For her sake, I hoped he had the information she believed he might.
I would be lying if I said a huge part of me wasn’t curious to know if he knew anything. The police had questioned him for information about that night, but he’d said he hadn’t been aware that Noah had even left their flat. He went to sleep early and was awoken by the police knocking on his door to inform him about the crash that took Bailey and almost took Noah too. They had no reason not to believe him, and though I disliked him greatly, I had no reason either.
Maybe Noah was right. Maybe there was a chance that Anderson knew something that could help shine a light on what took place that night and he didn’t realise it, but I wasn’t holding out much hope.
My issues with the man boiled down to one thing on my part: raging jealousy. I hated him for having Noah, and he knew it. He hated me for wanting her, because I made no effort to hide that fact. Back when I found out that Noah had moved in with the creep barely a few weeks after we broke up, I blew like a fuse. I was so furious, hurt and ready to beat the shite out of the man who had moved in on my girl. I’d found out where they lived, showed up at the place and demanded to know what was happening. Anderson had happily told me how he’d fucked Noah in every way imaginable, and planned to continue fucking her for the foreseeable future. I landed a solid to his jaw. Noah hadn’t been home at the time, but Anderson made sure to let me know that she would be returning to him and to his bed.
I left the flat that day expecting to feel better after letting my frustrations out on the pathetic wankstain, but I didn’t. I felt a million times worse off than I could have ever imagined. It had solidified in my mind – and heart – that Noah and I were never going to get back together. She had chosen another man over me . . . and at the time, I blamed myself. As time went by, I’d still mourned the loss of her and our relationship, and had a lot of self-hatred and blame for what had happened, but after thinking of our talk in the hospital I’d come to a conclusion.
It was no one’s fault.
Noah had wanted to get married and I didn’t; it was something we couldn’t compromise on and it was the end of our relationship. When said like that, it seemed easy to understand and to accept, but the reality of it was very different. It had been very hard for me to accept it was the end for us because I was still so deeply in love with her. So in love that, years later when she needed me, I still came running without a second thought or a moment of hesitation. I loved Noah Ainsley, and I always would.
She was my woman.
My person that was alone in the company of her husband who she planned to divorce. It eased my nerves, mind and racing heart to know that she had chosen me over him. It was even more comforting knowing that even if I wasn’t around, she would still be leaving him. He wasn’t the person for her, especially in the frame of mind she was in. He was a smooth-talking son of a bitch – I had heard him spin tales so easily the night I confronted him, and I’d learned that he was very good at making people believe what he wanted them to believe when he wanted them to believe it.
Present-day Noah wasn’t falling for his bullshit.
When he’d met her, she’d been in a low, dark place over our break-up; I didn’t need all the brains in the world to know that. He arrived in her life when she was at her lowest point, and the scumbag had sunk his claws into her before I ever got the chance to speak to her. It always made me tense when I wondered if things would have turned out differently if I’d spoken to Noah before Anderson entered her life. I had no way of knowing, but I believed that we could have talked at length about what was bothering us both, and we could have come to an understanding.
I would have rather been scared of marriage ruining us than losing her . . . The pain of that hurt more than I could ever describe. My mindset on marriage had drastically changed from the night Noah and I broke up. It was stupid to me that I’d been scared that marriage would change us, when in reality, the only thing that would change was Noah’s surname. Our daily lives would still continue, we would still have the future we’d planned together, and we would still love and be the person the other one kissed each night before bed.
I wondered if Noah believed me when I told her I wanted a life that involved everything with her. I wanted to stand in front of our friends and family and declare before them, before God, that Noah was the one I’d chosen to spend the rest of my life with. After bringing it up in the cemetery, I would leave her to think about it until she was ready to talk about it. Noah wasn’t one to keep things
