No! I wanted to scream. I wasn’t okay. I’d been doing just fine before Noah. No one noticed me. No one hurt me. Nine months. Just nine months and I would have been done with high school.
He nudged my elbow.
Please!
Please. That word. I heard it in my head the way he’d said it the night of the dance just before our lips touched.
If he only knew how much I wanted to respond, how much I wanted to pretend I didn’t know the things I did, hadn’t seen the things I’d seen. I knew what girls like Trina were capable of thanks to Alexa and I refused to be a victim again even if it meant giving up Noah.
I pushed his notebook away and put my head down for the rest of the class. As soon as the bell rang, I was up and out the door.
“Tierney!”
I should have known he wouldn’t give up so easily. Picking up my pace, I all but ran from him. But the boy was an athlete, there was no way I could out distance him.
“Tierney, please.” His hand landed on my elbow, drawing me to a stop.
Tears prickled at my eyes and made my nose itch. “Noah, stop.” I couldn’t bring myself to look up, but I knew we had to be drawing attention. I pulled at the grip he had on me. Gentle as his hold was, he didn’t let me go.
Before I knew what was happening, his broad chest was in my face. He herded me into an alcove away from prying eyes. His backpack dropped to the floor beside us and he cupped my face with his hands. I closed my eyes, unable to look at him. I’d never felt such conflict. Part of me wanted to knee him in the groin and run while the other wanted to throw my arms around his neck and kiss him until I forgot why I shouldn’t.
Noah must have recognized the emotions I battled on my face and decided to take matters into his own hands, hands that held me so carefully I wanted to cry.
At first, I tried to resist the sweet onslaught. Noah’s lips tasted minty and familiar. How could he feel so familiar already? It was like we were made for each other, my soul knowing his and his knowing mine.
My resistance melted just a fraction and I was crushed in his arms. Noah wasn’t taking any chances. Not that it mattered, I couldn’t have walked away from this kiss if I tried.
“Tierney,” he whispered, his lips lifting just enough to adjust the angle of his kiss. I breathed in through my mouth and he was there, his mouth open on mine, deepening the kiss until I was lost.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard the bell ring and knew I should break away from him but I couldn’t. He felt amazing. I wanted to stay in this exact moment forever.
“Noah.” His arms held me close, but a slight turn of my head broke the connection of our mouths.
“No.” His tone was petulant, full of denial. With my lips out of reach, Noah lowered his head to the curve of my neck. He didn’t kiss me there, but buried his face in my exposed skin, his shoulders lifting with the depth of his breath as he inhaled. “No. Don’t do this.”
His hold lifted me off my feet.
“It won’t work, Noah.” I was desperate to make him see before I did something foolish. More foolish than I had already.
Noah raised his head and his bright blue eyes searched mine. “Why?”
His expression was so earnest, so open, I had a hard time coming up with the reasons for a moment, long enough he began talking.
“You like me. I know you do.” Noah’s eyes flicked to my hair. “I’m so sorry about Trina.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe she did that to you.” He paused. “Does it hurt?”
We’d gotten derailed, but Noah needed to talk about this. I could see the guilt written plainly on his face even though I didn’t blame him. At all. “That wasn’t your fault. It was Trina’s.” Or mine for ever allowing myself to get involved with anyone, let alone a popular guy like Noah. I knew better than to get involved with a high school guy and especially one as high profile as Noah.
Noah exhaled a deep breath. “I can’t believe I ever dated her.” His eyes met mine. “I’ve never wanted to hit a girl before, but I was so close to pushing her down when she went for you.”
“I’m glad you didn’t do anything rash.” Noah was a good guy. I knew he’d never use his strength to overpower someone so obviously weaker than him.
His lips curled into a faint smile. “She’s lucky. She dragged me out of the best kiss of my life. I’d punch a guy for that.”
“Noah,” I chided even as my heart swelled at his words and melted completely when he smiled. Gah, I wanted him to kiss me again. I was sending such confusing messages, but Noah didn’t seem to mind.
This time when he kissed me, it was soft, barely there and left me wanting more.
“Seriously, you can’t keep doing that,” I whispered against his lips.
They twitched against mine. “Then you can’t keep looking at me like that.”
They were the same words he’d said in his room that day we made our monsters after he kissed me in the hall.
Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself against the emotions he couldn’t know he made me feel and met his gaze.
I watched as he studied my eyes. I had no idea what he found there, but his shoulders dropped and so did his arms. He wasn’t touching me at all and with everything I had inside me, I fought to keep the feeling of loss from my face. He was right. I couldn’t keep sending him mixed signals. Neither of us deserved that.
Noah took a step back, his jaw clenched.
“You gave me permission at the dance. You have to say it, Tierney. I’d never force myself on you or anyone, but you have to tell me no or I will keep trying.”
Gah, he was killing me. I knew he meant what he said, if I turned my back on this now, it would be up to me if I changed my mind. Noah would keep his promise and leave me alone if I gave the word it was what I wanted.
I dredged up the memories. It wasn’t difficult. In a matter of seconds, it all flashed through my mind like a movie on fast-forward. Alexa. Dalton. My friends. People I thought were my friends. The hurt. Humiliation. And Lizzy. Always Lizzy.
My heart couldn’t handle anything like that again.
I shook my head, my throat constricting to the point I didn’t think I could say the word if I wanted to.
Noah’s blue eyes hardened to shards of glass. “Say it, Tierney. Say you don’t feel the way I do, that you don’t want this.”
Fighting down a sob, I squared my shoulders. “No, Noah. I don’t want this. Please let me be.”
Without a word, he reached for his backpack on the floor at our feet and walked away. I watched his broad shoulders until he disappeared from sight before falling to my knees in the empty hall and giving into the grief that followed.
22
Noah
“She’s a mess, man. She’s not sleeping. Barely eating.” Luke’s jaw tightened and he shook his head. A bunch of us were at the gym under the pretense of playing basketball, but none of us felt much like playing. Instead, we sat center court and tried to make sense of what had happened to Piper.
Piper had just been getting off work the other night when Jack Fawcett, her number one tormenter and an all around asshole, tied her up and threw her into the back of a minivan. Then, he and a bunch of his friends took her out to his house. His parents were gone on a business trip. Piper was supposed to meet Drew to play basketball. When she didn’t show up, he called Luke and they found her by using a tracking app that linked her phone to Luke’s.
“I wish they’d let Drew finish Jack off.” I’d never heard Luke sound like that.
“Hey, man. You don’t mean that.” I put my hand on Luke’s shoulder. I couldn’t imagine how my friend was feeling right now.
Luke’s tortured eyes met mine. “I kinda do. You weren’t there. You did see-” his voice cracked and he had to clear his throat before he could finish. “You didn’t see her.”
Piper hadn’t returned to school yet. I’d seen Drew walking around like a shell of himself and I thought about what I would do if anything like that ever happened to
Tierney and wondered if Luke was right. Maybe they should have let Drew beat the life out of Jack. How could they do that to Piper? And for what? Because she was taller than all of them? What had she ever done to anyone? Nothing, that’s what. It made me sick. It made me worried. I thought about Tierney’s friend Lizzy and that made me more concerned about Piper than ever. What if Piper decided to do what Lizzy had done? Would what happened with Jack and his buddies push my friend over the edge?
“I’m sorry, Luke.” We sat quietly for a long time. Each of us inside our own heads. Drew hadn’t come to play ball all week. According to Luke, he was almost in as bad shape as Piper.
“I’m just glad we got there when we did.”
The whole thing made me so angry. Jack. Alexa. Trina. Who did these guys think they were? What gave them the right to treat anyone the way they did? Jack and his cronies had been bullying Piper as long as I could remember. And what did anyone do about it? Nothing. At least, not until it was too late and someone got hurt. And that chick, Alexa. How is it okay for someone to torment another person to the point they wanted to take their own life?
How did we let this happen? Where was the safety net for Lizzy? For Piper? Why didn’t someone do something?
Even Trina. Maybe she wasn’t the same as Alexa or Jack, but she wasn’t right, either. I didn’t deserve to miss out on the best relationship I’d ever had because some girl thought it was a good idea to yank my girl’s hair out and use her fingernails as weapons. When I thought about the way Trina slapped Tierney, it filled me with rage.
It wasn’t fair.
After leaving the gym, I made my way home. League ball was over and the regular basketball season would start in a little over a week. I saw Tierney every day but we never talked other than to say hello and do our assignments. I hated the coldness between us, but I also wanted to respect her wishes. She said she was done. What more could I do?
“Hey, Dad.”
He’d been looking better lately. The new medicine the doctor put him on was working better than anyone anticipated. He was still weak and still uncomfortable a lot of the time, but he seemed better than he’d been before.
“Noah. How are the guys?” He knew I’d been at the school to play ball.
I sank down onto the floor, my back resting against the couch. “Up in arms about this deal with Piper.”
Dad’s brow furrowed. He knew all about what had happened with Piper. “I hope you guys aren’t planning to take matters into your own hands, son.”
I exhaled a long breath. “No. We know better than that. Besides, Jack and Patrick aren’t coming back to school. They were the ones causing all of Piper’s problems.”
Dad nodded. “Yeah, I heard they went to juvenile detention, but there’s a chance they’ll be tried as adults.”
“I hope so.” I thought about Luke and Drew. “Luke is torn up, Dad. Piper’s not doing well. She’s healing, but she’s not sleeping or eating like she should. I’m worried about her.”
“Piper has a lot of good friends. A good family. She’ll pull through this. It won’t be easy and it may not be as fast as everyone would like, but she’ll be alright.”
I hoped so. “Hey, Dad, can I talk to you about something?”
Dad sat taller in his chair and gave me all of his attention. “Of course, you can, Noah. What’s going on?”
“It’s about Tierney.” After taking a deep breath, I told him everything that Tierney told me about her experience at her old school. About Alexa. And Lizzy. And then I told him about my breakup with Trina and what she’d been doing since school started and finally, I told him about the dance.
“Dad, I was so mad. I couldn’t believe Trina would do something like that. Tierney’s cheek was all red and her hair was pulled out of the clip she had it in.” I shook my head and blinked back the moisture collecting in my eyes.
Dad listened through it all. He asked a couple of questions, but mostly he just listened. When I got to the part about Trina and the dance, I could see the emotions rising in his eyes.
“Noah, why didn’t you talk to us about this?” The space between his brows wrinkled and his lips pulled into a frown. “You should have told us from the beginning. Things might not have gone this far.”
With a sigh, I wiped my hand down my face. I felt exhausted. All the emotions from the last few months were weighing me down. “I guess I realize that now, but when it was happening I just kept feeling like I could handle it. But then Trina went after Tierney and I’ve never wanted to hurt someone so much in my life.”
Dad shook his head. “I’m happy you restrained yourself.” He sat back in his recliner and scrubbed his hand over his own face much like I’d just done. I hadn’t thought about it before but it was something I did all the time when I was frustrated. I must have picked it up from him. Dad looked at me, his gaze direct.
“There’s been so much going on here, too. I just didn’t want to add to it all.”
Dad’s frown deepened. “Noah, bullying isn’t a small thing. The incidents you described of Tierney and the girls at her old school are evidence enough, not to mention what Piper is experiencing right now. Just because you’re a young man and Trina is a young woman doesn’t make what she’s been doing any less wrong.” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Noah, I know things here have been hard on you and I’m sorry for that. But, son, you have to understand. No matter what, you come first for your mom and me. I may be sick, but I’m still your father.” He paused and had to clear his throat again. His eyes blinked rapidly and the emotion on his face made my own throat clog. “Noah, as long as I’m alive on this earth, I will do whatever I can to protect you, be there for you, stand up for you in any way that you need.”
“I know that, Dad.” And I did.
Dad held my gaze before nodding. “I’m going to call the school. With what happened to Piper I’m hoping they are already working on a plan to keep things like this from continuing to go on in the school, but they need to have all the information so they can make the best decisions. That means telling them about Trina. She assaulted Tierney at a school function. That’s not right and I’m determined for Tierney’s sake as well as yours that she be held accountable for that.”
I nodded, thinking about what he said. It was a relief to talk to him about it, a relief to know he had my back.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“I mean it, Noah. I’m here for you.”
I nodded again.
“Now, let’s talk about Tierney. I’ve sure missed that girl around here.” He shot me a smile and winked. “I know I’m not the only one. So what’s your plan to get her back?”
I slid all the way to the floor with a groan. “I have no idea. I’m pretty sure she hates my guts.”
Dad waved my insecurities aside. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
“I promised her before the dance I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her. See how well that turned out,” I said bitterly.
“You do like her, don’t you?” he asked.
I huffed. “What’s not to like? She’s funny. Smart. Smoking hot-”
Dad grunted, making me smile. I’d almost forgotten who I was talking to there for a second.
“I mean, she’s really pretty,” I amended. “And she’s real. And I like hanging out with her. It’s easy and fun and-” I stopped there. I was gushing. To my father. I glanced up to find him smirking at me.
“It sounds to me like you can’t give up so easily, that maybe this girl is worth fighting for.”
I blew a breath up to my hairline and shook my head. “I promised I’d back off. I’m not going to break my word.”
Dad hummed in the back of his throat. He did that a lot when he was thinking hard about something. “Well, then it seems to me you have your work cut out for you.”
“Dad-”
“I’m not saying to go back on your word. I’m just saying you should live up to it. Be her friend. No strings attached. Build her trust in you again. Then,
just wait for things to happen naturally. If it’s meant to be…well, then everything will work out.”
I thought about what my dad said all weekend and decided he was right. If I really cared about Tierney, then I should be happy with whatever kind of relationship she was willing to give me. Maybe lab partners was all she would ever want to be, but if we could be friends? And someday maybe something more? Well, it was worth a shot to me. My promise to be there for her didn’t have to end just because the dance had ended so badly. I still owed it to her and to myself to prove I meant what I said.
The truth was I wasn’t perfect. I tried hard and did my best, but no one was flawless. Everyone made mistakes. The biggest mistake I’d made was not checking my own ego. I didn’t have control over Trina or anyone else. All I or anyone could do was try. And I wanted to do just that.
I’d never been in love before, and maybe I wasn’t in love with Tierney, but I was something. I hated the void she’d left in my life, in my heart. Hourly, I had something I wanted to share with her. Laugh about with her. Hear what she might have to say. Man, I missed her.
Dad was right. If I wanted Tierney in my life, then all I could do was work to earn her trust back. This time without promises based on unrealistic expectations, but something real that accounted for the fact that no one around us was perfect and neither were we.
23
Tierney
It was all over the school, the incident with Piper and a couple of jerks from the football team. Hearing about it triggered an anxiety attack so bad I had to go home. It was hard to think about Lizzy and hard not to. I felt bad for Piper and hoped she was okay. I wasn’t friends with her, but I knew she was someone Noah cared about and that was something I couldn’t ignore no matter how much I wanted to.
I missed Noah. When the darkness began closing in, he was the one person I wanted to run to. I knew he’d hold me. I knew he wouldn’t judge, he wouldn’t ask a bunch of questions I didn’t want to answer. I knew he would just be there and I wanted him to be. So badly.
Dating: On the Rebound Page 16