Our Fault (Culpable Book 3)

We were standing at the foot of his bed. His lips were tender, kissing every inch of my body as he peeled off my clothes. He lifted my nightgown so slowly that it hurt, pulled it over my head, dropped it beside us. I was in a trance as I watched him take off his shirt and pants. When he was just in his underwear, I looked away.

Neither of us seemed able to believe what was happening. This was nothing like New York. Then, we’d both been hurt and bitter, and our encounter had been cold, just sex; now, after our truce, after several days with hardly an argument and after hearing such painful news, we couldn’t ignore the weight of our feelings anymore.

Doubts and fear gathered in my mind. He knew it, and he pulled me close, whispering in my ear: “Noah, please.” His hand was rubbing my back up and down, giving me gooseflesh. His mouth moved down to my breasts.

I closed my eyes, held my breath, wished he couldn’t control me and my body with such ease. He turned me around, squeezed my back into his chest, kissed the nape of my neck, toyed with my hair, and his hand kept going down past my stomach and into my panties, touching me without hesitation or shame.

I moaned when he licked my earlobe and prayed that we really would make love. I wanted to forget our past, pretend we were together. I wanted to do it with Nick, in Nick’s bed, the way I had the first time when he took my virginity and told me he loved me.

He took off my underwear, laid me back in the bed, and climbed on top of me. He kissed my breasts, took my nipples in his teeth, and my back arched with desire. He lifted my left leg by the ankle, set my foot down next to his hip, kissed my thigh, passed his tongue over me, as though my skin were as sweet as chocolate. This torture lasted for minutes. One more caress, I thought, and I’ll explode. He asked me something, and I said yes, but I didn’t even know what it was.

I could feel his weight on top of me. He kissed me; we looked at each other for what felt like forever; and at last, he grabbed my waist and plunged inside me.

It hurt, and I cried out involuntarily.

Confusion and worry crossed his face.

“How long has it been, Noah?” he asked me, grinding against me, giving me pain, giving me pleasure… I didn’t even know where I was or what I was doing; all I could concentrate on was feeling, feeling, yes, because for so many months, I had felt nothing.

“Too long,” I said, grabbing hold of him.

He stopped and leaned back to look at me. “You haven’t done it since New York?” he asked with what seemed like incredulity but might have been relief.

“I haven’t done anything since we broke up, Nicholas.”

His eyes lit up, and he kissed me hard and started moving again. His strokes slowed down, his movements were more affectionate, and he nibbled and sucked my lower lip. I gripped his arms in ecstasy as we shared that moment of togetherness. Our cheeks touched.

“Tell me you love me,” I asked him, my voice cracking. He stopped. “Please…”

“Don’t ask me for that. Trying to forget you is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I don’t even know how I’ll manage to go back to my old reality after this.”

“Then stay with me,” I asked him, knowing how vulnerable he was just then. I didn’t know if it was wrong, but I needed him, as much as or more than he needed me.

I dug my fingers into his hair, and his eyes closed. I kissed him. I never wanted to let him go. “Nick, please, say it.”

He silenced me with his lips. His movements turned more intense. He wanted to make me hush; he thought his body was enough to satisfy me… He was sweating, clinging to me, skin against skin, in the deepest intimacy possible. He was angry, aroused, sad, everything all at once.

“Give it to me, Noah… Give me what I want…what I need…please.”

He thrusted harder, faster. I lost all connection to my surroundings, my feelings, my problems, everything. I was on the verge of orgasm, the kind of orgasm that washes everything away.

I shouted with pleasure, arched my back until I was barely touching the bed. He kept thrusting and came inside me, his roar muddled by my shoulder, and then he collapsed on top of me. It was perfect, yes.

But he hadn’t said I love you.

When we had recovered, Nicholas walked to the bathroom. I thought it would be like that time in New York, that he’d shower, throw me a T-shirt, and tell me to get dressed. But I was wrong. When he came back, he lay down beside me and pulled me into him. I didn’t understand… Did that mean something? I rested my cheek on his chest, feeling as if I’d been given a direct injection of happiness. I didn’t want him to go. I didn’t want to lose him again. I hugged him tight and closed my eyes. I was exhausted. Nicholas stroked my hair until I started feeling sleepy. I knew I’d have lovely dreams that night, about him and me, together again… No hatred and no mistakes would exist in my dreams, and the love we professed to each other would be all that mattered.

But morning brought with it truths and insecurities, and when I opened my eyes, very early, I realized what had happened in that room wouldn’t happen again. Nicholas was with another woman, and not just any woman. He was with Sophia, with her, with one of the people who’d made the planets align on that horrible night that ended with me doing what I had done.

He was asleep, squeezing me against his chest as though he never wanted to let me go. I’d have given anything to freeze that instant, but I knew that when he opened his eyes again, I’d see bitterness and regret, and I didn’t know if I was ready for that.

He had needed me. His mother was sick, and he had used me to salve his wounds… You owe it to me, he had said, and it was true, I did owe him a conversation, but then it became more. And now, I saw how wrong what we’d done was: This wasn’t how you did things. It wasn’t how you asked for what you needed. That moment would be one more in a long string of painful memories. And yet I would cherish it; I would hold on to that goodbye, if that was what it was, waiting to see how he’d reject me once more.

Careful not to wake him, I lifted Nicholas’s arm off me. It was better to leave, get away from him, from his sister, from any and all painful memories. I would make up some excuse for my mother, or maybe I wouldn’t need to. I couldn’t go on like this. I had to live my own life. Nicholas had been a part of me; he would always have a place in my heart… What was I saying! He’d always have my heart, every part of it, but I needed to be myself again, love myself, learn to forgive myself.

I packed my suitcase as quickly and quietly as I could. Maddie was still there, curled up in the sheets, sleeping like a little angel. When I walked out, dressed and ready to go, what I felt wasn’t relief. I wasn’t happy that I’d finally put an end to all that—no, I felt like I was closing a book that had touched me to the core, a book I would always remember…a magical, incredible book that, even if I read it again, would never be as it had been the first time. That morning, I ended an important chapter of my life. A chapter…but don’t forget, a chapter isn’t the whole story.

The drive home was unbearable. My body was screaming at me to go back, to climb into bed with Nick and to sleep until the end of time, but my mind kept repeating to me what an idiot I’d been, how stupid it was to think anything might have changed. But if Nick and I had broken up more than a year ago, why was I crying as if it had only now really happened? At one point, I had to pull off the road, cut the motor, and grab the wheel so I could sob without worrying about crashing into anyone.

I cried for what we had been, I cried for what we could have been, I cried for his sick mother and his baby sister… I cried for him, for disappointing him, for breaking his heart, for getting him to love me and then showing him love didn’t exist, at least not without pain, and that pain had now scarred him for life.

I cried for Noah, the Noah I had been when I was with him. That Noah full of life, the Noah who, despite her inner demons, had known how to love with all her heart. I had loved him more than anybody, and that was something to grieve, too. When you meet the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, there is no going back. Lots of people never learn what that feels like. I knew, I know, that Nick was the love of my life, the man I wanted to be the father of my children, the man I wanted by my side through good and bad, in sickness and in health, till death did us part.

Nick was the one, he was my other half, and now I’d have to learn to live without him.