A Known Stranger

Chapter 34

Chapter 34

                I sat on the beach, my bare feet and fingers buried within the cold sand. It was around two in the morning and I hadn’t been able to sleep; so like many times before when I would stay up all night long, I snuck down to the beach and sat down.

                But this time was different. Instead of sitting down on the rocks a few feet away from me, I sat on the sand. I could feel the cold texture of the soft grains through my jeans, the cool air blowing my loose hair back and seeping into the semi thin material of my black sweater.

                I couldn’t stop thinking about what Kimberly had told me days ago. Her words kept replaying over and over again running through my mind like a broken record. I didn’t understand. Why had Ryder done that? Why had he stepped in front of those bullets when he couldn’t stand Noah?

                In the early months that Noah and I had been dating, every time Ryder would catch sight of Noah and I together his expression would instantly turn sour. His eyes would narrow and he would walk away, practically stomping his feet like a child.

                It was no secret that Ryder hated Noah, especially since I had begun dating Noah months after breaking up with him. So if Ryder loathed Noah so much, why save his life?

                So caught up in my own thoughts, I hadn’t heard the approaching footsteps coming from behind me. So on instinct, I flinched when a pair of long legs stretched out at my sides and a pair of hands slowly made their way down arms until their long fingers intertwined with mine.

                “It’s only me,” Noah whispered in my ear, his soothing voice rapidly causing my racing heart beat to slow down a bit but still beat faster than normal. “What are you doing out here?” he asked as he rested his chin on my shoulder. “It’s close to three in the morning.”

                I shrugged and silently leaned back into his touch, warmth immediately spreading throughout my body. “I couldn’t sleep.” I admitted.

                “Still thinking about Ryder?” he asked before placing a small kiss on the exposed skin that my sweater didn’t cover up on my collar.

                Some boyfriends would probably get mad if their girlfriends were thinking about their ex at all times of the day but Noah wasn’t like other boyfriends and me thinking about my ex wasn’t something to alarm him. After all, my ex recently died.

                I nodded and tilted my head back until it was resting on his shoulder, I had moved down a bit so I was leaning against his hard body, wrapping his arms around me, his hands never left mine. I felt him kiss the top of my head, before resting his head against mine. We sat in silence for a bit, staring out at the ocean in tranquility.

                “Did you love him?” Noah blurted out, his thumb running over my knuckles light as a feather. I could feel his warm breath on the base of my neck as he spoke the four words that threw me off guard.

                “Ryder?”

                “Yeah,”

                I bit my lip in thought. In the time that he and I had dated I never told him those three words that most couples threw around like nothing. I knew that I loved him but I was pretty sure I wasn’t in love with Ryder. At first everything in our relationship was great, but then little by little I felt as if I were doing the exact same thing over and over again with him.

                He never took me out on dates, never showed up unexpectedly offering flowers and candy. He would cancel plans to hang out with his friends at times; he stopped doing the sweet things that he had done at the beginning of the relationship.

We got too comfortable, that had been our downfall.

“I loved him,” I admitted. “But I wasn’t in love with him.”

Again, I bit my lip, a question forming on the tip of my tongue. In the time that Noah and I had been dating, very little about his past was revealed. It wasn’t because he hadn’t wanted to talk about his past with me it was because I never wanted to know.

I couldn’t get myself to ask about his life before moving here to California. I had already found out so much about his past just with the drug and gang situation that I was afraid that if I asked about his love life back in New York I would find out something that I would hurt me deeply.

For some reason, it hurt to even think about Noah being with another girl. But if I thought he was a saint, then I had serious delusion problems. I knew better than to assume Noah never had a girlfriend back home, or some kind of female companion.

“What are you thinking about?” Noah asked.

“You,” I admitted.

“What about me?”

“Your life back in New York,”

“You know about my life back in New York,” he said.

“No, I know about the gang and drugs back in New York. I don’t know about your love life back there.”

“Is it really important anymore, Fae?” he questioned, “You’re my girlfriend now, here. Who cares about the girls back in New York?”

I remained silent, eyes glued to the ocean waves rolling in and out. He was right. Who cared? I was his girlfriend now. The girls he possibly dated in New York weren’t here and I had no need to worry.

“Besides,” Noah said a while later. “None of the girls I dated have what you have.”

I snorted out a laugh and I felt the corners of my lips twitch upwards, “What’s that, dignity?” I laughed.

“Ha-ha,” Noah retorted. “That’s funny,” he replied sarcastically, “but no I wasn’t going to say that.”

“Then what were you going to say?”

“As cheesy as it sounds,” Noah replied squeezing his arms tighter around me in a comforting kind of way, “None of them ever had my heart.”

“And I do?” I questioned.

“You do,” he whispered, his hot breath hitting the base of my neck before he placed his lips on my cold skin, causing waves of fire to roll down my spine.