Star-Crossed ✔️

27

this is pretty fluffy
felt like we needed it

- 27 -

The carpet might as well have been torn down to the cement from how long I was pacing back and forth in our room. Noah sat on the bed with his hands in his lap, listening to my mindless grumbling about the scene that'd just unfolded.

"What if it was me? Would he have stopped it if it was me?"

"It wasn't you."

"But what if it was? Is he really that evil?"

"I don't think he's evil."

"Okay, not evil. Just a dick."

"Definitely a dick."

"Was he the reason we cut contact when we were younger?"

"I cut contact. Not you."

"Well, I could have tried harder."

"You tried plenty."

"I just don't understand why he'd do that."

"He was just trying to protect you."

After nearly forty-five minutes of back and forth, I stopped pacing. Noah watched me curiously. I was feeling somewhat worn out from voicing my thoughts and actually receiving responses back for once. My eyebrows furrowed as I looked at him. "Protect me from what? I wasn't the one that needed protecting."

Noah stood up and slid his arms around my waist. I felt my shoulders relax as he placed his ear to my shoulder and hugged me. For someone who was an accidental fray in my relationship with my dad, he was in good spirits. Normally he'd shut down and try to push me away at a time like this. Maybe he knew that this time, I was the one that needed comfort. After all, it wasn't like it was his intention to slice the rope connecting me and my father. It was bound to break soon.

"Think about it, Theo. If you were him and you walked in on a fifteen-year-old boy sitting on a grown man's lap with a bottle of Henny to his lips, you'd think the worst, too. Not everybody is as forgiving as you. His first thought was probably, like, 'There's got to be something seriously wrong with that kid,' and then, 'What can I do to prevent my son from turning out like that?'"

I shook my head as my fingers subconsciously massaged his nape. "Not a single person in that room would have left you with him," I said confidently. "Had it been my mom to see it, you would have been—"

"Theo. Relax and hold me."

My mouth shut, but my mind didn't stop. It was true. If I had been the one to find them that day, David MacNeil would have been in prison. Or, if the justice system failed, blackballed from Hollywood, hopefully divorced, and moved continents with a name change. I wouldn't have given up, just like I wasn't planning to now. Now I had a chance to make things right for Noah. To let him bloom.

I tightened my grip on my beautiful boy. For once, I'd have liked to stop thinking about all the ways the world screwed him over. The list seemed to keep growing with every passing hour.

He smelled like the shampoo Lina loaned us. I pressed a kiss into his hair and he turned his head, meeting my lips for the third time tonight. We stood there and kissed. I tried to translate all of my frustrations and apologies and promises with my tongue, holding his jaw lightly as if he were to crumble under my touch.

"Should we go back out there?" he asked when we pulled away to breathe.

"We don't have to."

Noah smiled, kissing my cheek quickly before separating our bodies. "I think we should. Your mom is almost drunk enough to do karaoke with me," he said. It was the first time I'd seen a genuine grin in a while. It was contagious.