Your Fault (Culpable Book 2)

Silence.

That was what there was between Nicholas and me. I had never seen that coming. I was sitting on my bed staring at my phone, thinking about what I could do or say to justify how I’d acted the other day. I missed him, and I was scared I’d tried his patience too much.

Trying to make the best of a bad situation, I started a message to him… but then I erased it, thinking it was better to call, even if that took more courage. I waited anxiously until I heard him pick up.

“Hello?”

A woman’s voice.

My heart started pounding, and I could hear the blood rushing in my ears.

“Is Nicholas there?”

My voice must have given my feelings away. I was blind with rage, and only my desire to know what was going on kept me from hanging up when I heard Sophia answer.

She said yes, and soon I heard his breathing on the other line.

“Noah.”

Noah. No Freckles anymore, I guessed.

I felt so far from him in that instant that my heart ached.

“What are you doing with her?”

I hadn’t intended to ask that; it slipped out.

“I work with her.”

Taking a deep breath, I tried to find a way to connect with him, but after four days apart, with silence on both ends—something that had never happened before—I was lost. I didn’t know what was going on.

The tattoo.

I had talked about it with Michael. I was going to his office almost every day, and we talked about anything and everything. I had never felt able to open up to a stranger like that, but he had helped me, and it had been his idea for me to wait and see how things turned out with Nick. He told me it was never good to pressure people, that I should wait for the anger to subside instead of letting it speak for me.

Well, there we were: talking. But it wasn’t exactly the conversation, the reception, that I’d hoped for.

“Nick…”

“Noah…”

We were both talking at the same time, and we both stopped to hear what the other had to say. It would have been funny on another occasion, but not then, not when he felt a million miles away.

“I want to see you,” I said, seeing he wouldn’t take the initiative.

I could hear him on the other line walking away from the noise around him. I guessed he was shutting himself up in some empty office.

“Sorry I haven’t called,” he said. “The company anniversary is coming up, and I’ve been busy with that…”

“I’m going to a psychologist,” I blurted out. I don’t know why I didn’t lay the groundwork before saying that. Maybe I needed to tell him that despite my attitude, I was willing to change, to improve, for him.

“What? Since when? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m telling you now.”

“You can’t just go to any psychologist, Noah. What was the point of all that looking around, making those lists, if you were just going to up and do it without me…?”

“Nicholas, what does it matter? He’s helping me. He’s young, he’s on the university staff, I feel more like I’m talking to a friend than to a doctor.”

“A friend?” His tone froze in a matter of seconds.

“His name’s Michael O’Neil, he’s the brother of one of my classmates, and he says—”

“The school psychologists are just a bunch of underpaid chumps, and they have no idea what they’re doing. How old is this guy?”

Incredible.

“What does it matter how old he is?”

“It does matter, believe me. What the hell does a guy who just graduated know about what’s going on with you?”

“He’s twenty-seven. Anyway, he’s helping me… That should be the only thing that matters to you.”

“You’re what matters to me, and being sure that you get what’s best for you, and I promise you, a staff psychologist won’t even know where to start when you tell him what’s going on with you.”

“What are you trying to insinuate?”

“I’m insinuating that I want you to stop seeing that dumbass and—”

I couldn’t listen anymore. I hung up and tried to take a few deep breaths to calm down. How the hell had this conversation turned into another damned fight?

I grabbed by leather jacket, put on my boots, and walked out to the living room, where my roommate was watching television. Our place was cozy, with two bedrooms, a shared bathroom, and a living room with a studio kitchen. I couldn’t complain—William hadn’t slacked too much on the accommodations. My roommate’s name was Briar, and after a few weeks living with her, I could say honestly she was a bit of a bimbo. She didn’t dress especially provocatively or anything like that; it was just that there was something about her that made any guy with eyes want to get her in the sack, and she was generally happy to oblige. She had dark red hair, almost scarlet, and her eyes were green and exotic. Her parents were famous Hollywood directors, and she knew she’d end up working with them sooner rather than later.

There were no surprises there—if I had that face, I’d have become an actress, too—but Briar had a to hell with everything attitude that I found unsettling. She was chatty with me, nice, too, but there was something about her I couldn’t quite get a handle on.

“Lovers’ spat?” she asked indifferently while she inspected her nails one by one and painted them the same bloodred color as before.

I went to the fridge and took out a can of Coke. Not that I needed caffeine—it would probably give me the jitters—and I wasn’t even thirsty, but it was a reflex. I just couldn’t stay still. That last conversation had cut me to the core.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I responded a little nastily. Briar shot an angry stare at me, and I felt immediately guilty.

We weren’t friends or anything, but she’d been too nice to me for me to treat her that way. So I sighed and told her my story with Nick. Honestly, I needed more friends anyway because Jenna had been doing her own thing ever since we started school, and she lived on the opposite end of campus. I didn’t tell her about my psychologist, of course, but I did mention the tattoo and my reaction to it.

“Damn, a tattoo. You’ve really hooked him, right?” she said, sitting on one of the stools around the kitchen table. I spun my can of Coke in my hand, trying to decide how much to tell her.

“What we’ve got is different from anything I’ve ever felt for any other guy. It’s intense, you know…? One word from him can send me rocketing up to heaven or bury me six feet underground.”

Briar was listening attentively. “I’ve only felt anything like that with one other person, and he turned out to be a manipulator who was just playing with me…” Her words were sincere, and as she uttered them, she pulled off a silver cuff she always wore on her right wrist. “I know what you’re saying about intensity.”

Opening my eyes wide, I looked at the two scars on her wrist. In her eyes, I saw many of the things I saw in myself when I looked into the mirror. She smiled.

“It’s not such a big deal. It’s funny the way people look at you when you tell them you tried to kill yourself,” she said, putting the cuff back on. “It’s a sign of weakness, fine, but whatever, it happened and I’m still here, talking to you, no remorse whatsoever. Sometimes life is shit. We all handle it the best way we can.”

Marks on the skin…infinite memories of moments you wish you’d never live again.

“I like your tattoo,” she said, and I realized I was touching it. I did that sometimes without realizing it.

“There are times when I ask myself what was going through my mind when I got it.”

Briar smiled, pulled up her shirt, and showed me her ribs. In black ink, in beautiful calligraphy, I saw a message that touched my heart: Keep Breathing.

I grasped intuitively the meaning behind those words.

“Now’s the part where we hug and swear we’ll be friends forever,” she said, lowering her shirt and laughing blithely.

I could tell I wasn’t the first person she’d told about all that. We didn’t know each other well, and the way she talked about her past made it clear she wasn’t seeking sympathy from anyone. She had no problem revealing her demons, but I saw that was a way of keeping people from knowing her too well. I knew she was hiding many things and that her life had been anything but a bed of roses.

“You in the mood to go out?” I asked, without even thinking about it.

With surprise, she replied, “Well, Morgan, that’s not the usual reaction when people hear my story about attempting suicide.” That was a thing of hers, for some reason, calling me by my last name. I had yet to hear her utter the word Noah. “Usually people just look away or change the subject, but I guess you want to buy me a drink?”

I shrugged. “I’m not like other people. Anyway, I didn’t say I’d buy you a drink.”

Briar laughed and got down off the stool. “I like you… Let’s go out, then.”

I smiled and went to my room to get ready.

She had made me see I wasn’t the only person with problems or the only girl in the world who had been hurt. Talking with her had made me feel way better than I could have imagined.

“Which of those dudes would you pick up for a roll in the hay?”

We were at a club close to campus. Briar was like a passport for getting a VIP booth. One look always got us past the doorman without even needing to stand in line.

“I’ve got a boyfriend, remember?” I responded, taking a sip of my drink through a straw.

We’d been drinking for free, thanks to the server, ever since we got there.

Briar waved me off. “Fuck boyfriends. We’re speaking hypothetically.”

I saw a group of guys at the next booth over staring at us. No surprises there: we were two girls alone at a club, and Briar wasn’t shy about looking back at them…

“Cut it out. You’re going to make them come over here,” I said when she winked at one of the two or three best-looking ones.

“Damn straight,” she said with a radiant smile. Her teeth were white and perfectly straight. It was obvious she came from a family with money, but she was nothing like the people I’d met in high school. Or like anyone I’d ever met at all, for that matter.

I didn’t want them to come over because they’d be impossible to ignore while Briar was there flirting. Plus, the one who came over to sit with us had brought along a friend.

“Hey, precious,” the blond guy said, the one Briar had been eyeing dreamily.

The other one, darker-haired, reminded me of Nick. That wasn’t good, and I felt immediately uncomfortable.

After ten minutes of chitchat with no depth whatsoever, Briar dove in and started making out with the blond guy while I was stuck repeating to the other one that I had a boyfriend and wanted to be left alone.

“Your boyfriend’s not here, and I know you like me. Admit it, you’re getting nervous,” he said, scooting in closer.

I pursed my lips. “I’m not going to say it again,” I warned him, angrier than I probably should have been. “I don’t want anything with you, nothing whatsoever. I wouldn’t give you the time of day, got it? Now beat it.”

He reached for my knee, and I swatted him away, standing.

“Are you deaf as well as stupid?” I shouted over the loud music.

“Why don’t you do like your friend instead of being so uptight?”

Briar had now separated from the blond and was giving me a suggestive look. “Morgan, no one’s going to know.”

That was ridiculous.

“I’m leaving.”

I walked out of the VIP area in a rage, furious I’d ever set foot in that trashy club. Unsurprisingly, Briar didn’t follow me. She had already made it clear to me that we were both free to do as we wished.

Once outside, I stopped to catch my breath. I was drunker than I’d thought at first. Just sitting there and drinking had been a bad idea. Now the whole world was spinning.

I unlocked my phone and opened a ride-sharing app. When I did, I saw several missed calls from Nick. He had pissed me off with his reaction to my finding a psychologist, and I’d decided not to pick up, but now, all at once, I was tired of being angry with him. I sent him the address of the club with a message.

I’m here. Can you pick me up?

He responded right away.

Be there in five.

Soon afterward, I saw his Range Rover parking next to the sidewalk, and I didn’t really know what to do. I wasn’t sure where we were at just then or how I was supposed to act. It was weird the way we’d just left everything hanging lately. I decided to stand there and wait for him to get out.

As he crossed the street in my direction, someone started shouting my name. It was the guy from the bar.

“You’re not going to come back in? I was just joking before,” he said, reaching me before Nicholas did. As I turned to Nick, he wrapped one arm around my waist and with the other pushed the guy away.

“Go.” His voice was as frozen as the weather that night. I shivered. The guy looked up at Nick.

“Who are you?”

“The guy who’s about to split your face open if you don’t get away from my girlfriend.”

I felt worried, seeing how angry he was.

The dark-haired kid stepped back reluctantly. “She didn’t say shit about you when she was flirting with me back inside.”

My eyes opened wide…the jerk.

Nick let go of my waist and stepped forward. “You’ve got one second to get out of my sight, and if you don’t, you’re going to have problems, get it?”

This was spinning out of control. I grabbed Nick’s hand. “Come on, let’s go. Please,” I said softly.

I didn’t want them to fight. I just wanted to get out of there.

The idiot from the bar seemed to understand this could turn out badly for him; there was no question about who would go down if the two of them were to fight. The door to the bar opened, and the music from inside echoed out into the street. Briar emerged, holding hands with the idiot’s blond friend.

“What’s going on?” she asked, coming over. Nick turned on his heel. His entire body went tense, and I knew this wasn’t going to turn out well.