My Fault (Culpable Book 1)

Something was going on. Noah was acting different, strange. Since we’d returned from her school, she hadn’t come down from her room. I knew she wasn’t well, and I wanted to see her. Since I’d seen that scar, alarms had started going off. Something had happened to her a long time ago, and something was happening now to make her act like this. Getting drunk until she passed out… That wasn’t Noah, not the Noah I knew, not the one I’d fallen in love with.

She hardly spoke to me. I’d hurt her, and I deserved to be pushed away, but I couldn’t let anything bad happen to her. I needed to protect her from that son of a bitch Ronnie, even if that meant following her around or watching her in secret.

My phone rang. I picked up and talked to my sister. I couldn’t be there for her first day of school, and that broke my heart, but I also couldn’t leave Noah alone. I felt guilty, but something told me I needed to be there with her. I told my sister I would visit as soon as I could and wished her a great day at school. I imagined her in her little uniform and her Cars backpack, and I was filled with remorse.

The days passed, and on Thursday, something knocked me back: I went up to my room after an exhausting day at college and heard laughter and noise coming from Noah’s room. I threw the door open and found her with two guys and three girls. The room was smoky, and the dense odor was unmistakably marijuana. Jenna was there with that dumbass friend of hers Noah had kissed when they’d played spin the bottle. Sophie was there, too, in her uniform skirt and a red bra.

“What the hell is going on here?” I shouted when I saw the spectacle. At least Noah was fully dressed, but she had a little white joint smoking right between her fingers.

“Nicholas, get out!” she shouted, standing up.

I wanted to shake her and kick every single one of them out of there, but instead, I just stepped forward and took the joint out of her hand.

“What are you doing smoking this shit?”

She stood still for a moment and then shrugged indifferently. Her eyes were red, her pupils dilated. She was blazed.

“Everybody out!” I shouted.

The girls jumped and ran, while the two guys tried to bow up.

“What’s with you, dude? We’re just having fun,” one of them said, trying to get in my face. With one look, he turned meek and said, “Okay, take it easy, bro,” before gathering his things.

Noah rested her hands on her hips, defiant.

“Leave me alone!” she said, trying to get around me and through the door. I grabbed her by the arms and forced her to look at me.

“You want to tell me what the hell’s going on with you?” I asked, furious.

She looked back, and I could see her eyes were hiding something dark, and yet she smiled at me joylessly.

“This is your world, Nicholas,” she replied calmly. “I’m living your life, hanging out with your friends, and feeling like I don’t have a care in the world. That’s how you are, and that’s how I’m supposed to be, too,” she said and stepped back, pulling away from me.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“You’re out of control,” I hissed at her. I didn’t like what my eyes were seeing; I didn’t like who the girl I was in love with was turning into. But when I thought about it, what she was doing and how she was doing it were the same things I had done before I met her. I was the one who’d gotten her into all this. It was my fault. It was my fault she was destroying herself.

In a way, we’d switched roles. She had shown up and dragged me out of the black hole I’d fallen into, but in doing so, she’d wound up taking my place.

“For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m in control, and I like it, so leave me be,” she said, shoving me and walking out the door.

I stayed where I was. What could I do? Noah was hiding something, and she wasn’t going to tell me what. I’d lost her trust a long time ago, and to get it back, I was going to have to play her game. I wanted to protect her, wanted to keep her away from where she was going, but how could I if she barely wanted to be in the same room as me?

Loving that girl was going to put an end to the last bit of patience I had.

That night, my father and Raffaella left for a meeting and spent the night in the Hilton downtown. I stayed home keeping my eye on Noah and making sure she didn’t get into any more trouble. I didn’t really know when I’d turned into her bodyguard, but something about her kept me from leaving her alone. I could hardly be under the same roof as her without wanting to get close to her and wrap her in my arms.

I was worried about the change in her behavior and especially about the possibility that she might start acting like the people around me. Her freshness, her natural innocence, had made me realize that outside the world I lived in, there was much that I didn’t know, and seeing Noah transform into someone like me killed me inside.

It was after midnight when I heard the front door open. Noah had gone out with Jenna. I didn’t know where, and by the time I’d asked her, she had already been peeling out in Lion’s girlfriend’s convertible. Now I walked to the door to see her. She was drunk again. She didn’t even notice I was there. She was barefoot, shoes in one hand, purse in the other.

“Where are you coming from?” I asked. She was startled and scowled at me.

“What are you doing there? You scared me!” she responded, trying to keep her balance. After watching her nearly fall over, I picked her up, despite her protests, and took her to the bathroom, resting her on the counter while I turned on the shower.

“You’ve got a really weird way of trying to get me into bed, you know?” she said. But at least she wasn’t screaming or trying to get away. Her eyes were glassy as I took off her coat. Her hair was messy, her cheeks were pink, and her lips looked fleshier than normal. Even drunk, she attracted me, and I had to keep a cool head to avoid taking her off to the bedroom the way I had the last time she was like this. I was angry, though, and her attitude worried me.

“When I finally do sleep with you, weird is the last thing it will be,” I sat cuttingly as I took off her blouse and stared a second at her black-lace bra.

“Now I don’t care what you do. You saw my scar, and it didn’t gross you out, didn’t even seem to scare you like it does me. It brings up a lot of bad memories, you know?” I stopped undressing her. I couldn’t stand to see her naked; her body had too strong an effect on me. I hated that I couldn’t stop obsessing over how good she looked even when she was talking about something so serious. When people were drunk, they told the truth. I needed to take advantage of the situation.

“Noah, what are you scared of?” I asked.

After a few seconds, she replied, her voice wavering:

“Right now, I’m scared of you.”

I stood very still and tried not to make a sound. She was trembling, and I knew it was because I was touching her. She wanted me, I wasn’t too stupid to see that, but I also knew she had feelings for me, however much she refused to accept them.

Her lips were an inch away from mine, and that lower lip of hers was begging for someone to kiss it, to nibble it. But I wouldn’t. Not when she was in this state.

I lifted her up and set her directly under the cold water of the shower. She screamed when the water hit her skin, but she was too drunk to even put up a fight. She stayed there, freezing, silent under the water as it cascaded over her nearly naked body.

“This is what you get for acting like an idiot,” I said. I wanted to get in, too. I could use it…

Once she was more or less clearheaded, I wrapped her in a towel and accompanied her to the bedroom. I could tell she was embarrassed about her behavior. Or, at least, I hoped she was.

“You a little better?” I asked when she leaned back against the pillows and looked up at me.

“Why are you doing this? Why are you making it so hard for me to hate you?”

“Why do you want to hate me?”

“Because if I let someone hurt me again, I don’t think I’ll be able to get over it,” she said.

“I won’t hurt you,” I told her, and knew I was promising myself that as well.

Before turning over and falling asleep, she made a remark that cut me like a knife:

“You already have.”