Your Fault (Culpable Book 2)

When I woke up that morning, the first thing I did was turn on my phone. The night before I had fallen asleep before I could respond to Nick’s last message.

He had sent another four since then. I smiled like an idiot when I saw the photo he had sent of him and Maddie sticking their tongues out and smiling. He was so handsome, with that black hair all mussed up…and that little girl who looked so much like him and at the same time so different… I knew that when he went to see Maddie, it was hard for him to stay in a good mood, and I worried about him during those hours of sorrow.

I missed him. I wanted so badly to hear his voice, to have him beside me.

Luckily my mother had her own room, so I was alone when I dialed his number. I waited anxiously for him to respond. It was late in the US, so he was probably still sleeping, but I didn’t mind waking him, I was so impatient to talk to him.

“Noah?” He picked up on the fifth ring.

“I miss you,” I said simply.

I heard him sitting up and imagined him turning on the lamp on the nightstand and running his hand over his face, waking up for me.

“Don’t wake me up just to tell me that, Freckles,” he said with a grunt. “Tell me you’re having a blast, that you’re not even thinking about me, because otherwise, that stupid trip doesn’t make any sense.”

I smiled, sad, and rested my head on my pillow.

“I am having fun, you know that, but it’s not the same without you,” I said, knowing that despite what he said, he was happy to hear I missed him. “How was it with Maddie?” I asked, wishing I could have been with him. I loved going with him to see his sister: it showed me a Nick who was completely different, one who was sweet, patient, fun, protective.

After a pause, he said, “Mom brought her.” His tone was one I knew very well. “If only you could have seen her…looking all stiff like a forty-year-old Barbie doll, forcing me to treat her in a way she definitely doesn’t deserve just because Maddie was in front of us.”

Shit. His mother. I still remembered how upset he’d been after seeing her in the hospital when Maddie got sick. The desperation in his voice, his eyes damp after seeing her for the first time in years.

“She shouldn’t force the situation like that,” I complained. I understood that Nick’s mother might want to have contact with him again—after all, he was her son—but that wasn’t the way to do it, putting him on the spot.

“I don’t know what the hell she wants, but I don’t want to see her again. I don’t give a shit about her or her life.” His tone was furious, but there was sorrow in it, too, even if he was good at covering it up. I knew him, though, and I knew there was a part of him that was hungry to find out what his mother had to say to him.

“Nicholas, don’t you think that…” I started, but he cut me off straightaway.

“Don’t go down that road, Noah. Forget it, don’t even try. There’s no way I’m talking with that woman or even being in the same room with her again.” His tone was frightening. That was only the second time I’d even considered suggesting he see his mother again. The first time, he’d lost his mind. There was something he wasn’t telling me. It was impossible that he hated her so much just because she’d abandoned him when he was a boy. That was horrible, sure, but I knew there was something else, something he wasn’t telling me.

“Sure, sorry,” I said, trying to calm things down.

I could hear him almost panting on the other line.

“What I’d like right now is to be inside you, forget all this bullshit, and just make love to you for hours and hours. I curse the second you left.”

I could feel butterflies in my stomach when I heard him say that. He was mad, but it didn’t keep me from warming up inside. I wanted to be in his arms, too, wanted him to kiss me all over, hold me down with his big hands, push me into the mattress, so hard but so tender and careful at the same time…

“I’m sorry this trip has been so terrible for you, I really am. I’d like to be with you right now, too.” I tried to make my words reach him, but I knew Nicholas was someone who needed contact to feel good, to feel loved… I wasn’t sure if my words would suffice to make him understand how much I loved him and how bad I felt when I thought about him suffering because of the thing with his mother and with no one able to help him but me because it was something he never talked about with anyone else, not even with Lion.

“Don’t worry about me, Noah, I’m fine,” he said a second later.

A part of me wanted him to wish me a pleasant trip, but the other undoubtedly wanted to upbraid me for ever leaving.

I heard my mother waking up in the next room over. We had slept late, and if we wanted to do all the things we had planned that day, we needed to get started.

“I have to go,” I told him, wishing I could talk to him for hours.

He was silent on the other end of the line.

“Be careful. I love you,” he finally said and hung up.

The trip was amazing. It was true that I missed Nick, but I couldn’t believe I was lucky enough to be in all those amazing places. Italy I’d loved: we had seen the Colosseum, had walked through the narrow streets, had eaten tortellini and the best raspberry gelato I’d ever had. Now we’d been in London for two days, and I couldn’t feel more in love with the city. Everything about it seemed straight from a Dickens novel, and all the books I had read across the years were set in that city, all those romantic period tales of women walking or riding in a horse-drawn carriage through Hyde Park, with their chaperones… The buildings were elegant, old but beautiful and classy. Piccadilly was full of people: executives in suit jackets with briefcases, hippies in colored hats, tourists like myself, milling in crowds and admiring the lights of that street. Harrods fascinated me, even if the prices were mind-blowing, but I guess for people like the Leisters, it was no big deal to pay ten pounds for a chocolate bonbon.

My mother was as crazy about it all as I was, but she was more used to it because she and William had traveled all over. They’d gone to London for their honeymoon and then spent two weeks in Dubai. My mother was clearly on a different level from me: I could tell from how she reacted to everything we saw. I was constantly freaking out; even the dumbest sights left me slack-jawed. My mother laughed, but at the same time, I knew, however many places she’d visited, she felt incredibly fortunate.

The days passed, and soon we’d been away for almost two weeks. We still had France and Spain left, and I still had yet to share a room with my mother. It had been three days since I’d talked to Nick, and I’d always been able to do so from my private bedroom in our suite. But in France, they mixed up the reservation, and we wound up sharing not only a room but a bed as well.

“Do you like Paris?” my mother asked as she took off her earrings. She was already in her pajamas, while I was wrapped in a towel, my hair still dripping, after just coming out of the shower.

“The city’s gorgeous,” I responded, putting on my underwear. I turned to the mirror where my mother was brushing her hair, and I could see her eyes linger for a second on the scar on my stomach.

I shouldn’t have stood there without anything on in front of her. I knew she got sad every time she laid eyes on the evidence of the time I’d almost been killed. Bad memories were surging up in her, I could tell, and I wanted her to be happy again, to think about something nice before she started blaming herself for something that wasn’t her fault.

“Have you talked to Nicholas?” she asked a minute later, when I had gotten into bed in my pajamas and was waiting for her to finish putting on all the lotions and face creams she’d brought.

“Yeah, he said to tell you hi,” I lied, hoping she wouldn’t notice. Mom and Nicholas were in a bad phase, so I tried never to mention them to each other when we talked.

She nodded, pensive.

“Are you happy with him, Noah?” she asked abruptly.

I didn’t expect that question, and I waited a few seconds before responding. The answer was easy: of course, I was happy with him, happier than I’d ever been with anybody. I remembered then when we were in the Bahamas and we still weren’t technically going out yet, and Nick had asked me the same thing. Was I happy? I told him that with him, I was. And what about when we weren’t together? Was I completely happy in that hotel room, miles and miles away, even knowing that he loved me and that we’d be together again soon?

“Your silence is worrying me.”

I looked up and realized she had misinterpreted my hesitancy.

“No. Of course. Of course I’m happy with him, Mom. I love him,” I explained.

Her brow furrowed as she observed me. “You don’t look especially convinced.” Despite those words, she did seem somewhat relieved.

“The problem is, I love him too much,” I said. “Without him, my life wouldn’t have any meaning, and that worries me.”

My mother closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, she said, “That doesn’t make a bit of sense.”

Of course it did, and I was completely serious. With Nick I was safe. He protected me from my nightmares, gave me the security I had been missing my entire life. He was the only person I could tell my problems to. When we weren’t together, I felt I was losing control of myself; thoughts that shouldn’t exist and feelings I shouldn’t feel bombarded me.

“It makes perfect sense, Mom, and I’d have thought you of all people would understand, seeing how in love you are with William.”

She shook her head. “You’re wrong there. No man should be the reason for your existence, understand me?” The color had drained from her face, and there was something unsettling in her expression. “My life revolved around a man for a long time, a man who didn’t even deserve a minute of my time. When I was with your father, I thought he was the only person who’d ever put up with me. I came to believe that no one else would love me, that I’d be totally alone if I didn’t have him by my side.”

My heart started pounding. My mom almost never talked about my father.

“The pain he inflicted on me was nothing compared to the fear I felt of not being with him… Men like your father get inside your head, and then they do what they want with you. Never let a man take control of your soul because you never know what he’ll do with it: hold it and venerate it, or let it crumble to pieces in his hands.”

“Nicholas isn’t like that,” I shouted, feeling every nerve in my body on edge. I didn’t want to hear those words coming from my mother. I didn’t want her to tell me how possible it was that my heart could get shattered again. Nicholas loved me; he would never leave me. He wasn’t like my father—he couldn’t be.

“I’m just saying that you come first and everyone else after… You need to always prioritize yourself, and if your happiness depends on a boy, you should reexamine things. Men come and go, but happiness is something you alone can cultivate.”

I tried to keep her words from affecting me, from getting inside me, but they did, and powerfully. That night was a clear example of how much so.

My hands were tied; there was a blindfold over my eyes, not a bit of light could get in. My heart was beating at a thousand miles an hour, cold sweat covered my body, and fear had made my breathing speed up. I knew a panic attack was coming.

I was alone. There was no one there. Infinite darkness surrounded me, and that was what made me so afraid. Then someone took off the blindfold, my hands were no longer tied, and an intense light came through the window. I took off running down a long hallway with a voice inside me telling me I should stop because there was nothing good waiting for me on the other side.

But still, I went on, and when I ran through the door, I found an army of Ronnies aiming their pistols at me. I stopped, scared, shaking, feeling sweat soaking into my shirt.

“You know what you’ve got to do…” they all told me in unison.

I turned to find a pistol in a broken wooden box on the ground. Hands trembling, I grabbed it, and after a few seconds’ indecision, I turned off the safety like a professional, got up, and turned to face the person in front of me.

“Don’t, please…” my father begged, kneeling on the ground with a terrified look on his face.

My hand was shaking, but there was no turning back.

“Sorry, Papa…”

The sound of the shot made me open my eyes, but I didn’t really wake up until I saw my mother there shaking me, frightened.

“My God, Noah!” she said as I sat up, disoriented. I was sweating and shaking like a leaf. I was bundled in blankets as though someone had tried to pin me down, and I’d been crying, as I realized when I brought my hands to my face.

“I…I had a nightmare,” I confessed.

I saw the fear in my mother’s blue eyes as she looked at me.

“Since when have you had those kinds of nightmares?” she asked, as if this confession changed how she thought of me. Her eyes were the furthest thing from placid. What I saw in them, once again, was…that look.

I wasn’t about to tell her nightmares were a normal thing for me, something I only ever escaped from when I was with Nicholas. I didn’t want her to worry, and I didn’t want to admit that I had dreams of killing my father, that I was the one pulling the trigger, the one who spilled his blood on the ground.

I got up and went toward the bathroom, but my mom grabbed my arm to stop me.

“How long has this been going on, Noah?”

I needed distance from her. I needed that look of worry out of my mind. I didn’t want her to feel bad again. I didn’t want anyone to know what was going on inside me.

“Just this once, Mom. It’s probably because we’re in a strange room. You know new places make me nervous.”

She didn’t seem convinced, but she also didn’t stop me when I pulled away, went to the bathroom, and locked the door.

I wanted to call Nicholas. He was the only one who could calm me down. But I didn’t want to have to tell him what had happened—not like this, with this distance separating us. Not when he didn’t have any idea about my nightmares either.

I splashed water on my face and tried to look relaxed. When I went back out, I ignored my mother and lay back down over the sheets.

Noah, please, don’t…

My father’s words went on echoing in my head until finally, somehow, I managed to go to sleep.

There were five days left until we went home. I was exhausted, not just physically but mentally. I desperately needed to sleep for twenty-four hours straight, and I would only be able to do it with Nick holding me in his arms. Luckily, I hadn’t had to share another room with my mother, but the bags under my eyes were the perfect reminder of what had happened, and she wouldn’t forget it.

Then again, there was the slight problem that I hadn’t told her I wanted to move in with Nick. I knew she would lose it, but I had made my decision, and there was nothing she could do to make me change my mind.

My mother was more suspicious than usual, as if she could tell something she didn’t like was going on, that something wasn’t right. I tried to bring her nosy questions back to neutral territory, but I knew once we got back to California, there’d be hell to pay. That’s why I was counting the days till I saw Nick again. With him, I’d have the strength to face her.

After all those years, with my father dead, my mother still couldn’t protect me, because it was all in my mind, inside me…and even I had no idea what to do about it.