Never Mine by Clare Connelly
Chapter 12
“SHE’S ASLEEP.”
Noah expelled a breath as he entered. The house was silent except for Gray, who was sitting in the kitchen with a pot of coffee and a broadsheet newspaper. He was the only person Noah knew who still read actual printed papers rather than subscribing on his tablet.
“I’m glad. I thought she might be too agitated.”
Gray nodded. “The EMS left some sleeping pills for her. I got her to take one an hour ago.”
Noah nodded, moving into the kitchen and withdrawing a coffee mug. He poured himself a measure from Gray’s pot.
“She wanted to wait up for you.”
Noah’s hand tightened imperceptibly on the coffee cup. “Yeah?”
Gray’s eyes locked with Noah’s, a challenge passing from one friend to the other. Noah didn’t look away. Finally, Gray sighed. “Noah, God, you know I think the world of you.”
He braced for what was coming. He knew, and he knew he deserved it.
“But she’s my sister, for chrissakes. Tell me there’s not something going on between the two of you?”
Noah stood perfectly still, his body flowing with electricity. He hadn’t expected such a direct challenge, but that was foolish, because this was Gray and he was nothing if not straight-down-the-line.
“With all due respect, I’m not sure that’s any of your business.”
Gray swore. “She’s my sister,” he repeated. “You’re my best friend, and she’s my sister.”
Something flashed in the pit of Noah’s stomach. Anger. Anger at being made to feel like he’d done something wrong, anger that Gray was pushing him outside of Max’s life, as though Gray belonged but Noah didn’t.
It was abundantly clear Gray was working hard to keep his voice level. “Look, I know Max acts like a ball buster. I know she seems like she’s got everything sorted, like she can handle anything and anyone, but she’s not like that really. Not in every way. She’s gentle and kind and loving and loyal and if you hurt her, so help me God –,”
“I’m not going to hurt her,” Noah interrupted angrily. “I swear to you, I have no intention of doing anything to hurt Max.”
“I saw the way she looked at you. You’re going to break her damned heart, Noah.”
Noah stiffened, disbelief curdling through him. “Her heart is fine.”
“You think you’re just screwing around with her?” Gray pushed back his chair. “I don’t know what’s worse – using her for sex or letting her fall in love with you when you have no intention of sticking around.” Gray thrust his hands onto his hips. “You’re leaving again, aren’t you?”
Noah was on the edge of a cliff, beneath him a ravine so deep there was no hope of jumping and not dying.
Gray slammed his palm against the kitchen bench. “Tell me what the hell is going on.”
“Yes, I’m leaving.” The confirmation burst from him without his foreknowledge.
“And she knows this?”
“I have never been anything but honest with Max.”
“Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to have stopped her from developing feelings for you.” Gray shook his head, his eyes scathing. “How could you do this?”
Guilt rolled through Noah.
“I know what you’re like with women. I get it. You like sex. One night stands. You like to fuck and forget, and that’s fine. What goes on between two consenting adults is none of my damned business, except when one of those adults is my sister. You couldn’t have put your libido on hold for one freaking week?”
Noah’s eyes flashed, his gut clenching at Gray’s implication that what he shared with Max was simply a matter of sex. He couldn’t tell Gray that he’d tried to stop it. He couldn’t admit how hard he’d tried – and failed – to put an end to their attraction. Because, at the end of the day, he’d taken what he wanted from Max, knowing it wouldn’t last. Knowing he’d leave again.
“I’ve always been honest with her,” he said firmly, as though it mattered a damned bit.
“For God’s sake.” Gray slammed his palm against the bench again and this time, the newspaper trembled then fell off the edge. “Do you hear what you’re saying? You’re actually justifying treating my sister like any other woman you pick up in a dive bar at three in the morning?”
Noah flinched. But what could he say about the accusation? Gray was right; he knew Noah too well for Noah to deny any of it.
“I called you here because I needed you. I thought you were the one person I could depend on to look after Max.”
Noah dropped his head forward, the accusation digging right beneath his ribs. Gray was right. Noah had failed him, failed their friendship, and he’d almost failed Max in a way she could have paid for with her life.
“I’ll leave in the morning,” he said quietly.
“You can leave now,” Gray responded tightly. “I’ll explain to Max –,”
“No.” Noah’s voice whipped around the room, his tone short. “I made this mess. I have to be the one to clean it up.”
Their eyes were locked for several beats and then Gray nodded.
He picked up his paper, his wallet and phone, then moved out of the kitchen. At the door, he turned back to Noah. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Noah nodded. It was a sign that Gray would get over this, one day. It was a sign that everything wasn’t ruined. Except it was, and the sooner Noah accepted that, the better. This was a no-win situation.
“What’s that?”Emerging from her room sometime after midday, the last thing a groggy Max had expected to see was a leather overnight bag by the kitchen bench.
Noah moved towards her, dressed in a dark suit, just like he had been the morning they’d met. She smiled at him, relieved, and light-hearted for the first time in a long time. Despite the trauma of the night, she felt like she could breathe again. Her stalker had been caught. Life could and would get back to normal. A new normal, because everything was different now. There was Noah, there was hope, there was something buoyant and joyous inside of her stomach, a feeling of delight that wouldn’t go away.
“My bag.”
“I see that,” she murmured, trying to hold onto that flicker of warmth, to not jump to conclusions. “What’s it doing there?”
“My car’s waiting. I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”
“Leave?” She repeated, her feet stopping where they were, stranding her in the floor in the middle of no man’s land, between the kitchen and the lounge area, between delight and devastation. “What do you mean, leave?”
“My work here is done,” he said, attempting to lighten the mood with a joke. A bad one. It didn’t help.
“Your work,” she repeated, pressing her lips together while she attempted to get her brain to catch up. “But that doesn’t mean you have to leave.” She forced her feet back into action, making her way across to him, pressing her palms to his chest. His arm was in a cast, and the sight of it made her want to kiss him better all over, all afternoon. “Not right away, at least.”
“There’s no need for me to stay,” he said gently, but unmistakably firmly. “DCI Wingrave has matters well in hand. They’ve already charged Baslemore with multiple crimes. He won’t be getting out.” Noah frowned. “And naturally my company will keep an eye on matters through to his conviction. You’re safe, Max.”
Max’s heart stammered in her chest. “I know that. I got the significance of the guy who broke in last night being arrested. I just didn’t think his arrest would mean you’d pack your bags right away.”
He nodded slowly. “I know that.”
So he did feel something? He did understand what she was feeling?
“The thing is, if I stay, things here go from bad to worse, and I don’t want that.”
“What’s bad about what we’re doing?” She demanded, tilting her face up to his so he felt as though he’d been punched hard in the gut.
“It’s not right,” he said slowly. “I’m not the guy for you and never will be. I’ll never really be yours, you’ll never really be mine. But for as long as we fool around, we’re taking a risk that one of us will forget all the reasons this would never work. And I’m not prepared to risk that.”
Her lips parted, confusion in her eyes. “Is it really so hard to imagine a world where we could make a go of this?”
Something like determination fired in his eyes. “Yes.” But he softened the admission by kissing her temple. “God, Max, you are so beautiful, but you know how I feel about relationships, what I want in life.”
“And it’s not me.”
“It’s not anyone. And you want the whole deal, love and romance and happily ever after, stuff I can never give you. I’m not going to waste your time, leading you on, until one day you grow to hate me because of what you could have had if I hadn’t been such a dick, selfishly taking what you’re offering without thinking about your future. This doesn’t work between us. There’s no path we can go down together that leads to the ending you want.”
“I’m not asking you to marry me,” she snapped, stepping back from him, her hurt obvious. He hated seeing that on her features, but even in that moment he knew that it was better to go through the temporary pain of this than it was to lead her on any longer. He’d told her again and again that they were playing with fire and he was right. He just didn’t expect they’d both get burned, even after his warnings.
“I just want to spend a bit more time with you, that’s all. A few more nights. Is that such a terrible idea?”
The razor-sharp temptation tightening in his groin told him exactly what was wrong with that idea. Plus, there was Gray. Noah didn’t mention Max’s brother – it wouldn’t have been fair to draw Gray into this anyway. He’d simply held a mirror up to Noah’s behaviour and made him admit what he already knew.
“And then what? I leave and you don’t care anymore? You think this is going to feel any different in a few days? A week? A month? Leaving you is always going to feel like shit –,”
“So don’t go,” she responded angrily. “Don’t run away from this. Stay and see what happens.”
“I know what happens. I know how this ends. All I’m doing is making us both face the music now, rather than in a month’s time.”
“You’re not making any sense!”
“Yeah, I am. For the first time in a week I’m saying something sensible. I should never have slept with you. It was a gross betrayal of my professional ethics, my friendship with Gray, and despite what we shared, I can’t not regret this, Max.”
Her gasp was like a knife, slicing through his belly.
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t love every goddamned minute,” he growled.
“Every minute of sleeping with me? Is that all this was to you?”
A muscle jerked in his jaw as he clamped his mouth shut, refusing to answer that question – to himself or her.
“And here’s me thinking that we were starting to actually feel something for one another. That just maybe you were waking up and realizing you didn’t want to be such a cynical, lonely jerk.”
He flinched at her accusation and the names she labelled him with.
“I can’t give you more than this.”
“Stop making excuses! I know you, Noah Storm. You are determined, brave, a man who makes his own destiny. You could give me the whole bloody world – if you wanted to. So don’t say you ‘can’t’. Say you ‘don’t want to’. Say you don’t ‘choose’ to. Say you don’t choose me.” She tilted her chin at a defiant angle, her eyes sparkling like emeralds.
In that moment, he would have said or done anything to relieve her pain. He would have promised her the world, just as she’d said, if he hadn’t known that it was just delaying the inevitable, that any pain she felt now was only going to get a thousand times worse with every day they spent together, with every day she grew to hope for more.
It was better to tear off this Band-Aid now, to leave and let her be angry with him. Anger was better than heartbreak. Heartbreak? Did that imply love? Did she love him? No. Not yet. But she might. She was too kind, too generous with herself, to sleep with someone with feeling. He couldn’t allow it. He’d been a selfish bastard to let it get this far.
“I can’t,” he responded firmly, refusing to use her language, refusing to say he didn’t want to. In another world, if he were another man, he would want her with all of his heart. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, go to hell,” she snapped, tears moistening her eyes. She spun away so he wouldn’t see her cry, but it was too late. His gut ached.
He stared at her back, waiting for her to turn around, wanting, more than anything, not to end it like this. But after more than a minute, he understood. She wasn’t going to turn around. She didn’t want to face him. And there was nothing he could say to make this better.
“Goodbye, Max. Take care.”
The heatin New York was oppressive, humid and unrelenting, so just walking from his office to his apartment made Noah feel as though he’d run eight miles. He shouldered his way into the door of his brownstone – a flat conversion in the Village that boasted high ceilings and art deco architecture, as well as mostly retired neighbours who’d been there for what felt like millennia. Noah had got the place on good terms. The other tenants liked having someone like him around to keep an eye on the place, especially as the area had morphed from a sort of eclectic, hippies’ paradise to a boho chic neighbourhood filled with luxe Instagram influencers and movie stars. As the values had gone through the roof so too the tourists and temptation for sticky fingers to wander the place.
As he walked in his front door, he stripped out of his shirt, tossing it through the open bathroom floor to somewhere in the vicinity of the wash basket. It was late in the afternoon, almost evening, the sun low in the sky. Noah appraised the street below him as he always did, as he had every night for the last six nights, since flying back from London. He stared out at the street, tried to reconnect with his life, his normal self, tried to remember who and what he’d been before he met Max.
Then he sat down and picked up the phone, calling his London office for an update. He might be a loner, determined to never fall in love, but that didn’t mean he could put Max Fortescue anything like out of his mind. Nowhere near it.
Max closedout the last mile, stopping with breath burning in her lungs, pressing the button on the side of her watch to pause the exercise recording. “Damn it.” She wiped her brow, the speed slower than the day before, despite the fact that she felt as though she’d run her ass off. She paced the footpath, long strides as she drew in breath after breath, trying to return equilibrium to her harried lungs, lifting her hands to her hair and scooping it into a bun, tucking the ends into the elastic holding her ponytail in place. A door across the street opened and past trauma had her eyes immediately homing in on the movement – she was out of immediate danger but her central nervous system hadn’t quite got the memo.
Edward Walton emerged, and their eyes met for the first time since his arrest. Heat bloomed in her cheeks. She lifted her hand, half-expecting him to ignore her, but he smiled and walked laconically towards her, surprising her by giving her a big bear hug.
“I am so bloody sorry, Max. What a bastard he is. I had no idea. Obviously.”
He pulled away, looking at Max with concern.
She blinked rapidly, his sympathy softening her heart, making her feel a thousand kinds of vulnerable. “You stole my line,” she muttered. “I was about to say sorry to you.”
“What for?”
“Um, the whole ‘you being arrested’ thing,” she reminded him.
“God, don’t even worry about it. It was kind of exciting, actually.”
“Exciting?” she spat, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Sure. I mean, I knew I was innocent, so the whole process was sort of an out of body experience. I had no doubt the truth would come out and I’d be free, so I just sat back and enjoyed the ride.”
“Geez. I wish I could have even a pinch of your perspective.”
“It sounds like you kept a level-head pretty well yourself.”
She grimaced. “Maybe. Have you heard –,”
“Nothing more than you, I’m sure. Sounds like an open shut case. He’ll be locked up a long time.”
She shuddered, even the thought of that something she couldn’t really contemplate.
“Do you –,” she bit down on her lip midway through making the offer.
Edward arched a brow.
“Did you want to come in for a cup of tea?”
“Sure. I’ve got ten minutes.”
It was an innocent, spontaneous invitation, but as she crossed to her gate, past the guard who was part of a five man team that had been watching her house for the last week, and saw the uniform logo on his shirt – Storm Security – she couldn’t help wondering if news of her visitor would filter back to Noah. And how he’d feel about it. If he’d even care. And her heart was racing just as hard and fast as if she were still running, full pelt, towards an ever-changing finishing line.
“Catch!”
Noah lifted a hand as the ball sailed towards him, landing it between two palms.
“You got it!”
His business partner’s son, two years old and made of chubby arms and legs and a big broad grin, ran towards Noah, arms up, reaching for the ball. Noah mimed throwing it and then passed it to the little boy.
“There you go.”
“Again!”
“Sure,” Noah agreed, watching as the little dynamo spun and began to toddle back to where he’d been a moment ago. Turning to Ashton, he lifted his brows. “He’s got quite an arm.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” Ashton mimed rubbing his cheek. “Think he’s headed to play pro football one day.”
The ball sailed through the air, and would have landed hard against Noah’s chest if it weren’t for his quick reactions. He caught it and quickly returned it, pitching it close to the toddler’s feet.
The little boy laughed, and then fell over in his attempts to capture it, laughing uproariously.
Noah turned with Ashton, and began to walk towards the house. “He’s so like you.”
“Yeah, poor kid,” Ashton grinned, with such obvious pride that Noah looked away, a heavy feeling landing hard in his gut.
“How’s Suzie?”
“About eleven months pregnant, if you ask her.”
“Over it?”
“Completely. Not long to go now.”
Noah nodded, happy for his friend, even when he couldn’t get his head around how Ashton had transformed himself into this dedicated family man. It was something he’d wondered over the years, in a casual, curious way, but suddenly, he had to know. It was no longer an abstract concept, but something very real he needed to understand, something he was trying hard to grapple with.
“You and Suzie are happy?”
“I think you pronounced exhausted wrong,” Ashton volleyed back as a ball hit him in the back of the head, but his smile showed the truth of his feelings. He whirled around, gripped Tommy’s little tummy and tossed him into the air, so laughter pealed through the garden.
“You break it, you bought it!” Suzie’s voice sing-songed out of the kitchen windows.
“This one’s too much trouble!” Ashton called back. “Laughs too much and throws balls at my head. Can I get another one?”
Suzie flashed a grin. “No refunds, sorry.”
“I guess I’ll have to keep you,” Ashton mock-sighed, tickling Tommy’s tummy so he backflipped in Ashton’s arms, almost knocking the man in the chin.
Ashton slid him down to the ground. “Okay, young man. Go wash up. Dinner’s almost ready.”
“You stay dinner, Uncle Noah?” Tommy asked in his adorable little voice and halting English.
“Depends. Did your dad cook?”
Tommy frowned. “No. Daddy not cook.”
“Only because I want to keep my family alive,” Ashton grinned.
“Yeah, I’m staying then,” Noah nodded. “See you at the table.” He high-fived the little boy and watched as he made his way up the stairs with a disarming mix of vulnerability and confidence.
When they walked inside, Tommy was just finishing setting the table – or rather laying the cutlery out in a slightly haphazard pattern that Noah pretended not to notice. The meal passed as it always did when they were together – with barely a quiet moment. Noah listened as Suzie and Ashton bantered back and forth, arguing about everything from the right condiment to serve with pot roast to the state of world political affairs, reminding Noah that when Suzie wasn’t a delicious dinner cooking, baby-making super-mum she was also a top lawyer at an international political firm.
Later, alone on the terrace, Ashton fixed Noah with a steady gaze. “What’s going on with you, anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were quiet at dinner. And you asked about Suzie and me before. So, what’s up?”
Noah clenched visibly. “Nothing. I was just curious.”
“Nah, I don’t buy it.”
“You’re different to how you used to be. I never would have picked you as wanting all this.” He gestured to the house, the garden, and the glow of warmth emanating from the windows, a glow that spoke of happy contentment and domesticity.
“I didn’t want it. Not at all. Not until I met Suzie, then it was all I could live for.”
Noah frowned. “Why?” The question was asked with an urgent intensity.
“Jesus Christ, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d met someone.”
Noah was silent.
“But you’re Noah Storm. I know that’s not possible.”
“No.” Noah’s voice was grim. “It’s not possible.”
“Oh, shut the hell up. Who is she?”
“No one.”
Ashton was quiet for a long while, and then he expelled a heavy breath. “All I can say is this: when I met Suze, it was like being struck by lightning. Everything the books tell you, the movies, the songs, all that stuff. But so much more. I just lost myself to her in every way, and I didn’t even care. I would have given up everything I was for her to smile at me, to look at me, to want me like I wanted her. All of a sudden the life I was living, the future I had banked on, seemed completely devoid of substance. Nothing was enough anymore, without Suzie to share it with.”
Noah stiffened, his eyes pinpointing a tree in the distance. “So what did you do?”
“I told her how I felt and prayed like hell she’d feel it back.” He laughed unsteadily. “And now I pray every day I don’t stuff it up somehow.”
Noah gripped the railing tighter, his features a vice-like mask.
“So what are you going to do?”
“This isn’t about me.”
“Isn’t it?”
Noah kept his gaze straight ahead.
“Look, man.” Ashton’s voice was earnest. “You don’t have to tell me what’s on your mind. I get it, you’re a closed book kinda guy. But for as long as I’ve known you, you’ve had this hard shell around you. If you’ve met someone you want to let inside of that, then she must be one hell of a woman. Not the kind of woman you want to let go, right?”
Noah frowned, but didn’t answer.
“I’ll tell you something else I’ve learned – in life, and in our business, the work we do.”
“What’s that?” Noah begrudgingly asked.
“You only get one chance. Don’t stuff it up.”
