Bad Decisions

•THIRTEEN•

Aurora stared at Noah.

He had to have been lying.

"You're fucking lying," she whispered. "You made this shit up to fucking tear me down and make me betray the company."

"You think that I have the capabilities to make any of this stuff, and plant it into your life like this?" Noah asked, gesturing to the old yearbook, the family photograph she had.

She looked back down at the pictures, trying to puzzle everything together. The face was all the same, and if she looked into a mirror, it would still be the same face, just older. And that sent her reeling.

If it was true, and he wasn't lying...

"Get out," she whispered to the counter, to the pictures, to the glimpse of a dead life spread out before her. Noah didn't move in her peripherals, and she needed him to leave. She could feel the thread of her life being plucked at, loosened, and it was igniting a fuse in her. "Get out!"

"Rory-" he started, his voice calm, but she cut him off.

"Don't fucking call me that! Get the fuck out!"

She was about to combust, explode, that single thread yanked and the unraveling starting. And she didn't want anyone to see her as she fell apart. Especially Noah, who knew so much of a past that wasn't hers, of a person that she was not.

"Get the fuck out, Noah!" She shrieked, snapping her head up to face him. She flung her hand out in a wide arc to point towards her door.  But he didn't move. He stayed right where he was, the counter separating them. He folded his arms in defiance, and she couldn't fight the detonation that was happening inside her.

"No, I'm not leaving you," he replied cooly, his arms still crossed over his chest. There was an unspoken word that hung between them; again.

I'm not leaving you, again.

The blast came. Rage boiled over in her, screaming for an outlet and she grabbed the half full bottle of wine, lifted it above her head, and spiked it to the ground at her feet. The glass shattered, shards sent flying into her pure white cabinets, red wine splashing across her legs and onto the cabinets, the glass slicing into her bare feet and legs. The wine stain bloomed beneath her.

"Layton is my uncle?! And he tested that shit ON ME?!" She cried, yanking the wine glass from the sink, and sending that crashing to the floor next. Noah didn't even try to stop her, but his eyes followed her movements. "Why don't I fucking know this?!"

"They eras-" but Noah was cut off again when Aurora swung around to face him, panting from her explosion, and her eyes fell onto the picture frame.

Her fingers gripped onto the frame, so hard the cheap metal she never replaced bending to her will. "I don't even remember these fucking people!"

The frame was sent slamming into the wall of cabinets beside them, denting the wood, the frame snapping, glass breaking then falling to the floor. And still, Noah didn't stop her, and only watched as rage consumed her.

"Why can't I remember them?!" She screamed, and she reached out to swipe the yearbook to the ground with the puddles of wine and shattered glass. Only then did Noah stop her hands by settling his on top of hers, then pulled the book out of her reach.