mouth was just millimeters from mine.
“Fuck,” he murmured against my lips. The feel, the word, sent a hot little shock through my spine. It skittered through my veins, danced through every nerve.
And then I brushed his lips with mine.
I knew Noah worshipped Charlie Parker and that his toothbrush was green. That he wouldn’t bother to button his shirts correctly but always made his bed. That when he slept he curled into himself and that his eyes were the color of the clouds before it rained, and I knew he had no problem eating meat but would subtly leave the room if animals started to kill one another on the Discovery Channel. I knew one hundred little things about Noah Shaw but when he kissed me I couldn’t remember my own name.
I was starved for him, for this. I was a creature of need—soaked in feeling and breathless. There was a pull, furious and fierce, and part of me was frightened by it but another part, low and deep and dark, breathed yes.
Noah whispered my name like a prayer, and I was free.
I moved his jacket off of his shoulders. Gone. Unfastened the buttons on his shirt in seconds, loosened the tie at his neck. His skin was on fire under hands that traveled the slender muscle and bone beneath them of their own volition. Over his abdomen, his chest. Over two slim lines of silver that rested against his throat—
Colors burst in my mind. Green and red and blue. Trees and blood and sky. The sand and ocean vanished; they were replaced by jungle and clouds. There was a voice, warm and familiar but it was far away.
Mara.
The word filled my lungs with a rush of air and I breathed in sandalwood and salt. Then there was strong pressure on my hips, shifting me away. Down. Gray eyes pinned me to the earth and the sky changed again above them; the blue chased by black, the clouds chased by stars. Noah was above me, his breathing quick, his pupils blown. He looked down at me.
Differently.
My thoughts were hazy, and it was difficult to speak. “What?” I managed to say.
Noah’s eyes were lidded, and there was a storm beneath them. “You—” he began, then stopped. “I felt —”
“What?” I asked again, louder this time.
“I believe you,” he finally said.
Heat rose beneath my skin as I understood what he meant. “Did I hurt you?” I asked in a rush. “Are you okay?”
A slight smile turned up his mouth. “I’m still here.”
“What happened?”
He considered his words. “You sounded different,” Noah said slowly. “I was listening for a change and I heard it but didn’t know what it meant; I’ve never heard you like that before. I said your name but you didn’t respond. So we stopped.”
I didn’t know what it meant either and I didn’t care. “Did I hurt you?” I asked again; that was what I cared about. That was what I needed to know.
Noah helped me up and we rose from the sand together. His words and eyes were soft. “I’m still here.” He laced his fingers through mine. “Let’s go home.”
Noah led me along the water, looking forward, not at me. I studied him closely, still unsure if he was all right.
When I arrived on the beach, Noah was flawless. Now his tie was loose, his cuffs were undone, sand and sea had ruined his five-thousand-dollar suit, and his hair had been ravaged by my hands. His gray sapphire eyes were blazing and his velvet lips were swollen from mine.
This was the boy I loved. A little bit messy. A little bit ruined. A beautiful disaster.
Just like me.
46
IT FELT LIKE THE WEIGHT OF MY WORLD DISSOLVED with that kiss.
It wasn’t feather-light, like the others. It was wild and dark. It was incredible.
And Noah was still here.
I wore the goofiest grin on the ride back to the marina; I couldn’t stop smiling and didn’t want to. After both of us had changed into our normal clothes and I returned his mother’s necklace so that it would stay safe, what we decided was this:
I was right. Something changed in me when we kissed.
But Noah was also right. I didn’t hurt him the way I was sure I would.
I didn’t know if it was because he was listening for something this time, for that change, maybe, or if it was because I really couldn’t hurt him, just like he said. I was thrilled that he was okay, obviously. Deliriously so. But it shook my confidence in my memory a little—I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe, after all this, I had dreamed or imagined or hallucinated that first kiss in his bed. I told Noah as much, but he took my hands and looked into my eyes and told me to trust myself, and to trust my instincts, too. I tried to coax more out of him but then he kissed me again.
I could spend the rest of my life kissing him, I think.
I was buoyant the rest of the weekend. We had answered one question out of a thousand, but it was a happy answer. I wanted to believe that after everything I’d been through, I deserved it.
Noah seemed different, too. He told me he brokered a deal to buy the security tapes from the carnival people to resolve one way or another whether Roslyn Ferretti was bribed, and if so, by whom. He also wanted to fly to Providence and try to find out more than his investigator, to see if he could learn more about Jude himself. I was happy to let him go. Nothing had happened since John started watching the house, and I didn’t need to be attached to Noah every second. The fake fortune-teller’s words mattered less to me now that I knew I couldn’t hurt him, and so I in turn cared less about them. I didn’t feel afraid.
I felt free.
Noah’s hands lingered on my waist when he kissed me good-bye on Sunday night, and I smiled at the two charms that now hung around his neck. I loved that he was wearing mine for me.
My good mood was obvious to everyone, including my parents, apparently.
“We’re really proud of you, Mara,” my father said on the drive to Horizons on Monday morning. “Your mom and I were talking about the retreat this week and we decided that if you don’t want to go, you don’t have to.”
The Horizons retreat; part of the evaluation I was signed up for—to see if I would be better suited to the residential program than the outpatient one. I’d forgotten all about it, but I guess now it didn’t matter because I didn’t have to go.
I was shocked but thrilled by this development. “What brought this on?”
Dad shook his head. “We never wanted you to live somewhere else. We love having you home, kid. We just want you healthy and safe.”
A worthy goal. I had no protest.
The thing about happiness, though, is that it never lasts.
When I walked into Horizons I was handed a worksheet, which turned out to be a test. A sociopath test, if the questions were any indication. It was obvious which answer you were supposed to provide when prompted to choose—those tests always are—so I answered benignly, growing slightly uncomfortable about the fact that most of my real answers were not particularly nice.
Do you lie or manipulate others when it suits your needs or to get what you want?
A) Sometimes
B) Rarely
C) Often
D) Never
