It Started with a Crack by Piper James

Chapter Thirty-Three

Dakota

Afist pounding on the door startled me out of a light sleep, and I flew upright. Rubbing my swollen eyes, I looked around the living room. I was still alone. There’d been some kind of emergency, and Ember was downstairs in the boutique. Had she forgotten her key?

“Open up, Dakota. I need to talk to you.”

Oh, shit.

That was not Ember’s voice. My whole body shuddered as Noah pounded his fist against the wood again.

“Come on. I know you’re in there. I saw your car out front. Please. I can explain.”

“Go away, Noah,” I shouted, righteous indignation filling me. “I don’t want your excuses.”

I didn’t know how he knew I’d caught him red-handed, but it was obvious he did. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have felt the need to hunt me down and plead his case.

But I didn’t want to hear it. I knew what I saw.

“Open this door,” he shouted, “or I’m going to get my power saw off the truck and cut it off the hinges!”

“You wouldn’t dare,” I shouted back, leaping off the couch and taking a few steps toward the door before pulling to a stop.

“Try me,” he shouted, pounding his fist on the wood again.

Stalking forward, I unlocked the door and flung it open. My heart stopped at the sight of him. He was panting, his eyes rolling wildly as his hands clenched and unclenched over and over again. But he didn’t look angry. He looked…panicked. Terrified.

“What do you want, Noah?” I asked, my voice softer and filled with resignation.

“I know what you think you saw,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “Belle told me.”

“Fucking Belle,” I muttered through clenched teeth.

“I didn’t fuck her, Dakota. I swear, I didn’t. Please just let me explain what you saw.”

Against my better judgment, I stepped to the side and allowed him to enter. Closing the door behind him, I moved back to the couch and sat down. He paced in front of me, raking his hand through his hair and rolling his shoulders back a few times.

“I thought she was you,” he said finally.

“Sure,” I said, an ugly laugh bursting through my lips. “I can see how you’d make that mistake. We look exactly alike.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes and pinned me with a hot glare.

“Listen to me, Dakota. Hear what I’m saying. I was working out with my ear buds in when she came in. I hadn’t seen your text, so I wasn’t expecting her, and when she touched my back, I thought you’d come home. I spun around to kiss you. You, Dakota.”

“But it wasn’t me,” I said, my voice as dead as I felt.

“I figured that out pretty quickly,” he said, his expression turning sour. “I apologized for the mistake, and she came onto me. She touched me, which is what I’m assuming you saw.”

I nodded. He stopped pacing and moved forward to squat in front of me.

“If you’d stayed for three more seconds, you would’ve seen me snatch her hand off me. If you’d stayed for ten seconds after that, you would’ve seen me kick her ass out the door, along with the perspective buyers that showed up to see the ranch.”

I watched him, my face hard and unyielding. His hopeful expression fell, and he pushed himself back up to his feet. I stared up at him with narrowed eyes, and he sighed.

“You don’t believe me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, my voice flat.

“How can you say that, Dakota? Of course, it matters! I didn’t betray you. It was all a big misunderstanding!”

He was shouting again, and it took everything within me not to lash back. It didn’t fucking matter. Even if he was innocent in all this, it was only a matter of time before he moved on, for real. I’d been living in a fantasy, and seeing him with that woman burst the bubble, bringing me back to reality.

Noah Perry wasn’t the settling down kind. He never would be.

“I know what kind of man you are. I may have forgotten for a while, but I won’t be making that mistake again.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked, his face incredulous. “What kind of man am I?”

“The kind who likes to sleep with strangers,” I said, cursing the burning sensation that flared up in my sinuses. “The kind who devotes his attention to a woman one minute, then moves on the second a pretty blonde—or two—catches his eye.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he barked. “I don’t even like blondes.”

Liar! my mind screamed, but I didn’t voice the accusation. He didn’t know I’d overheard him with those blondes at the bar, and I wasn’t going to bring it up now. It didn’t matter, anymore. I was done.

“Just go, Noah. It’s over.”

“The hell it is,” he roared, then caught himself and took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. “I made a mistake. I didn’t intentionally hurt you. I never would.”

“You might believe that now,” I said, “but eventually, you will. I always knew I wasn’t enough for you. I don’t think any one woman ever will be.”

“Dakota, please,” he begged, his expression broken. “We can work this out. I don’t want to lose you. Not over this. Not over a simple misunderstanding. I did not sleep with that woman.”

“I believe you,” I said, surprising both of us.

And I did. There was no deceit in his features. Only anguish and desperation.

“You do?” he asked, his eyes filling with hope.

“I do,” I said, then held up a hand when he reached for me. “But it doesn’t change who you are. You might not have fucked someone else today, but you could tomorrow. And I can’t live like that, always wondering when you’ll rip my heart out.”

“So, you’re just going to rip mine out first?” he spat, a myriad of emotions washing over his face before settling on anger.

“Don’t pretend like this means more to you than it does,” I sighed, ignoring the guilt his words created inside me.

“You have no idea what this means to me,” he said, pinning me with a dark look. “And I guess you never will.”

Then he was gone, storming through the door. I flinched as he slammed it behind him, and the silence that followed held a finality I wasn’t ready for, despite my assertion that what we had was over.

The tears I’d been holding back started to fall as I stared at the closed door. It swam in my blurred vision as I realized it was the perfect metaphor for my relationship with Noah.

That door had closed and would never reopen. I’d made sure of that. It was the right thing to do.

But if it was so right, then why did it hurt so fucking much?