Our Fault (Culpable Book 3)

I tried to stay away from him. I used all my strength to try to stop myself from glancing over at him. Luca helped a lot: when I’d escaped everyone after the ceremony, when I’d broken down and needed a few minutes to recover, he had given me his hand, had helped me up, and had made a funny comment that had brought a smile to my lips.

Who could have ever imagined that Lion’s gangster brother would turn out to be so fun? He had promised me he wouldn’t leave me on my own that night; he’d laughed at me, saying I was like Nicholas’s lapdog, looking at him all the time with that cow-eyed stare. If Luca had noticed that, then Nicholas definitely had, too.

I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. I didn’t want him to feel sorry for me. I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me, really. So we made a deal: Luca would be my life raft that night. As long as we were together, I could avoid the temptation to look, let alone break down and ask Nicholas to forgive me, even though it had passed through my head countless times since we’d seen each other again.

When I saw him dance with that girl, flirt with her, I felt my heart shrivel. If a mere dance made me feel that way, how must he have felt when he’d found out I’d slept with another guy?

I wasn’t an idiot; I knew Nicholas hadn’t taken a vow of celibacy after breaking up with me. The list of girls he’d been with was probably endless.

Luca saw me watching him and pinched me on the hip and reprimanded me. After that, I turned away, concentrating on the people in front of me. Of course, that was harder when we were all sitting at the same table. My eyes turned in Nick’s direction a few times, but whenever they did, Luca pinched me under the table. The last time he did it, it tickled, and I laughed out loud. That was when Nicholas almost shattered his glass slamming it down on the table. He got up and disappeared toward the bathroom.

“He’s jealous,” Luca said, scowling after him.

Jealous?

“No… He just can’t stand having me here in front of him,” I replied, depressed, and took a sip of my champagne.

Nicholas came back with a girl on his arm. People were standing up now; the band was playing, and the time to dance had come. The bride and groom took to the floor first, and the whole ambience changed: the lights shifted, the floor filled with people shaking their limbs, and people switched from champagne and wine to high-octane cocktails.

Luca pulled me out onto the dance floor. I was glad to be rid of Nick and not have to watch him feeling the brunette up under the table. It was gross, gross, and I was so, so jealous. Luca and I danced the way friends do. He was behaving. Not for one second did he try to make a move on me or even suggest he might. We found Lion and Jenna, and the four of us danced together, laughing and having a ball. It was the best moment of the night. Nicholas wasn’t there; God knew what he and the girl were up to, which made my blood boil, but the drinks in me helped make everything easier.

What happened afterward…I have to admit, it was my fault.

A moment came when I turned around and saw him… I saw him kissing her, and she was sitting on his lap, but that wasn’t the worst of it: he was staring at me while he did it, his lips pressed into the brunette’s neck and his eyes looking straight into mine. He smiled. I stopped dancing. And what I did next…damn it! Was I never going to learn?

Luca knew what I was looking at, and he came over to say something. He bent over to whisper in my ear over the thundering of the music, and then…then the old Noah took over, and everything I’d learned during those months, all those sessions with the psychologist, all my regrets, all of it went to hell just then, and I grabbed Luca by the neck, pulled him downward, and pressed my lips into his.

The weird thing was he didn’t pull away. I felt his tongue in my mouth, his hand on my back pulling me into him.

What was I doing?

I didn’t have much time to think about it because someone pulled him backward right away, and the next thing I knew, Luca was on the ground, his lip busted open and bleeding. I looked up and saw Nicholas completely out of his mind. Shaking his injured hand, he looked at Luca and then at me. His wounded gaze made me tremble…but I was also seething. He clenched his teeth and turned around. Luca got up—or rather, the people around him helped him up—while Nick walked off to the other side of the room.

I didn’t know what the hell was going on with me. Maybe the champagne had clouded my judgment. But I went after him, and not to ask for his forgiveness.

He had gone out back to where the wedding had been held, where the chairs were still perfectly arranged, as were the flowers. It was deserted there, but still, the noise from the party was deafening.

“Where are you going, Nicholas?” I yelled.

I almost stumbled down the stairs. He turned, red-faced, angry I had followed him.

“You had no right to do that!” I roared.

I was out of my mind, half-drunk, pissed off. A bad combination.

I walked toward him. He looked serious, trying to decide what he was going to do. He was scary, even. But I didn’t bow down. The opposite, actually. His attack of jealousy showed something; there was no denying it… He hadn’t forgotten me. I refused to believe that now, and if I had to face his fury to get him to confess it, then so be it.

I shoved him. “You liar!” I shouted. I cocked back my fists, ready to strike him in the chest as hard as I could. “You’re a fucking liar, Nicholas!”

For a second, he barely moved, but then I saw his chest rising and falling. He let me keep hitting him, but just two more times before his hands came up and stopped mine. That contact angered me more than anything else.

“You say you forgot me? Well, your actions don’t show it! You said nothing could come between us!”

He looked at me incredulously. “You’re the one who broke every single fucking promise, Noah, the one who decided to ruin everything, goddammit! You’re worthless, Noah—to me you’re completely worthless.”

His words made me stop short. I froze, on the verge of vomiting.

I swallowed, cleared my throat, tried to look into his eyes, but I couldn’t see him well, could hardly see at all. My vision was blurry… It took me a little time to realize it was because my eyes were full of tears.

“How can you say that?” I asked, my voice cracking.

Standing there, looking as upset, as sorrowful as I felt, Nicholas observed me… How could he have said that? To me?

“Because it’s the fucking truth.”

He turned around and took a few steps.

“I made a mistake, Nicholas! One fucking mistake!” My shouts didn’t stop him. “Your crazy ex-girlfriend made me think you were cheating on me! You kissed Sophie right in front of me, but I’m the one who screwed it all up?! You did that! You forced me into making the worst mistake of my life! You allowed me to be used, to be used as if…as if I…”

I couldn’t keep talking through the sobs. I was bitter, burned, torn apart inside…and yet what I was saying was what I felt: if it hadn’t been for his lies, there was no way I’d ever have wound up in a position where someone else could take advantage of my weakness, using things I’d told him in confidence… I looked up, and there Nick was in front of me. He’d come back. The rage in his face was so pure, so terrifying, that I almost wanted to step backward, but then he did the last thing I would have expected: he wrapped an arm around my waist, and his lips touched mine. I thought it was a nightmare at first, one of the many I’d had recently, when sleep overwhelmed me and I thought I was with the Nicholas from before—we were happy, we were kissing, and suddenly, he’d leave, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I’d run, run behind him, but my legs could never move fast enough.

This was no dream, though. Not in the least. He picked me up off the ground; my breasts squeezed into his hard chest; his tongue wove its way hungrily into my mouth. For a moment, I wasn’t sure what was happening, but my body lit up from the contact. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him tighter. God, I had needed that contact! It was as if he had returned all the energy to my body after months of depletion.

I felt his arms tight around me and the hunger, the voracity in his kiss. I grabbed his hair, but it wasn’t like before; it was too short for me to pull it the way I used to. As he panted, his hand climbed my back to my neck, gripping me as he pulled away and stared… His pupils were dilated, dilated with excitement, desire, a pure carnal desire I thought I’d never see again.

As we looked at each other, I wanted to say so much…but something changed…a thought flickered behind his pupils, tormented him, and I knew I’d lost him again. Desperate, I pulled him back in and kissed him, but the response wasn’t the same. His arms slackened, and he set me down. Panic crept in, panic that he’d leave, panic that I’d lose him again.

I cried, my lips separated from his, and buried my face in his neck. But I refused to let him go. I refused to let him just leave.

“I can’t do this, Noah,” he said very clearly, but his voice was choked with feeling.

“No.” I refused him; I held him tight. My tears were leaving streaks on his shirt, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t let him go. I needed him; he needed me. We needed to be together.

His hands moved from my waist to my wrists. He pushed until I had to let go. He brought my hands close to his face and looked straight at me.

“Don’t leave me,” I pleaded. I was begging, I know, but he was leaving the next day, and I wouldn’t see him again, and that feeling was killing me.

“When I close my eyes, I see you with him,” he confessed. He blinked, and I was yearning for him to stay, to love me, to protect me once more.

“I don’t even remember it, Nicholas,” I told him, refusing to let him let me go. And it was true: I couldn’t remember what had happened that night. I knew we had slept together, but I hadn’t really been a part of it; I had let him do it to me because I didn’t have the strength to say no… Nothing had mattered to me then because my life was hell.

His eyes misted over, and I felt myself dying.

“I can’t do it… I’m sorry.”

He turned around and walked off, leaving me there…

Jenna found me two hours later sitting in one of the chairs from the wedding, hugging my knees and trying to pull myself together. That kiss, those words…they hadn’t helped. She hugged me, and I felt even worse, knowing I had screwed up her special day.

“I’m sorry, Jenna,” I said, trying to stop crying.

“I’m the one who’s sorry, Noah. All this is my fault,” she said, and I looked at her, not understanding. “This whole situation, you guys being the maid of honor and the best man, putting you in the same car, in adjoining rooms… I wanted to give you guys a chance. I thought…I thought if I pushed a little…”

“We kissed,” I admitted, knowing that despite that kiss, a last kiss, things wouldn’t get better regardless of what Jenna did.

She looked surprised, confused, then glanced around, as if trying to understand what had happened and why Nick was gone.

“It’s over, Jen,” I said, bringing a hand to my mouth to stifle my sobs. Christ, I was pathetic…but it hurt, damn it… It hurt so badly, losing him!

She hugged me again. I let her console me. Some pair we were: her on the happiest day of her life, and me in a black hole of misery.

Resolutely, she said, “I shouldn’t tell you this, Noah, I really shouldn’t, but I know Nick, and when you were with him, he was completely happy. Even if you had problems, I’ve never seen him so centered, so… How should I say it? So normal. He had a hard life; I saw how he cried for months when his mother left, and then he turned tough, and he put on that suit of armor he wears, trying to pretend he’s untouchable… You managed to break through that. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy for you, Noah, but dammit, he’s the love of your life! I want my best friends to be as happy as I am. I need that; I’m asking you for it, Noah. I’m asking you not to let him go, no matter what he says, no matter how many times he tells you he doesn’t love you or can’t forgive you… There’s got to be a way.”

I got up and looked at her with a sad smile. “I know you want to believe what you’re telling me, Jen… I do, too,” I said, looking back to where he had been standing. “But I broke his heart… I thought he had cheated on me, and I was dying inside, I really was, so I know what he’s feeling… He won’t forgive me. He just never will.”

She was about to say something, but then she closed her mouth. I think it was the only time I’d ever seen her speechless. I came close and kissed the top of her head.

“Go enjoy your day.”

After that, I tried my hardest to go back to being the girl I had been all week. I wasn’t going to let Lion and Jenna spend that time without their two best friends, so I stayed at the party for as long as I had to. I forced myself to dance and enjoy the people around me. At one point, I bumped into Luca. There was wariness in his green eyes but not an ounce of rancor at the fact that I’d used him to make Nicholas jealous.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. I hoped my words were enough to make him forgive me. I’d acted like a fool, like the immature little girl I’d sworn I’d stop being, and I felt terrible for giving Lion’s brother false hope.

“I’m not,” he replied, taking my hand and pulling me in close. “Relax,” he said as I panicked, wanting to get away before something else happened between us. “I don’t mind you using me to make that dumbass jealous, and honestly, you’re helping me out, too.” He turned me around, my back pressed into his chest, moving to the rhythm of the music as he bent down and whispered clearly. “See that chick over there?” he asked, pointing subtly at a group of girls next to the bar. I nodded, amused, realizing what he meant. “That blond has been watching us and trying to act like she doesn’t care about what we’re up to.” He spun me back, put his hands on my spine, almost touching my butt, and I glowered at him. “She and I slept together like a month ago. I mean, to tell the truth, we’ve been sleeping together ever since I could crawl. Or ever since I could…you know.” I rolled my eyes. “We lost touch when I was locked up. Then we ran into each other at a party in my hood. She’s the oldest daughter of one of my mom’s friends, and I bet she’ll lose it when I feel you up like I’m about to do.”

I cracked up and pushed him. He put his hand to his heart as if I’d hurt his feelings. Then he pulled me in slowly and whispered in my ear, in a very different tone, “Don’t give in, Noah. What you did was wrong, but we all make mistakes.”

What he said wasn’t exactly a revelation, but it did make me realize that everyone could see what was going on between me and Nicholas.

But what was I to do? I hadn’t made just any mistake. Cheating—that was the hardest thing to forgive. And the lies, our past, the intensity of our relationship, that had brought us to a point of no return.

I danced more with Luca, and with other people, too, until the time came for Jenna and Lion to leave. They’d done all the formalities: cutting the cake, which I barely tried, throwing the bouquet, all that. I mean, she pretended to throw it. Actually, after a moment’s hesitation, she turned and smiled at me, handing it to me with a smile on her lips before I could realize what was happening.

“This is so you’ll know I still believe your day will come, Noah, and you and I both know who it will be with.”

I didn’t know what to say. I admired her determination, her hope, but it only made me more sorrowful. I couldn’t take it anymore, being around all those people, and when Jenna kissed me on the cheek and ran off with Lion to the limousine that would take them for a night in a luxury hotel before their honeymoon, I got into one of the chauffeured cars waiting for the guests and told the driver to please take me home.

I needed that night to be over with.