Your Fault (Culpable Book 2)

I was going to meet up with Jenna that afternoon. I hadn’t seen her in a month, since before I’d gone to Europe, and I had the feeling she was avoiding me. Finally she’d agreed to let me come to her house. As I was waiting by the door, I couldn’t help admiring their huge front yard. They didn’t have a private gate like the Leisters, but it was a far walk to reach the entrance. They had a bunch of very tall trees and yellow swings and a small pond with frogs and pretty flowers to the right of the house, which gave it a fairy-tale air. Almost all the mansions in that development were incredible, but Jenna’s had something special about it, and that was probably thanks to her.

“Come in, Miss Morgan,” Lisa, the maid, said. I smiled back at her.

“Is Jenna in her room?” I asked. I could hear video games in the background, so I knew her brothers were home, at least.

“Yes, she’s waiting for you,” she answered. Then she took off running when she heard something break in another room.

I laughed as I headed toward the stairs, which were next to an elegantly decorated sitting room and a bar with hundreds of bottles of liquor meant to tempt you.

I knocked on Jenna’s door and went in, and I found her sitting cross-legged on her zebra-skin rug surrounded by suitcases and piles of clothes. Her hair was pulled back on the top of her head. A smile appeared on her face when she saw me, and she got up to give me a hug.

“I missed you, Blondie,” she said as she let me go. It was weird not to see her jumping around or dragging me over to sit on the bed so she could gossip and grill me for the latest details in my life. I could tell something was bothering her, something that kept her from being her usual energetic, entertaining self.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to hide my worry.

She looked around, almost clueless.

“Oh, this!” She sat back on the floor and motioned for me to do the same. “I’m deciding what to take to school. Can you believe it’s so soon?”

Despite all the times we’d talked about college, our independence, and how we would make sure to come see each other, I was surprised she seemed so excited to go.

“I haven’t even started packing my bags…” I said and remembered with apprehension that I still hadn’t confronted my mother to tell her I’d be living with Nick. I also needed to tell Jenna, but something told me this wasn’t the time.

I spent a few minutes helping her fold T-shirts and looked around, distracted, anxious to find out what was going on with her.

Jenna’s room was the complete opposite of mine. While mine was blue and white and tranquil, an invitation to relax, Jenna’s had pink walls and black furniture. She had hung up a big mannequin with a bunch of necklaces around its neck; we’d tried to untangle them before, because they were supercool, and we wanted to wear them. But our attempts were in vain—they’d never be more than decorations. On another wall, a black-and-white zebra-print sofa that matched the rug was turned toward the TV across from it. She, too, had a walk-in closet, but just then it was an utter disaster.

In the background, I heard Pharrell Williams playing. I was surprised she wasn’t humming along. I looked at her for a few more seconds. Since when did Jenna Tavish spend more than five seconds in silence? I laid the T-shirt I was folding on the ground.

“You can go ahead and tell me what’s up with you,” I said in a slightly firmer tone than I had used thus far.

“What do you mean? Nothing’s up,” she responded. But she then got up and turned her back to me, sitting on her immense bed, which was covered in clothes and fashion magazines.

“Jenna, we know each other… You didn’t even ask how my trip was. I know something’s going on with you. Now spit it out,” I said, getting up and going over to her. I didn’t like seeing her like that: my friend, my best friend, normally so cheerful and alive, all depressed.

She looked up from a piece of paper she was holding in her hand, and her eyes were damp.

“I had a fight with Lion… I’ve never seen him like that before. He’s never yelled at me that way.” A tear streamed down her cheek. I couldn’t believe what she was telling me.

Lion was a sweetie pie. He could be an asshole sometimes, the same as Nick, but that didn’t change his nature. He treated Jenna like a queen. I couldn’t imagine what could have happened to make them argue.

“What was it about?” I asked, afraid it was because of the beating Nick took the other day and the trouble Lion had gotten into…or rather, that they both had gotten into. But I decided not to say anything.

Jenna wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her head on her knees. “I decided not to go to UC Berkeley,” she said.

I opened my eyes wide. Jenna had worked so hard to get into the same college as her father. And it wasn’t just the family connection—it was Berkeley! One of the best schools in the country.

“What? Why?”

Jenna huffed. “You’re looking at me just like Lion did, like I’ve committed a crime or something.” She let her hair down and pulled it back again, the way she always did when she was nervous or angry. “UCLA is a great school. You’re going there, Nick goes there…”

“Yeah, but Jenna, Berkeley is a huge deal. Even if you go there, you can still see Lion on the weekends. It’s not like the Bay Area is on the moon…”

“I’m not going!” she said desperately. “I don’t know what’s up with Lion lately, but he’s being weird as hell, and there’s no way I’m moving to another city unless I know he’s okay.”

I nodded. I understood her perfectly. “So what exactly did Lion say?”

“He completely lost his shit. He told me I was an idiot for changing schools just because of him. He said there was no way I could put my future at risk because of us…” Her voice cracked, and I could see she was about to lose it. “He threatened to leave me!”

I opened my eyes wide with surprise. What the…?

“He’s not going to leave you, Jenna, and you’re free to do what you want. He’s crazy about you. There’s no way he’ll stop seeing you over this.”

Jenna shook her head, wiping away tears with the back of her hand. “You don’t get it—he’s changed; he’s different. I don’t know what it is, but all he talks about is making money. The other day…” She choked back a sob. “You should have seen his face, Noah. I mean, not like Nicholas wasn’t worse for wear, too, but they could have killed him, and it was all the fault of…”

Her eyes met mine as she left the phrase hanging.

“The fault of what, Jenna?”

She looked away, stood, grabbed a pile of clothes, and dropped it into one of the open suitcases on the floor, making it seem as if she didn’t want to look at me.

“Nothing. I just don’t like Lion getting involved in stuff like that. Doing the things he and Nick were into last year…”

“They don’t, though, Jenna. They’ve changed. Nicholas has changed,” I said.

She turned to me and laughed, with an incredulous expression. “No they haven’t! Nicholas is still wrapped up in the same shit as always.”

I stood still, feeling a pressure in my chest that made me unable to breathe for a few seconds.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, angry now, though I didn’t know why. I wasn’t going to let Jenna take her bad mood out on me, let alone Nick. She was telling me a bunch of lies.

She seemed to regret her words, but that didn’t stop her.

“Our boyfriends are fools. They’re still up to their necks in shit, and they’re just trying to make us believe they’ve cleaned up their act!”

“They have, Jenna! Nicholas doesn’t hang out with those people anymore. He’s changed!”

Again she laughed, but this time, it was cruel. I didn’t recognize her just then—I didn’t know who she was—she was trash-talking my boyfriend for no reason, not even making sense, as if it were his fault Lion couldn’t accept her decision about what school to go to.

“You’re more naive than I thought, Noah, honestly. You don’t know anything.”

Now she was trying my patience.

“What do I not know?”

“They’re talking about going back to the races,” she replied bitterly. “Both of them. Next week. I bet nobody told you that, did they?”

I was speechless.

“Nick will never race again, not after what happened last year,” I finally managed to say.

“Well, it’s just a matter of time till you see for yourself.”

As soon as I could, I left. I didn’t want to keep talking to her; I didn’t want to keep listening to her. Nicholas wouldn’t race again. We’d both promised each other we wouldn’t make that mistake. Those races had made Ronnie my enemy, and then he’d almost killed me, not to mention schemed with my father to kidnap me. What had been fun at first had turned terrible and dangerous, and that was why I didn’t believe a word Jenna was saying.

When I got home, it was almost dinnertime. I went in, trying not to make noise, and heard my mother in the living room. I didn’t want to talk to her, so I crept into the kitchen, grabbed a ready-made salad from the fridge with a Coke Zero, and hurried up the stairs. Right as I was placing everything on the bed, my phone rang.

Another unknown number.

Shit. That could only mean one person. I let it ring, feeling my pulse speed up. I still felt guilty for telling Nicholas’s mother that I would meet her to talk about him behind his back, but the social worker had called Nick to tell him she’d decided his sister could stay with him for a few days, and he was elated about it. There was no turning back. Maddie wouldn’t arrive till Thursday, there were two days left, but I knew as soon as Anabel set foot in LA, she’d want to see me.

The phone rang again, and again I didn’t pick up. Then a text message came through.

See you at the Hilton at LAX at noon. A.

Shit. Anabel Grason had just sent me a message. I erased it as soon as I read it. I didn’t want there to be any proof of what I was about to do. I felt awful, as if I were betraying Nick, and deep down I knew that I was. But apart from wanting his sister to spend a few days with him without a social worker around or the clock ticking down, I wanted to know what that woman had to say, what her angle was, apart from pumping me for details about her son.

I typed a short and simple response.

OK.

I lost my appetite after that, as well as what little dignity I had, at least in regards to that woman.

“Come on, Noah, pick one,” Nicholas said, exasperated.

“I’ll go for beige,” I said after thinking it over for a long time.

Nick rolled his eyes.

“If it’s beige, we’ll just leave it green, the way it is,” he said, taking the sample out of my hand.

“Green?” I said with disgust. “You’re going to stick a little girl in a green room?”

The woman who was helping us and had waited patiently while we chose a color for Maddie’s room decided it was time to interrupt us.

“Green is very stylish, even if you’re still on the fence… How far along are you?” she asked, looking at my stomach and smiling.

It took me a few seconds to figure out what she was insinuating.

“What? No, no!” I shook my head.

Nicholas turned serious and stared icily at the employee.

“Oh, I thought…” she said, looking at Nick, then me, then my belly again.

She’d thought I was pregnant and we were choosing the color for our baby’s bedroom. Our baby… God, why did I have to think about that? It gave me an uneasy feeling.

“We’re choosing a color for my six-year-old sister’s bedroom,” Nicholas said, putting the samples on the counter. “Do we look like we’re about to be parents? My girlfriend’s eighteen and I’m twenty-two. Why don’t you think before you start drawing stupid conclusions?”

I was shocked. What was that outburst about?

“I…I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

I understood how she was feeling. The look Nicholas gave her was the same one he gave me when I was upsetting him.

“It’s fine. We’ll go with white. You can tell the painters to come out tomorrow,” I said, trying to calm things down. Nicholas’s blue eyes looked furious, but he didn’t say more.

After we paid, there was an uncomfortable silence. I couldn’t take it, so I forced him to look at me when we got to the car.

“Are you going to tell me what’s up?”

Nicholas looked elsewhere, and that just made things worse. I was scared…scared I wouldn’t be good enough for him. Scared I couldn’t have kids, shouldn’t even think about it, especially now, because if I did, I might break down and fall into a black hole and never be able to crawl out.

“I can’t stand people sticking their noses where they don’t belong. That’s all,” he said, and gave me a kiss on the forehead.

I knew he was hiding something. And I knew exactly what he was thinking…but I didn’t want to hear about it. Not then.

I hugged him, leaned my cheek into his chest, tried to cheer up. I ignored the fear that threatened to come out at moments like that and got into the car as if he had never uttered those words.

We spent the rest of the afternoon buying furniture for the room. It would all be delivered the next day, which meant we had twenty-four hours to put it together if we wanted the room ready for her on Thursday. Nick was excited; I could see it in his eyes, in his enthusiasm as he picked everything out. Leaving aside the flare-up over my supposed pregnancy, I’d had a good time going to the shops and toy stores with Nick.

We bought a blue single bed for her and a few things to play with. Nick wanted the room to look like mine: more or less neutral and not too cheesy. When we got to his place, I was exhausted, and I flopped down on the bed as soon as I walked in. He lay down over my back, pressing me into the mattress while giving me just enough space to breathe. His mouth looked for my ear, making me shiver.

“Thanks for doing this with me,” he whispered, leaving hot kisses on my neck.

With my cheek pressed into the mattress, I couldn’t see his face, but the feel of his mouth on my skin was enough.

But despite that, I came out with the words “I was with Jenna yesterday,” uncertain how he would react to that mention of my best friend. He stopped, tensed, and I could feel his weight rising off me. I turned around and leaned on my elbows, observing him. His back was turned as he removed his T-shirt and let it fall to the ground.

“Great,” he replied.

I frowned as he walked into the bathroom and almost slammed the door shut. I walked in after him without knocking, feeling I didn’t need to.

He was leaning on the sink and looked up when he heard me.

“You know…?” I said. “We were talking.”

“So?”

Why is he talking to me that way?

“You getting on the defensive only confirms to me that what Jenna told me you’re up to is the truth.”

He turned around. “What is it I’m supposedly going to do, then?”

I hated when he adopted that tone of voice. I wished I hadn’t even brought the whole thing up, but if it was true he was thinking about racing again…

I looked at his nude torso, the scabs and scars… That had to stop.

“You can’t go on doing this stuff, Nicholas,” I said, measuring my words. “Jenna told me Lion was going to start racing again…”

Without even looking at me, he walked around me and back out. “Lion’s a big boy. He can do what he wants, no?”

“So you’re not going?” I went on, just wanting to put myself at ease.

“No, I’m not going.” He turned and stared at me. “And honestly, I couldn’t give less of a shit about what Jenna has to say about me or our relationship.”

That got to me.

“Jenna’s not what matters. It’s that you shouldn’t have gotten into that fight with Lion! You told me all that was over!”

“It is over! Noah, honestly, I already told you. Lion was in trouble, and I lent him a hand.” He exhaled, came over, and hugged me tightly. “I didn’t know it would get out of hand like that, but I won’t make the same mistake again, okay?”

“No more fights, Nick. No more dangerous situations. You promise?” I asked, arching my body as he started kissing my neck.

“I promise.”