Your Fault (Culpable Book 2)

I walked out in a rage, disoriented by the music, the people, the candles, and the waiters. My mind had been so far from that farce that the sight of people happy, dancing and drinking, was utterly surreal.

Noah had seen my mother. Noah had met her. Goddammit. How could she?

The mere thought that she had even listened to what that woman had to say drove me insane. I had been very clear about my feelings about my mother: we didn’t talk about her, we didn’t mention her, we didn’t see her, nothing, period.

And now I found out my father had been having an affair with Raffaella since I was a child. I had to reexamine everything because there was a difference between my mother up and leaving me and doing it because her husband was cheating on her. I’d always believed it was the opposite, that she’d left because she wanted to hurt my father. Now everything appeared differently.

My life, ever since the day I was born, had been a lie, and neither of my parents had been capable of putting their fucking issues aside for my sake.

All at once, Sophia appeared in front of me, her face full of worry, and I asked myself what it must be like not to feel the least worry apart from climbing the ladder at work. Sophia was utterly free. She had been so easy to talk to, about whatever, just to pass the time.

“Nicholas, are you okay?”

I stared at her closely, at her tan skin, her black hair, her dark eyes. What would Noah feel like if I betrayed her that way? How would she feel if I stabbed her in the back?

Sophia said something else, but I couldn’t even hear her. Consumed by sudden rage, an infinite hatred for everyone that I could no longer even control—maybe even a hatred for Noah because the light at the end of the tunnel had vanished, and she was doing what she pleased, not even caring about what I had done or said or wished for—furious at her, at my mother, I acted without thinking, not even realizing what I was doing until my lips were pressed into those of the girl in front of me. I felt strange; for a few seconds, I was waiting for that vertiginous feeling I always got when I kissed Noah; but there was nothing, just skin touching skin, and that made me even angrier.

I pulled Sophia close, ran a hand through her hair, slipped my tongue into her mouth, looked for that flavor that obsessed me, that made me melt inside. Nothing. Goddammit. I felt nothing. Just then, she must have realized what we were doing, because she pushed me.

“What are you doing?”

I looked at her, analyzed her, wanting to see a person who wasn’t there.

Shit.

Sophia was speechless.

I smacked my forehead and drank the entire contents of the glass sitting next to me. The alcohol burned my throat, but I was used to that burning, at least.

“I need to go.”

I called Steve and told him to meet me out front. I begged Sophia to go—that was best—and tried to erase every proof of what I’d just done. She was shocked and angry, but she did as I said, grabbing her purse, following me outside, and getting into one of the cars waiting there. When I walked out, a gust of cold air hit my face. I looked up. The sky was dark, threatening.

I walked down the steps without even bothering to smile at the photographers, passing in front of the valets and the other staff, trying to find Steve, who was waiting for me farther off. I reached his vehicle, opened the back door, and got inside, waiting to disappear.

“What happened, Nicholas?” he asked, his eyes on the road as we left the property.

Steve had been with me as long as I could remember. He had picked me up from school, taken me to games, had been there when my parents weren’t. I had a special place in my heart for him, and for a moment, I wanted to open up to him and tell him how I was feeling.

With my mind in a million places, I needed some time to see the box in the seat next to me and the note I’d asked Steve to give Noah that night. I put both in my jacket and looked out the window. I’d left Noah alone with my monster of a mother and our parents, I’d walked off without letting her explain herself, and then I’d kissed Sophia in front of everyone there. I felt sick to my stomach and grabbed my phone. I’d turned it off a while ago, as soon as I’d left the main hall, and when the screen glowed, I saw I’d missed a call from Noah twenty minutes before. I’d been a dickhead… I dialed and waited for her to pick up, but she didn’t. Her phone was turned off this time. All at once, I felt a profound unease.

“Steve, let’s go back to the party… I’ve got to get Noah out of that hellhole.”

We were back in no time. As far as I could tell, the ceremony had continued according to plan, and at that very instant, my father was on the stage delivering that speech he’d been planning for so long. I looked around the room, trying to find her, in vain… I didn’t see Raffaella anywhere either. I didn’t even want to think of what reason my mother might have had for starting a scandal there or why she had lied, saying Noah had met her for money. I knew Noah didn’t have a greedy bone in her body.

With every minute that passed, I felt guiltier for leaving. If what Noah had said was true, the only reason she’d met with my mother was to let me have Maddie. I had been such a jerk, an absolute first-rate asshole!

Increasingly anxious, I walked into the crowd just as everyone lifted their champagne flutes in a collective toast. Right away, the music, which had been silenced for the speech, boomed from the speakers, and the sound of conversations rose again. That was when I saw a red blur appear in my field of vision: Briar. I hurried over to her.

“I’m looking for Noah. Have you seen her?”

Briar laughed and looked at me with contempt.

“So now you’re looking for her? You’re the worst!” she exclaimed, shaking her head. “For a minute, I believed you, you know? I really thought you had changed… There was even a little part of me that had stopped hating you with all my soul, that was happy for you because, whatever problems you have, you’d finally learned what it meant to really love someone.”

Her green eyes told me I wasn’t likely to get any further with her. She continued. “You know what? Your father was right the last time I saw him. He told me you were incapable of love, that you harbored a hatred so profound that there would never be room for anything else, and certainly not for a nineteen-year-old girl with a baby on the way.”

I clenched my teeth.

“Now I realize he was right…because Noah loved you for real, Nicholas, but you couldn’t love her back… You couldn’t love me, you couldn’t forgive your parents, and you certainly won’t be able to love her because you know she’s better than you in every way.”

“Briar, where is Noah?”

I couldn’t believe this was blowing up in my face again. Briar had no idea what I had been through and how every single day, I’d regretted what my father had forced her to do.

Briar was one of many girls I’d hooked up with, and she was never supposed to be anything else. I just assumed the whole thing was a fling. Briar was no saint—she’d been with half the guys on campus before me—but at some point, I found out she’d actually been in love with me. When she realized she was pregnant, she came and told me at home, and my dad found out. To avoid a scandal, he forced her to get an abortion, and there was nothing I could do about it. Briar had problems: since childhood, her environment had been toxic, just like mine. Her parents had never cared about her or given her the things she needed. What happened between us caused her to have a nervous breakdown, and they checked her into the same clinic I’d been in once. I tried to get in contact with her; I tried a million times to ask her for forgiveness when I’d escaped from my own hell, but it was impossible. She had tried to kill herself when she was younger, and the doctors had refused to let me get close to her in case she tried it again.

“I’m sorry for all this, Briar… I never wanted to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you now—not you, not Noah. So, please, tell me where she is.”

She grinned vilely and looked me directly in the eyes. “She knows you’re cheating on her with Sophia, and she knows about us, too… She’s gone, Nicholas. She left more than an hour ago.”

An irrational fear invaded my body and left me petrified, my heart about to jump out of my chest. “Jesus! What have you done?”