Your Fault

Chapter 53 Noah

I didn't remember reserving a car. I didn't remember how I got in it. All I could focus on was trying to breathe in and out. I was having a panic attack, one so horrible that my chest was aching, and it felt like someone was tearing out my heart.
I couldn't stop thinking about all that had happened over the past hour.
It was like I was trapped in a horror film. Finding out my mother had lied to me my entire life about virtually everything had shattered me inside, but when Briar told me Nicholas had cheated on me, had let me live with someone he had been sleeping with for months, someone he forced to have an abortion... I couldn't take it anymore.
Was this really Nicholas we were talking about? How could he have done this to me? How could he have lied to me, laughed in my face, pretending they didn't know each other? How had they both been able to keep up that farce? And why?
I had never felt anything so hard, so horrible, never before that day had I felt like everyone in my life was betraying me because it was everyone, every single person I loved, who had betrayed me that night: my mother, Nick, even Briar... I'd thought we were friends... I'd thought... With trembling hands, I took out my phone. I needed Jenna with me, by my side, because I had no idea how to resolve this. I couldn't imagine how I could recover from this blow.
"Are you all right?" the driver asked, looking at me in the rearview mirror.
All right? I was dying.
Jenna didn't pick up. Then I saw Nick's photo on the screen. I looked at it with unending pain, a pain far sharper than any I had ever felt before.
Seeing his image, seeing that photo of the two of us together, smiling at the camera, my pain turned into an irrational hatred that lodged in my soul, a hatred for him and for any and everyone who had ever hurt me.
I had suffered enough. I didn't deserve this. I just didn't. All I had done, all I had been through to get to where I was, and then this... It was like my entire world was falling apart.
"This is your destination," the driver announced just as a thunderclap crossed the sky, making me tremble.
I paid on the app and got out.
Since Jenna hadn't responded, there was only one person left to turn to.
I went to the entrance of the building and pressed button number eighteen.
I didn't get the person I expected, but in those circumstances, either of them would have worked. Michael came down and opened up, and he seemed shocked when he saw me. I was an absolute wreck; I could barely even breathe. I didn't care that I'd only known him for a few weeks: he had helped me, and more importantly, he knew me better than anyone-I had opened up to him in a way I'd done with almost no one else.
Seeing him through the mist of my tears, I stepped forward and collapsed into his chest. He hugged me tight, and just then, I felt my heart fall out of my chest and shatter.

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Three hours later, I opened my eyes in a completely unfamiliar room. My head was aching so badly, it was hard for me to focus on anything but the pain, and it wasn't just my head, there was something else, something I didn't understand... Then the truth hit me again, cold as ice.
I felt the tears stream down my cheeks once more, but in silence, as if I didn't want to make things worse, as if I wanted to keep the drama at bay.
But why bother? Everything that had happened was horrible, from beginning to end. Everyone had warned me, everyone I knew had told me this could come to pass, and there I was, in a bottomless pit because I hadn't been capable of seeing it or accepting it in time.
I lay back on the cushions and looked around for something to distract me. I saw two lit candles on the nightstand. I considered getting up, but before I could, the door opened, and there, with a steaming mug in his hands, was Michael. It was strange to see him in pajama pants and a gray T-shirt, and it was even stranger to realize I was in his bed, in his sheets, after crying for hours while he held me.
"Hey!" he said, walking in and sitting beside me. "I made you a cup of hot tea with honey and lemon. After all that crying, your throat must be killing you."
I nodded, grabbing the cup and bringing it to my lips. I was so crushed, so lost, that I didn't know what to do or say. My legs shifted under the sheets, and I realized I was no longer in my dress. I was wearing a large white cotton T-shirt.
Michael seemed to be considering what to say, and just looking at him allowed me to see he was even tenser than I was. I looked down at the steam rising from the rim of my tea as I felt Michael's fingers delicately wiping away my tears.
"He doesn't deserve you shedding a single tear for him, Noah. Not one."
I knew what he was saying was true, but I wasn't crying for just Nick or just me: I was crying for us, for Nick and Noah...because there wouldn't be a we anymore, right? I would never be able to forgive him. Or would I?
I looked at the raindrops striking the window. It had been a long time since I'd seen a storm like that... The last time had been in Toronto, before my whole life turned upside down, before I fell in love, before everything.
"Anyway, I guess it had to happen..." I said softly, more to myself than to Michael.
It seemed as if that phrase remained there, lingering in the air.
"It's not the first time either. It's almost like I'm not capable of making men love me... My father didn't. Neither did my first boyfriend, Dan. He cheated on me with my best friend. Now history's repeating itself... I'm asking myself if that's why I've been running away from everything with Nick, if there was a part of me that knew this had to happen and wanted to protect me from that pain..." Michael took the cup from my hand and, without my managing to stop him, kissed me on the lips, pressing me into the pillows I was resting on. I blinked several times, perplexed, then pulled away with a face full of rage.
Rage, and...something more.
"You're an idiot if you don't think you deserve to be loved, if you think the bad things that have happened in your life are your fault..." He stroked my hair. "I haven't done my job with you, Noah. I really haven't accomplished anything..." Again, he pressed his lips into mine, and I felt so lost, I let him do it.
My mind seemed to disconnect from my body, just as I had wished it would do since I took that car there. Michael's hands were all over me, and maybe just as a reflex, mine started doing the same.
It was different, the way he touched me; his kisses were different, too. I couldn't say whether I liked them because I wasn't really there. I didn't even know what was happening; my heart and my soul were crushed, blinded, waiting for someone to send a light into that bottomless pit and show me the way out.