Текст книги "The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer"

Автор книги: Michelle Hodkin

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

50

WHEN I AWOKE, I FACED A WALL OF books. My eyes felt puffy and swollen with sleep and I rubbed them with my fists like a little girl. Lamplight from an alcove stretched across the room, reaching for my exposed legs at the foot of the bed.

Noah’s bed.

In Noah’s room.

Without any clothes on.

Holy shit.

I wrapped the flat sheet tighter around my chest. Lightning flashed, illuminating the roiling surface of the bay outside the window.

“Noah?” I asked, my voice shaky and hoarse with sleep. My last memory was the taste of that rank concoction Mr. Lukumi gave me to drink. The warm feel of it dribbling down my chin. The smell. And then I remembered cold, being cold. But nothing else. Nothing else. My sleep was dreamless.

“You’re up,” Noah said as he padded into view. He was limned in the light from his desk, his drawstring pants hanging low on his hips and his T-shirt hugging his lean frame. The light cast his elegant profile into relief; sharp and gorgeous, as if he’d been cut from glass. He moved to sit on the edge of his bed, about a foot away from my feet.

“What time is it?” I asked him. My voice was thick with sleep.

“About ten.”

I blinked. “It was almost two when the seminar ended, wasn’t it?” Noah nodded. “What happened?”

He shot me a loaded glance. “You don’t remember?”

I shook my head. Noah said nothing and looked away. His expression was even, but I saw the muscles working in his jaw. I grew increasingly uncomfortable. What was so bad he couldn’t—oh. Oh, no. My eyes flicked down to the sheet I’d wrapped around myself. “Did we—”

In an instant, Noah’s face was full of mischief. “No. You tore your clothes off and then ran through the house screaming ‘It burns! Take it off us!’”

My face flushed hot.

“Kidding,” Noah said, grinning wickedly.

He was too far away to smack.

“But you did jump in the pool with your clothes on.”

Fabulous.

“I was just glad you didn’t choose the bay. Not in this storm.”

“What happened to them?” I asked. Noah looked bemused. “My clothes, I mean?”

“They’re in the wash.”

“How did I—” I blushed deeper. Did I take them off in front of him?

Did he take them off?

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

I buried my face in my hands. God help me.

A soft chuckle escaped from Noah’s lips. “Fret not, you were actually very modest in your intoxicated state. You undressed in the bathroom, wrapped yourself in a towel, crawled between my sheets, and slept.” Noah shifted on the bed, and the oddest crunching came from underneath him. I looked, really looked, at the bed for the first time.

“What,” I asked slowly, as I eyed the animal crackers strewn all over it, “the hell?”

“You were convinced they were your pets,” Noah said, not even trying to suppress his laughter. “You wouldn’t let me touch them.”

Jesus.

Noah raised the light quilt, careful not to disturb my sheet, and folded it so none of my pets would spill onto the floor. He walked over to his closet and retrieved one of his plaid shirts and a pair of boxer briefs and held them out to me casually. I gripped the bed sheet covering my skin with one hand and took his clothes with the other as Noah walked back to the alcove. I slipped the shirt over my head and the boxers over my legs but I was acutely, keenly aware of his presence.

In point of fact, I was acutely, keenly aware of everything. The places where Noah’s flannel shirt billowed and curved against my body. The cool cotton sheets beneath my legs, which really felt like silk. The smell of old paper and leather mingled with the rumor of Noah’s scent. I saw, felt, smelled everything in his room. I felt alive. Vital. Incredible. For the first time in forever.

“Wait,” I said as Noah slipped a book from a shelf and headed toward the door. “Where are you going?”

“To read?”

But I don’t want you to.

“But I need to go home,” I said, my eyes meeting his. “My parents are going to kill me.”

“Taken care of. You’re at Sophie’s house.”

I loved Sophie.

“So I’m … staying here?”

“Daniel’s covering for you.”

I loved Daniel.

“Where’s Katie?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“Eliza’s house.”

I loved Eliza.

“And your parents?” I asked.

“Some charity thing.”

I loved charity.

“So why are you going to read when I’m right here?” My voice was a challenge and a tease and I was shocked at the sound of it. I didn’t think, I wasn’t thinking—about what had happened last night or today or what would happen tomorrow. It didn’t even register. All I knew was that I was there, in Noah’s bed, wearing his clothes, and he was too far away.

Noah tensed. I could feel his eyes travel over every inch of my bare skin as he stared at me.

“It’s my birthday,” I said.

“I know.” His voice was low and rough and I wanted to swallow it.

“Come here.”

Noah took a measured step toward the bed.

“Closer.”

Another step. He was there. I was waist high, wearing his clothes and tangled in his sheets. I looked up at him.

“Closer.”

He ran his hand through my still-wet hair, and his thumb drew a semicircle from my brow to my temple to my cheekbone, moving over my neck. He fixed his gaze on me. It was hard.

“Mara, I need to—”

“Shut up,” I whispered as I grabbed his hand and tugged, and he half-kneeled, half-fell into bed. I didn’t care what he was going to say. I just wanted him close. I twisted my arm to curl him behind me and he unfolded there, the two of us snuggled like quotation marks in his room full of words. He laced his fingers in mine and I felt his breath on my skin. We lay there in silence for some time before he spoke.

“You smell good,” he whispered into my neck. He was warm against me. Instinctively, I arched back into him and smiled.

“Really?”

“Mmm-hmm. Delicious. Like bacon.”

I laughed as I twisted to face him and raised my arm to hit in one move. He caught my wrist and my laugh caught in my throat. A mischievous grin curved my mouth as I raised my other hand to hit him. He reached over me and caught that wrist too, gently pinning my arms above my head as he straddled my hips. The space between us boiled my blood.

He leaned forward slightly, still touching me nowhere and smelling like need and I thought I would die. His voice was low when he spoke.

“What would you do if I kissed you right now?”

I stared at his beautiful face and his beautiful mouth and I wanted nothing more than to taste it.

“I would kiss you back.”

Noah parted my legs with his knees and my lips with his tongue, and I was in his mouth and oh. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. I felt myself unfold, turned inside out by his insistent mouth. When Noah pulled back I gasped at the loss, but he slid his hand beneath my back and lifted me, and we were sitting and his head was dipping and our mouths were colliding and I pushed him down and lingered above, hovered before I crashed into him.

I felt delicious for an eternity. I smiled against Noah’s lips and ran my fingers through his hair and withdrew at some point to see his thoughts in his eyes, but they were closed, his lashes resting on his stone cheek. I lifted higher to see him better, and his lips were blue.

“Noah.” My voice was rude in the stillness.

But he wasn’t Noah. He was Jude. And Claire. And Rachel and dead and I saw them all, a parade of corpses underneath me, pallor and blood in lunatic dust. The memory sliced through my mind like a scythe, leaving behind lucid, unforgiving clarity.

Twelve iron doors slammed shut.

I slammed them shut.

And before the blackness, terror. But not mine.

Jude’s.

One second, he had pressed me so deeply into the wall that I thought I would dissolve into it. The next, he was the trapped one, inside the patient room, inside with me. But I was no longer the victim.

He was.

I laughed at him in my crazed fury, which shook the asylum’s foundation and crushed it. With Jude and Claire and Rachel inside.

I killed them, and others, too. Mabel’s torturer. Morales.

The realization slammed me back into Noah’s bedroom, with his motionless body still beneath me. I screamed his name and there was no answer and I freaked the fuck out in earnest. I shook him, I pinched him, I tried to wrestle into his arms but they held no asylum for me. I dove for his headboard and with one hand fumbled for his cell, furious and terrified. I reached it and began dialing 911 while I raised my other arm and backhanded him across the cheek, connecting with skin and bone in a furious sting.

He woke up with a sharp intake of breath. My hand hurt like a bitch.

“Incredible,” Noah breathed, as he reached his hand up to his face. The beautiful taste of him was already fading from my tongue.

I opened my mouth to speak, but there was no air.

Noah looked far away and hazy. “That was the best dream I have ever had. Ever.”

“You weren’t breathing,” I said. I could barely get the words out.

“My face hurts.” Noah stared past me, at nothing in particular. His eyes were unfocused, his pupils dilated. From the dark or something else, I didn’t know.

I placed my trembling hands on his face, careful to balance my weight above him. “You were dying.” My voice cracked with the words.

“That’s ridiculous,” Noah said, an amused smile forming on his mouth.

“Your lips turned blue.” Like Rachel’s would have, after she suffocated. After I killed her.

Noah raised his eyebrows. “How do you know?”

“I saw it.” I didn’t look at Noah. I couldn’t. I unstraddled him and he sat up, glancing his hand across the dimmer, brightening the room. Noah’s eyes were dark, but clear now. He stared at me plainly.

“I fell asleep, Mara. You were sleeping next to me. You pulled me into bed and I was behind you and … God, that was a good dream.” Noah leaned back against the headboard and closed his eyes.

My head spun. “We kissed. You don’t remember?”

Noah smirked. “Sounds like you had a good dream as well.”

What he was saying—it made no sense. “You told me I smelled—like bacon.”

“Well,” he said evenly. “That’s awkward.”

I looked at my hands lying limp in my lap. “You asked if you could kiss me, and then you did. And then I—” There were no words to translate it, the dead faces I saw on the insides of my eyelids. I wanted to rub them out, but they wouldn’t leave. They were real. It was all real. Whatever the Santeria priest did had worked. And now that I knew, now that I remembered, all I wanted was to forget.

“I hurt you,” I finished. And it was only the beginning.

Noah rubbed his cheek. “It’s all right,” he said, and pulled me back down, curling me into his side, my head on his shoulder and my cheek on his chest. His heart beat under my skin.

“Did you remember anything?” Noah whispered into my hair. “Did the thing work?”

I didn’t answer.

“It’s all right,” Noah said very softly, his fingers brushing my ribs. “You were just dreaming.”

But the kiss wasn’t a dream. Noah was dying. The asylum wasn’t an accident. I killed them.

It was all real. It was all me.

I didn’t understand why Noah didn’t remember what happened seconds ago but I finally understood what had happened to me months ago. Jude trapped me, crushed me against the wall. I wanted him punished, to feel my terror of being trapped, of being crushed. So I made him feel it.

And abandoned Claire and Rachel.

Rachel, who sat with me for hours under the giant tire in our old school’s playground, our thighs gritty with dirt, as I confessed an unrequited fifth-grade crush. Rachel, who sat still for my portraits, who I laughed with and cried with and did everything with, whose body was now turned into so much meat. Because of me.

And not because I went along with the Tamerlane plan, even knowing it could be dangerous. Not because I failed to scratch at some vague tickle of premonition. It was my fault because it was actually, literally my fault—because I crumpled the asylum with Rachel and Claire inside like it was nothing more than a wad of tissues in my pocket.

I reeled at the delusions I’d invented after murdering Mabel’s owner and Ms. Morales. I was not crazy.

I was lethal.

Noah’s hand worked in my hair and it felt so wonderful, so painfully wonderful that it was all I could do not to cry.

“I should go,” I managed to whisper, even though I didn’t want to go anywhere. I didn’t want to be anywhere.

“Mara?” Noah leaned up on his elbow. His fingers traced the outline of my cheekbone, stroking my skin awake. My heart did not beat faster. It did not beat at all. I had no heart left.

Noah studied my face for a moment. “I can take you home, but your parents will wonder why,” he said slowly.

I said nothing. I couldn’t. My throat was filled with broken glass.

“Why don’t you stay?” he asked. “I can go into another room. Say the words.”

The words wouldn’t come.

Noah sat next to me, the bed shifting under his weight. I felt his warmth as he leaned in, brushed my hair aside, and pressed his lips to my temple. I closed my eyes and memorized it. He left.

The rain lashed his windows as I buried myself in his sheets and pulled the covers up to my chin. But there would be no shelter in Noah’s bed or in his arms from the howling of my sins.

51

SITTING NEXT TO NOAH WHILE HE DROVE ME home the next morning was the worst kind of torture. It hurt to look at him, at his sun-drenched hair and his worried eyes. I couldn’t talk to him. I didn’t know what to say.

When he pulled into my driveway, I told him I didn’t feel well (truth) and that I would call him later (lie). Then I went to my room and closed the door.

My mother found me that afternoon in my bed with the blinds shut. The sun slotted through them anyway, casting bars against the walls, the ceiling, my face.

“Are you sick, Mara?”

“Yes.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything.”

She closed the door and I turned over in the membrane of my sheets. I’d been right; something was happening to me, but I didn’t know what to do. What could I do? My whole family moved here for me, moved here to help me get away from my dead life, but the corpses would follow wherever I went. And what if the next time it happened, it was Daniel and Joseph instead of Rachel and Claire?

A cold tear slid down my burning cheek. It tickled the skin next to my nose but I didn’t wipe it away. Or the next one. And soon, I was flooded with the tears I never cried at Rachel’s funeral.

I didn’t get up for school the next day. Or the next. And there were no more nightmares, now. Which was unfortunate, because I deserved them.

The oblivion when I slept was blissful. My mother brought me food but otherwise left me alone. I overheard her and my father speaking in the hallway but didn’t care enough to be surprised by what they said.

“Daniel said she was doing better,” my father said. “I should have withdrawn from the case. She’s not even eating.”

“I think—I think she’ll be all right. I spoke to Dr. Maillard. She just needs a bit of time,” my mother said.

“I don’t understand it. She was doing so well.”

“Her birthday had to have been hard for her,” my mother said. “She’s a year older, Rachel isn’t. It makes perfect sense for her to be going through something. If nothing changes by her appointment Thursday, we’ll worry.”

“She looks so different,” my father said. “Where’d our girl go?”

When I went to the bathroom that night, I turned on the light and looked in the mirror to see if I could find her. The husk of a girl not-named Mara stared back at me. I wondered how I would kill her.

And then I dove back into bed, my legs shaking, teeth chattering, because it was just so scary, too scary, and I didn’t have the guts.

When Noah appeared in my room later that evening, my body knew it before my eyes could confirm it. He had a book with him: The Velveteen Rabbit, one of my favorites. But I didn’t want him there. Or rather, I didn’t want to be there. But I wasn’t about to move, so I lay in bed, facing the wall, as he began.

“Long June evenings, in the bracken that shone like frosted silver, feet padded softly. White moths fluttered out. She held him close in her arms, pearl dewdrops and flowers around her neck and in her hair,” he said.

“‘What is Real?’ asked the boy. ‘It is a thing that happens to you when a girl loves you for a long, long time. Not just to play with,’” Noah said. “‘But really loves you.’ ‘Does it hurt?’ asked the boy. ‘Sometimes. When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’

“She slept with him, the nightlight burning on the mantel-piece. Love stirred.”

Hmm.

“Swayed gently,” he said. “A great rustling. Tunnels in bedclothes, an unwrapping of parcels. Her face grew flushed—”

So did mine.

“Half asleep, she crept up close to the pillow and whispered in his ear, damp from—”

“That is not The Velveteen Rabbit,” I said, my voice hoarse from disuse.

“Welcome back,” Noah said.

There was nothing to say but the truth. “That was awful.”

Noah responded by defiling Dr. Seuss. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, became an instructional rhyme on fellatio.

Fortunately, Joseph walked into my room just as Noah recited his next title. The New Adventures of Curious George.

“Can I listen?” my brother asked.

“Sure,” Noah said.

Filthy visions of the Man in the Yellow Hat and his monkey desecrated my mind.

“No,” I said, my face muffled by my pillow.

“Don’t pay attention to her, Joseph.”

“No,” I said louder, still facing my wall.

“Come sit next to me,” Noah said to my brother.

I sat up in bed and shot Noah a scathing look. “You can’t read that to him.”

A smile transformed Noah’s face. “Why not?” he asked.

“Because. It’s disgusting.”

He turned to Joseph and winked. “Another day, then.”

Joseph left the room, but he was smiling as he went.

“So,” Noah said carefully. I was sitting up, cross-legged and tangled in my sheets.

“So,” I said back.

“Would you like to hear about Curious George’s new adventures?”

I shook my head.

“Are you sure?” Noah asked. “He’s been such a naughty monkey.”

“Pass.”

Then Noah gave me a look that broke my heart. “What happened, Mara?” he asked in a low, quiet voice.

It was nighttime, and maybe it was because I was tired, or because I’d started talking. Or because it was the first time he ever asked me, or because Noah looked so heartbreakingly, impossibly beautiful sitting on the floor beside my bed, haloed by the light of my lamp, that I told him.

I told him everything, from the beginning. I left nothing out. Noah sat stone still, his eyes never leaving my face.

“Jesus Christ,” he said when I was finished.

He didn’t believe me. I looked away.

“I thought I was mad,” Noah said to himself.

I snapped my eyes to his. “What? What did you say?”

Noah stared at my wall. “I saw you—well, your hands, anyway—and heard your voice. I thought I was going mad. And then you showed up. Unbelievable.”

“Noah,” I said. His expression was remote. I reached out and turned his head to me. “What are you talking about?”

“Just your hands,” he said, taking my hands in his and turning them over, flexing my fingers as he inspected them. “You were pressing them against something but it was dark. Your head ached. I could see your fingernails; they were black. Your ears were ringing but I heard your voice.”

His sentences knotted together in a way that didn’t fit. “I don’t understand.”

“Before you moved here, Mara. I heard your voice before you moved here.”

The memory of Noah’s face that first day of school arranged itself into an unthinkable shape. He looked at me like he knew me because—because somehow, he did. Any words I could have spoken next vanished from my tongue, from my brain. I could not make sense of what I was hearing.

“You weren’t the first one I saw. Heard. There were two others before, but I never met them.”

“Others,” I whispered.

“Other people I saw. In my mind.”

His words sunk like a stone in the air around us.

“I was driving the first time, at night,” he said in a rush. “I saw myself hit someone; but it was on a completely different road, and it wasn’t my car. But I headed straight for her. She was our age, I think. Pinned behind the steering column. She didn’t die for hours,” Noah said, his voice hollow. “I saw everything she went through, heard everything she heard, and felt everything she felt, but was somehow still on my road. I thought it was a hallucination, you know? Like at night when you’re driving sometimes, and you imagine going over the shoulder, or hitting another car. But it was real,” Noah said, and his voice was haunted.

“The second one was very ill. He was our age as well. I dreamed one night that I was preparing food for him, then fed him, but the hands weren’t mine. He had some sort of infection and his neck hurt so badly. He was so sore. He cried.”

Noah’s face was drawn and pale. He leaned his head into his hand and rubbed it, then ran his fingers back through his hair, making it stand on end. Then he looked up at me. “And then in December, I heard you.”

The blood drained from my face.

“I recognized your voice on your first day at school. I was giddy at the impossibility of it. I thought I was going insane, imagining sick and dying people and feeling it, feeling an echo of what they must have felt. And then you showed up, with the voice from my nightmare, and you called me an ass,” Noah said, smiling faintly.

“I asked Daniel about you, and he told me, vaguely, what had happened before you moved here. I assumed that’s what I saw. Or dreamed. But I thought if—I don’t know. I thought if I knew you, I might be able to understand what was happening to me. That was before Joseph, obviously.”

My mouth felt like it was filled with sand. “Joseph?” That wasn’t real.

“A couple of weeks ago, in the restaurant, I had a—a vision, I suppose,” he said, sounding embarrassed. “Of a document, a deed from the Collier County archives.” Noah shook his head slowly. “Someone—a man wearing a Rolex—was pulling files, photocopying, and he lingered on that document. I saw it like I was the one looking straight at it,” he said, inhaling deeply. “It had a property address, a location. And when I saw it, I got a screaming headache, which is typical. I just couldn’t stand all the sounds. So I left you until it passed.” Noah raked his fingers through his hair. “A couple of days later, when I got home from school, I passed out. For hours—I was just gone. When I woke up, I felt high. And I saw Joseph asleep on the cement, before someone closed a door. And whoever it was wore the same watch.”

I sat still, my feet tucked underneath me, growing numb as Noah went on.

“I didn’t know if it was real or if I’d dreamed it, but after what happened to you, I thought it might actually be happening. In real time. Looking back, with the others, I’d always seen some indication of where they were—which hospital, which road. But I never realized it was real.” Noah’s eyes fell to the floor. Then he closed them. He sounded so tired. “And so with Joseph, I took you with me—just in case I passed out again, or something else.” His jaw tightened. “When it turned out that he was there, how could I explain that to you? I thought I was mad.” He paused. “I thought I took him.”

I heard an echo of Noah’s voice from that night. “Do whatever you have to do to wake Joseph.”

He said that before we even saw him.

“Holy shit,” I whispered.

“I wanted to tell you the truth—about me, about this—before he was even taken. But then when he was, I didn’t know what to say. I honestly I thought I was responsible somehow. That maybe I was the one hurting everyone I’d seen, and repressed the memories … or something. But then whose headlights were those in the Everglades? And why would they pull into the drive by the shed?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know. It made no sense. I’d thought I was crazy, but realized I wasn’t. I thought Joseph’s kidnapping wasn’t real, but it was.

“I didn’t take him,” Noah said. His voice was clear. Strong. But his intense stare was still fixed on the wall. Not on me.

I believed him, but asked, “So who did?”

For the first time since Noah started speaking, he turned to me.

“We’ll find out,” he said.

I tried to assemble all of this information into something that made sense. “So Joseph never texted you,” I said. My heart beat faster.

Noah shook his head, but flashed the barest suggestion of a smile at me.

“What?” I asked.

“I can hear that,” Noah said.

I stared at him, bewildered.

“You,” he said quietly. “Your heartbeat. Your pulse. Your breath. All of you.”

My pulse rioted, and Noah’s smile broadened.

“You have your own sound. Everything does; animals, people. I can hear all of it. When something, or someone’s hurt, or exhausted, or whatever—I can tell. And I think– fuck.” Noah lowered his head and tugged on his hair. “So, this is going to sound mad. But I think maybe I can fix them,” he said, without looking up. But then he did, and his eyes fell on my arm. On my shoulder.

Impossible.

“When you asked why I smoke, I told you I’ve never been ill. It’s true—and when I’ve gotten into rows, I hurt for a while and then—nothing. No pain. It’s over.”

I looked at him, disbelieving. “Are you saying that you can—”

“How’s your shoulder, Mara?”

I had no words.

“You’d be in quite a lot of pain right now, even once it was back in its socket. And your arm?” Noah said, taking my hand and extending it. He traced his finger down from the indent of my elbow to my wrist. “You’d still be blistering, and probably starting to scar,” he said, his eyes roaming over my unbroken skin. Then they met mine.

“Who told you about my arm?” I asked. My voice sounded far away.

“No one told me. No one needed to. Mabel was dying when you brought her to me. She was so far gone, my mother didn’t think she’d survive the night. I stayed at the hospital with her and I don’t know, I held her. And heard her heal.”

“It makes no sense,” I said, staring at him.

“I know.”

“You are telling me that somehow, you’ve seen a handful of people who were about to die. You could feel an echo of what they felt. And that whenever my heart—or anyone else’s– races, you can hear that.”

“I know.”

“And somehow, you can hear what’s broken in people, or what’s wrong, and fix it.”

“I know.”

“While the only thing I’m capable of is—” Murder. I could barely think it.

“You had visions as well, no? Saw things?” Noah’s eyes studied mine.

I shook my head. “Hallucinations. Nothing was real except the nightmares, the memories.”

Noah paused for a beat. “How do you know?”

I thought back to every hallucination I had. The classroom walls. Jude and Claire in the mirror. The earrings in the bathtub. None of them had actually happened. And the events I thought didn’t happen—the way I’d excused Morales’s death and the death of Mabel’s owner—did.

I did have PTSD. That was real. But what had happened, what I did, what I could do, was also real.

“I just know,” I said, and left it at that.

We stared at each other, not laughing, not smiling. Just looking; Noah serious, myself incredulous, until I was seized by a thought so potent and so urgent that I wanted to scream it.

“Fix me,” I commanded him. “This thing, what I’ve done– there’s something wrong with me, Noah. Fix it.”

Noah’s expression broke my heart as he brushed my hair from my face, and skimmed the line of my neck. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” I asked, my voice threatening to crack.

Noah lifted both of his hands to my face, and held it. “Because,” he said, “you aren’t broken.”

I sat perfectly still, breathing slowly through my nose. Any sound would shatter me. I closed my eyes to stop myself from crying, but the tears welled anyway.

“So,” I said as my throat constricted.

“So.”

“Both of us?”

“Seems that way,” Noah said. A tear trickled onto his thumb, but he didn’t move his hands.

“What are the odds of—”

“Highly unfavorable,” Noah cut me off.

I smiled under his fingers. They were painfully real. I was so aware of him, of us, lost and confused and with no new understanding of what was happening or why.

But we weren’t alone.

Noah moved closer and kissed my forehead. His expression was calm. No, more than that. It was peaceful.

“You must be starving. Let me get you something from the kitchen.”

I nodded, and Noah stood to leave. When he opened my bedroom door, I spoke.

“Noah?”

He turned.

“When you heard me before—before I moved here. What did I say?”

Noah’s face grew somber.” ‘Get them out.’ “