tear I cry, but I pull away for the last time, fling the door open and run out into the night.
41
Noah
The sky seems as suffocated as me. More snow is on the way, apparently. I can still taste her lips... the way we kissed after all this time. I'm not imagining the fact that I have never felt anything remotely like that before with any other girl. It's more than even wanting to fuck her; it's like I want to crawl inside her brain and actually figure out what the hell is going on in there, so I can fix this.
'What's up, rock star?' Jack's here. He pulls me into his trademark three-second bear hug that covers me and my guitar and then whistles, motioning around the set. 'So, this is a step up from YouTube! They're actually letting you record and make a video of your own song. Noah, you said this would never happen! You've made it bro, I'm so fucking proud of you! Can you believe we used to snowboard up here?'
'Thanks for coming, Jack, you're a legend,' I say, trying to focus. 'You're also just in time. Guys, this is my brother.'
I watch as he shakes hands with Sebastian, Jeremy and Zayne and I'm so glad he's here. I called him right after Chloe left. I had to... else I would've gone after her and caused a scene. I told him everything; what we did four years ago, what we almost did last night. I had to. It's been eating me up and there's no one else I can talk to anymore.