Summer

*Bonus* Chapter 4

Noah's POV

The rest of my week consisted of lifeguarding at the beach, taking care of Maggie at home, hanging with Justin, and beating the shit out of a punching bag that I ordered from Amazon. I haven't been to the warehouse since the night I brought Fee there. Spending time with her, I hadn't felt the need to fight, but now that she's no longer in my life, it's all I can think about.

I also haven't been to a single house party, even though there's been one every other night, especially with summer coming to an end. Don't get me wrong, the feeling of getting fucked up is calling my name, but I could give less than two shits about being around Greg, Cecilia, and the rest of those assholes. Besides Maggie and Justin, and the occasional text messages from Cassie telling me how much of a fucking idiot I am for doing what I did, I don't see or speak to anyone. And I plan on keeping it that way.

Today, I'm off from lifeguarding, which is perfect because it gives me plenty of time to run to the grocery before Maggie gets home from camp. I told her we could make tacos for dinner.

***

After unpacking the paper bags and stocking up the fridge, I remembered that I still had to do the laundry for this week.

I grab the hamper from Maggie's room and then mine before doing one last sweep to make sure that I got everything. That's when I notice a backpack by my bed that I hadn't realized before. It's too expensive to be mine and it's definitely not Justin's, which can only mean one thing.

It belongs to Fee.

Now that I'm thinking of it, she was carrying it on her back the night that she came here after fighting with her brother.

I walk over to the backpack and open it up just to make sure she didn't leave anything important behind. I shuffle through a few articles of clothing when my hand hits something hard.

Her journal. Her red leather journal.

I want to laugh at the irony of this situation, but I'm not in the mood for jokes.

I remember how much she hated me for reading what was inside that night she thought she lost it. Little did she know how much I actually admired what was written in there. She thought I was mocking her writing. Instead, I was praising it. It was deep, raw, and intellectual.

The voice inside my head tells me not to open it, but who am I kidding? We both know I have no angel on my shoulder guiding me through right vs. wrong.

I flick through to a page that she has bookmarked, landing on a passage from July 14 — the day that I took her to the warehouse. I couldn't forget the date if I tried to.

July 14

The moment that I laid eyes on Noah at Val's I knew he was going to be someone special to me — someway, somehow. I guess it is possible to feel strongly for someone you've just met. What I've come to learn over the past few weeks is that it's not about time. Time is just a number on a clock. It's just seconds in a day, days in a week, weeks in a year, years in a lifetime. It doesn't define what your heart's capable of feeling. And what I feel for Noah is something that I've been struggling to put into words. It's something that I've been struggling to accept. I'm falling for him — hard. After being with him tonight, I know that my feelings are one-hundred percent valid. Tonight, Noah brought me to this warehouse to watch him fight. I don't think I've ever been so scared for someone in my entire life. In the end, he came out on top, but those minutes in between where something bad could have happened to him hurt my heart.

I'm scared. I'm scared that we barely know each other, yet I feel so safe with him, and tonight he opened up to me in a way that I never saw coming. He told me about his childhood, his fears, his hate for vulnerability. It made me want to hold him in my arms and tell him that everything was going to be okay. If only he could see himself through my eyes.

If only.

What tomorrow or the day after that looks like, I don't know. But what I do know is that I want to be with Noah for as long as I possibly can.

Holy shit.

That's the only thought that comes to mind. I'm speechless. Speechless that Fee wrote this about me. Speechless that she feels this way — or felt. These words. Beautiful is not enough to describe them. They're everything. It's like she read my heart when she wrote this.

I don't even think about calling her to let her know that she left this behind. One, because there's no way in hell she's answering my calls, and, two, because I know exactly what I have to do. It's what Justin implied at Val's. It's what Maggie's been indirectly telling me to do. It's what I knew I had to do from the start but was too chicken-shit to act on.

I don't wait any longer. Time is running out.

I scroll through the contact list on my phone and click on 'Jerry Langford'. The call rings several times before going to voicemail:

"Leave a message at the beep..."

"Jerry, it's Noah. Noah Collins. I got your contact info from my boy Justin Klein. He told me to give you a call if I needed help booking a flight out of Charleston."

I inhale then exhale a deep breath before continuing.

"Connecticut. That's where I need to go. On the earliest flight possible. Please get back to me as soon as you can."

I'm about to hang up when I stop myself.

"Oh, and before I forget, I don't care what it costs."