by Chloe Walsh
"They already do," I muttered, holding my side.
I'd busted three ribs and the pain was something fierce.
Kyle's phone started to ring and he slipped out of the room before answering it.
"Here," Reese said softly as she handed me two pills. "For the pain."
"Thanks," I choked out. Taking the pills I chugged them back and let out a sigh when they went down. "Now go."
"But…"
"Go," I snapped. "I don’t want you here, Reese."
After about an hour the pain started to ease and my mind became surprisingly light.
"Where's your phone, Noah?" I heard Reese ask and that confused me. I thought she was long gone.
"Go…aw…ay…" I managed to slur, but I couldn’t move my lips properly.
I couldn’t open my eyes.
Something was seriously up with me, I could barely lift my hands.
I felt a sudden weight against my pelvis, but I couldn’t move an inch.
A nervous tingle shot up my spine before everything became too hazy to worry about.
And then everything felt sweet and soft and warm.
I was dreaming.
Teagan
I'd been home over five hours, I'd missed my flight, the sun was starting to rise, and I had spent every minute of those five hours waiting for the boys in blue to knock on my door.
I paced my bedroom floor for the millionth time, feeling anxious as hell and the only thing that was keeping me sane was the knowledge that Noah was okay.
He was more than okay…
He was a freaking Carter…
I'd hidden and remained perfectly still in the backseat of Mr. Carter's car earlier and heard the entire conversation between him and Logan. When they went inside, I'd waited another few minutes before creeping out of the car and skulking back to my house.
Noah was in the house next-door.
I knew this because I'd watched Mr. Carter walk him inside over an hour ago. Reese had been with them and that caused my good nerves to unravel. I had hoped she'd be keeping company with a jail cell right about now, but I guess wishes didn’t always come true. I guess there was no law against being a whore…
I'd sent Noah over a dozen text messages, but he hadn’t answered a single one. I was trying not to freak out, but it was virtually impossible considering the night we'd put down.
The sound of a door banging flooded my ears and I lurched towards my bedroom window and watched as Mr. Carter crossed the street to his own house.
Less than fifteen minutes later my phone beeped and I somersaulted onto my bed to grab it.
Noah: *Need 2 show u something. Front door's unlocked. I'm in bed. Come straight up."
Be there in 2, I replied as I threw open my bedroom door and rushed down the stairs.
****
"Noah?"
The house was deathly quiet when I slipped inside. I welcomed the silence. At least we could talk without being disturbed. Climbing Noah's staircase I walked straight to his bedroom door and knocked lightly before twisting the door knob and pushing the door inwards.
My heart dropped the moment I saw him lying there.
My stomach churned and a pained cry tore my throat.
Skin – naked skin –limbs and long red hair invaded my vision…
That's all I could see.
My blood rushed to my brain so fast everything became cloudy and when I was eventually able to focus the image that laid before me caused my stomach to churn.
Noah and Reese fucking like rabbits, right in front of my eyes...
Reese was straddling Noah, screwing him like a fucking Duracell bunny, bouncing up and down, grinding her naked body on top of my naked boyfriend.
"Noah," I cried out as disgust churned inside of me.
He didn’t even incline his face in my direction.
He kept his eyes closed, grunting softly as Reese fucked him.
"I'm leaving," I screamed, frantic. "I can't…I…I… how could you do this to me?"
I was losing control of myself.
Tears were spilling from my eyes. I needed to get a grip, but every time I tried to grab onto the ledge of something rational their sweat-soaked naked bodies fused together impaled me and I felt like bursting into flames.
I could forgive a lot of things, and maybe I had my priorities all wrong, but I couldn’t forgive this.
I could never forgive this.
Noah didn’t respond.
But she did.
Twisting her head to one side Reese glanced at me with a smirk. "Bye now," she sneered before lowering her mouth and claiming Noah's…
And that's when I ran…
"What the hell happened to you?" I demanded when I saw my best friend standing at my front door, drenched from the rain that was hammering down, with mascara running down her cheeks. She was shaking so badly I didn’t think she could answer me.
"Hope?" I asked softly as I wrapped my arm around her waist and led her inside. "Hope, what's wrong?"
"He's gone," she said in a flat tone. Her whole body shook violently. "He…he broke his promise…"
"I…" I paused, unsure of what to say. She looked in shock, like she was in a daze of some sort, and I was terrified because I'd never seen her cry before.
"I'm going too," I told her. "I can't… I can't stay here, Hope. Not now. I'm going home."
****
I bit down hard on my lower lip and forced my hands to stop shaking as I dragged my suitcase onto my uncle's porch and closed the front door out behind me.
The sun was rising and I wanted to be long gone before anyone woke up.
Taking one final glimpse at Noah's house, I inhaled a deep breath and held my head high as I made my way down the steps towards my taxi.
"This all you got, hun?" The taxi driver asked me and I nodded.
I couldn’t speak. I was afraid I would break down and cry if I did.
"You ready?" he asked me and again I responded with a small nod.
"Teagan, wait up." A familiar voice sounded from behind me.
My mouth fell open when I spotted Hope running down her driveway with a suitcase in one hand and a duffel bag in the other.
"I'm coming with you," she puffed as she opened the back door and tossed her luggage in before climbing in.
"What do you mean you're coming with me?" I demanded as I climbed in beside her. "Hope, you can't be serious? What-what about Jordan?"
"Don’t talk to me about him," she hissed before turning her attention to the confused looking taxi-driver. "Seriously, dude, put your foot to the floor before my dad finds out."
He must have heard the warning in Hope's voice because he tore off without another word.
"Have you got somewhere we can stay?" Hope asked.
Her eyes were bloodshot, but not one single tear fell from them
"You can cry, Hope," I said quietly. "It's okay to feel..."
"The only man I'll ever cry over will be the man who is worth my tears," she snarled, chewing on her lower lip. "He's not."
I watched as she played with the ring on her pinky finger before slowly removing it and placing it in her pocket. I was burning to ask her what had happened between her and Jordan but she'd kept her mouth shut about Noah, so I let her be.
"Do your parents know where you're going?"
"My mom knows," she replied. "I guess she'll talk to dad when he's calmed down."
"We're really leaving it all behind?" I sobbed. "You're sure about this – about coming with me?"
"One hundred percent," she choked out. "I am leaving Thirteenth Street and I am never coming back."
****
Treacherous
Epilogue
Seven Years Later
Noah
"How you doing, man?" I heard my manager ask seconds before he landed in the booth beside me. Tugging a sweet little brunette onto his lap, Quincy pressed a kiss to her neck before raising his beer bottle and clicking it against mine. "How're the knuckles?"
"Still functioning, Q," I told him before taking a swig of my beer. I was sore as shit, but the adrenalin that was still coursing through me numbed the aching.
Quincy was celebrating tonight. So was the brunette on his lap and the other forty or so people crammed up in the private room of the Krash bar. I'd done it. Finally. After eighteen months of blood, sweat and fucking tears I was the champion.
The champ…
The irony that I was now at the top of the very same game that had gotten me thrown behind bars seven years ago didn’t go unnoticed.
I was twenty-five years old and had spent the majority of my adult life behind bars, paying for a liar's mistakes…
"Smell that, champ?" Quincy chuckled, bleary-eyed and three sheets to the wind. "That, my man, is the smell of success – of freedom."
I wasn’t sure if I would ever get used to the feeling of freedom again.
It had been eighteen months since I'd been released and every day since still felt like I was living on borrowed time. But I didn’t verbalize my thoughts. Instead I stood up, tossed another shot back my throat, and headed for the bar.
A dark haired woman caught my attention at the far end of the bar and when I realized who she was my world came crashing down on me…
"Hope?" I called out as I pushed past a drunk couple in my bid to get to my old friend.
My heart was beating erratically in my chest. "Hope? Is she here – is Teagan with you?"
"Stay away from her, Noah," Hope warned me before rushing from the bar.
Like hell I was staying away from her.
Every fucking day since she ran out on me felt like I was hemorrhaging.
She was my thorn.
And I was getting her back.
****
Teagan
…"What do I mean to you?" I blurted out, never one to mince words. My cheeks reddened, I could feel them burn, but I kept my eyes on his face.
"Everything," Jordan mumbled, never taking his eyes off the pad he was sketching on. His fingers moved so fast across the paper, so skillfully, as I stared at him, drinking him in.
He looked good, too good for my twin bed he was sitting on – too good not to touch and I was itching to touch him.
His hair was a mess, a sexy mess of curls and his whole body looked entirely too tempting.
God, hormones had officially found me. This was only day three of summer vacation. We had at least another month together. How the heck was I going to cope?
"Everything." I tested the word around and decided that was a great answer. "You really mean that?"
"Of course," he added with a chuckle. "You're my little keychain…"
"This is really good," I muttered to myself as I studied the manuscript in my hands. Uncrossing my legs, I snuggled against the plush cushions on our super-comfy couch, engrossed in my best-friend's latest masterpiece.
…"Are you going to tell me what's wrong?" I asked, holding my breath, fearing his answer, hoping he would lie and tell me he was fine because that look in his eyes was petrifying me. He was hurting. I could feel it in the way his hands trembled, I could see it in his eyes. Something was wrong.
"Jordan," I whispered when he didn’t answer.
He didn’t look at me.
Instead, he stared downwards. God, I knew this conversation was going to end badly and if I was Ash, I'd know a number of different tricks to take his mind off his problems, but he wouldn’t let me touch him.
God knows I'd tried…
"Hope, I don't…" he broke off and rubbed his face with his hand. "Just sit with me," he choked out.
Edging closer to me, he bowed his head, rested his knee against mine and shuddered violently. "This is all I can manage," he admitted. "Please don't ask me why."
"I won't," I told him, forcing myself not to throw my arms around him.
I never asked and I never touched.
He would freak out if I did and I needed him close to me. I needed the smell of him in my senses, the weight of his knee against mine. I needed answers.
Dammit…
"I love you, Jordan," I whispered, hoping to god and every angel, star, and whatever the hell was up in the sky that he would open up to me. That today would be the day he would tell me his troubles.
"I'm never gonna be the right guy for you, Hope," he husked, twisting his head to look at me. His green eyes penetrated me, burned me. "You'll figure that out soon enough, but it would be a hell of a lot easier if you'd let me go now. Your dad's right about me…."
…As you can tell I've been in love before, but it was the first kind. The sweet innocent will-never-end kind of love that gently flickers over time but never completely burns out or fades from your heart.
It's a special sort of love really, and sometimes it’s the one that lasts the longest – the only one you remember when you're old and gray and drawing your final breath into your weary lungs.
If I had one wish it would be that I was his…his one love…the one that burned brighter and harder than all the others…the love that lasted the lifetime of the heart it was embedded inside…
This would be Hope's sixth full length novel in seven years and I fully believed this was her best work to date. She self-published a story she'd written back in high-school on a whim and it had been huge. She had been offered a dozen publishing deals since, but she preferred to stay indie. So along with the help of her trusted agent/publicist – aka me – Hope's writing career had gone from strength to strength.
I was also the person who quietly and dutifully changed her latest hero's name from Jordan – because it was always Jordan – without embarrassing her.
With every book Hope spat out her stories became more tragic and profoundly despairing. I knew why this was happening, I only wished I could make it better…
The banging on our flat door startled me and I leapt off the couch. The manuscript I'd been holding in my hand scattered to the floor and I groaned. I hadn’t numbered the pages…
The loud rapping noise continued.
"Hang on," I shouted as I made my way over to the flat door.
She was always doing this – going out for the night and forgetting her keys. Usually I didn’t mind because I was out with her, but tonight I hadn’t felt up to going clubbing. Even though it was the middle of July here in Cork, it was hammering down with rain outside and I'd had more than my fair share of nights gallivanting in the rain to last me a lifetime.
"Hope, I swear to god I am going to tie your key around your bloody…" My voice trailed off the moment I opened the door inwards and caught a glance of Hope's wide-eyed horrified expression.
"What's wrong?" I whispered seconds before she barreled into my arms.
"He's here, Teagan," she choked out, squeezing me so tight I could barely breathe. "In Cork…I saw him – at the club," she slurred. "He's here."
"Who?" I demanded, hugging her tightly. "Who's here, Hope?"
"Noah," she hissed and the ground fell out from underneath my feet.
All the emotions I'd felt when I was seventeen came back full force, smothering my heart and sabotaging my ability to breathe easily. "Oh my god," I choked out.
"You're my thorn, if you leave me I’ll bleed out…"
"And for what it's worth, my in belongs to you…"
"I'm either fighting with you or I'm fucking with you. There's no middle line, Teagan – not between us…"
My throat closed up.
Every emotion and memory of him that I'd spent years forcing into the darkest part of my mind were resurfacing–fucking flooding me…
Noah Messina, the man who stole my heart, the man who shredded it right in front of my eyes.
"He saw me," Hope wailed. "Teagan, he knows you're here."
****
The End.
Teagan & Noah's story Continues in
THORN
Twisted Youth #2
2015
Playlist for Treacherous
Taylor Swift: Clean
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Imagine Dragons: Demons
Nickelback: Burn it to the ground
Florence and the Machine: Never let me go
Good Charlotte: The Anthem
Damien Rice: Fuck You
Oasis: Stop crying your heart out
Sugababes: About you now
Sheryl Crow: If it makes you happy
Bob Dylan: It aint me babe
KC & the Sunshine Band: Give it up
Bruce Springsteen: I'm on Fire
Kelly Llorenna: Tell it to my Heart
Taylor Swift: Clean
Aslan: Shine a light
Bruce Springsteen: I'm on Fire
Lana Del Rey: Summertime Sadness
Acknowledgments
All of my stories would still be on a memory stick in the corner of my bedroom if it wasn’t for the huge support and encouragement I receive daily from the wonderful girls on Facebook and Twitter.
Alycia, Lorrie, Amy, Kim, Corrinne, Lisa, Valerie, Rhiannon, Carly, Kim, Lisa, Elizabeth, Jenna, Eilish, Tracy and all of you absolute wonders, I love you all to bits.
Thank you. xx
About the author
Chloe Walsh is a twenty-five year old wife and mother of two from County Cork, in the south of Ireland. The youngest of five children, she used reading and writing as her escape as a child.
In January 2014, she started to write about a cocky, self-assured man named Kyle Carter, and five weeks later, on Valentine's day 2014, she self-published her debut novel, Break my Fall, for a handful of her friends who had called over for tea, read bits and pieces of Kyle, and wanted to read the story on their kindles rather than printed sheets. Shockingly – and no one was more surprised than her – the book was a huge success, reaching No 1 in the UK iTunes and Amazon bestsellers lists, and Chloe followed it up the sequel Fall to Pieces in April 2014, vowing that book two would be the final chapter for Kyle and Lee.