How Our Hearts Break: A Novel, page 3
Touching Noah’s beloved Camaro was one thing that could really make him pissed off, and he and Bianca never really got along.
“So, are you feeling better?” She eyed me while we walked through the parking lot toward the entrance door. “Or were you just lying to me while you were moping around, crying over an asshole that wouldn’t know what he had even if you hit him in the face?”
I laughed at her exaggeration, but I would rather she think that I was moping around than that I was lying in my bed, unable to move because the headaches were getting stronger and stronger.
“I’m better, and I wasn’t moping around.”
“Mhm.” She scoffed.
“I really wasn’t. I’ve had a headache from hell for the last two days. I didn’t even go to the rink on Saturday.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. But I saw you-know-who.”
“No.”
“Oh, yes.”
“And?”
“He’d been with Jared. That fucktard pretended that he didn’t know about us not talking, and he asked me where I’ve been.”
“Is he stupid or what?”
“I mean, all of us used to hang out, and now they’re pretending as if I don’t exist.”
“Listen, boo.” She stopped and turned me to her. “I truly hope that all of them get diarrhea during one of their games, but you don’t need them.”
I did need Noah, and he abandoned me when I needed him the most.
“Besides, you have me, you have Riley, and you have your skates and your ice. If Noah and his buddies can’t see what a shining star you are, then they don’t deserve you.”
Her dark brown eyes shone with sincerity, but sometimes it was hard believing those words when that one person you thought would always be by your side, no matter what, decided to abandon you.
I had an amazing life. I had a family that loved me, friends that were always there. Noah wasn’t the only person, but it still hurt like a fucking bitch that I meant so little to him.
“Yeah, you’re—” But I was cut off mid-sentence, when a group I knew all too well caught my attention.
They were just behind us, walking in our direction, obviously going toward the front door of the school.
Out of all five of them walking and laughing, pushing each other, only one person caught my eye. Only one person could ever make my breathing slow down—Noah.
He was already looking at me, and I wondered how it was that we spent the last three months almost never seeing each other, to us seeing each other two times in the last three days. I was so careful, so obvious in avoiding him, and he never sought me out.
Did I expect him to, for the sake of our friendship? I fucking did. But hope was for fools, and I stopped hoping for him to talk to me over a month ago. I texted, I called, I tried to fix what happened, but he was the one that stopped talking to me.
He was the one that would look the other way every time he saw me in the hallway.
He was the one that told everyone that I wasn’t worth it. That one was the one that hurt the most. Maybe if somebody just told me that, I wouldn’t have believed them, but I saw that message with my own eyes.
So yeah, Noah Kincaid could fuck himself, for all I cared.
“Queen B,” Jordan hollered as they came closer to us. Noah still kept looking at me, earning a lifted eyebrow from me and a middle finger. “Whoa, you’re feisty today, Soph.”
“Bite me, Jordan.”
“Gladly, but—” Noah smacked him on the back of his head, scowling at me. “What the fuck, man?”
“Shut your mouth, J.”
Bianca looked from Jordan to Noah and then to me, confusion written all over her face. The confusion lasted for all of a second, when a wicked little smile appeared, and I knew whatever was going to come out of her mouth wouldn’t be good.
“Bianca,” I warned, but I knew it was too late. Whatever it was that she thought was going to bite us all on our asses, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it.
“So, boys.” She grinned and looked at Noah. “We’ve just been talking about an interesting little thing.” Fuck. Me. “Sophie met this guy from college…” You know the sound of brakes screeching on the pavement? My face most probably looked like the driver’s would, a second before stopping at the red light, praying to all saints that he or she didn’t go through the red.
“And we just wondered, since all of you have so much experience with ladies, where should they go?”
“Oooooh, our little Sophie has a date.” It was Jordan that started talking again, while my face went up in flames. I was going to kill her.
No, I was going to buy her a coffee with regular milk, just so that I could watch her lactose intolerant ass run to the toilet.
Motherfucker.
I refused to look anywhere else but at Bianca, who was still grinning like a Cheshire cat.
“You’re what?” It was Noah this time, yet I still hadn’t moved my eyes from B. “Sophie?”
“She’s going on a date, dum-dum.” Bianca answered instead, and I prayed for the ground to open up and swallow me whole. “But he’s in Boston. She’ll be visiting her brother soon, so they figured that it’s much easier to just meet there.”
“Sophie?”
I could feel him even though I couldn’t see him. He radiated heat, and I hated my traitorous heart for beating faster as he came closer.
“Look at me.”
If I looked at him, I would either punch him in the face or start crying. It felt like forever passed since we last stood this close, and the last time, he broke my heart in a thousand pieces, shattering all those good things we built together.
I understood then what Bianca was doing, even without her throwing daggers at me with her eyes, urging me to play along. Noah always had a problem with every single guy I would start liking, or every single guy that would ask me out.
That whole protective brother bullshit escalated that night when I was talking to one of the guys visiting our town, and Noah went ahead and ruined my night.
I pulled myself together and turned toward him, taking a step backward when I noticed how close we stood to each other. “Yes, Noah?” I thanked whatever was out there for how steady my voice sounded, curling my fingers into a fist.
“You’re going on a date? In Boston?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“The hell it’s not!”
“Lower your fucking voice,” I seethed. “It stopped being your business the moment you decided that you didn’t want to be friends anymore.”
“Sophie—”
“And yes, I am going on a date. And yes, it is in Boston, far away from here, far away from you and all your goons that would no doubt show up and ruin my night. Because that’s what you do best, Noah, isn’t it? Ruin my nights.” I looked at Bianca and took another step away from him. “Let’s go. I still need to catch Ms. Fiore to ask about that new assignment.”
My hands shook as we walked away from them. I felt hopeful that maybe, just maybe, that silly crush I had on him was finally going away. We didn’t manage to go too far, when he wrapped his hand around my upper arm and turned me toward him.
“Don’t walk away from me.”
“You walked away from me first.” I shook him off and moved farther, seething. How dare he. How dare he come back like this, to start talking to me when he did nothing but hurt me. “What do you want, Noah? It’s Monday. It’s too early and I still haven’t had my morning coffee. Standing here, talking to you, is doing nothing but increasing this already annoying headache.”
“You have a headache?” I hated, fucking hated, the concerned look on his face.
“Cut the crap, buddy. What. Do. You. Want?”
He moved his weight from one leg to the other, looking at me as if he couldn’t quite figure me out. And maybe he couldn’t. The Sophie he knew was the Sophie that was never coming back.
“We need to talk,” he almost whispered. “Please.”
I scoffed and wrapped my arms around myself. “Wasn’t that the same sentence I said to you almost three months ago?”
“Sophie—”
“Yet, you completely ignored me, deciding that I wasn’t good enough to hang out with you.”
“Please. I was an idiot.”
“Yeah, you were. But guess what, Noah? The time for talking was three months ago. This, now,” I pointed between him and me, “is just two strangers who used to know each other. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to see you, and I don’t want you to look for me. It was nice knowing you, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re just my neighbor. I pray that after we finish school this year, I won’t have to see you ever again.”
“Sophie, please.” Goddammit, heart. God-fucking-dammit.
I hated seeing the sorrow and pain in his eyes. I hated hearing those words and seeing how sorry he truly was. But he fucked us up. It wasn’t me.
I had no idea why. I just knew that one day he woke up and decided to stop being my friend, and now that I was slowly getting used to life without him in it, he decided to come back to me.
I wasn’t raised to be a doormat, no matter how much I loved the other person. I loved him with every single pore in my body, but sometimes… Sometimes love wasn’t enough, and we just grew up to be completely different people.
“Don’t worry, Noah. I’m not angry at you anymore. I will always love you, but this version of you is not the one I want to have in my life. I just… I’m done playing this game. I’m choosing me.”
I wasn’t going to let him hurt me again. I already had enough problems without Noah Kincaid being another one.
“Bye, Noah.”
I turned around, leaving him there, while a thousand emotions transpired on his face. Bianca looked like she wanted to high five me, but it would have to wait until we got inside. It would have to wait until I broke apart again, and I didn’t want Noah to see it happen.
“Come on, B,” I urged her. “I really need to get away from here.”
She hugged me and started walking, through the main entrance and all the way to the place beneath the stairs in the North Wing, where I finally allowed my tears to come.
“I hate him,” I sobbed. “I hate him so fucking much.”
“I know, babe.” She hugged me, dragging her hand down my hair. “I hate him too.”
4
NOAH
Some stories were better left untold, and ours was one of them.
I could still remember the first day I met Sophie. I didn’t remember the clothes I wore or what my mom made for breakfast, but I remembered her. I could never explain the feeling when my heart started beating faster at the sight of a petite girl, standing in the middle of the backyard of the kindergarten, washed in the afternoon sun, her golden hair glowing even brighter, rendering me speechless.
She looked as lost as I felt, and something… something told me to go and talk to her. Something pushed me in her direction. As I approached her, the most brilliant smile spread across her face, her eyes twinkling, two pigtails on her head bouncing when she moved her head from side to side. Nothing ever felt as good as her hand in mine. Nothing ever came close.
When she asked her mom to enroll her in figure skating classes held at the local sports center, I asked mine if I could start playing hockey, so that I would feel closer to her. After that first day, when my feet clad in skates I didn’t know how to use hit the ice, I knew one thing—I found my one love thanks to her.
She was always there, on the sidelines, cheering for me, yelling and jumping, always, always with a smile on her face.
And now I’d lost her.
I’d lost the best thing I ever had, because I didn’t want to admit to myself what was clear to everybody else around me. I was in love with Sophie Anderson, probably have been from that first moment I saw her. I was a jealous prick who couldn’t stand seeing another guy talking to her, touching her, and making her laugh.
I couldn’t stand to see his hands on her. Before those first words even left my mouth, I knew I was going to regret it for as long as I lived.
Three months, five days, and I didn’t even know how many hours, but the image of her tear-stained face was etched into my mind as clear as day, and it was all my fault. I couldn’t blame other people for what I said. I couldn’t blame that guy for trying to win her over, because if I were him, if I were just a little bit braver, I would’ve done the same thing.
The moment she exited her house that night, wearing black, high-rise, skintight pants, her favorite Doc Martens boots, and a crop top sweater that revealed her stomach every time she stretched her arms above her head, I knew I was going to get into trouble. Instead of going to that motherfucking carnival, I should’ve taken her behind our houses, to our spot beneath that willow tree, keeping her with me. I should’ve taken her hand in mine and looked into her eyes until she finally realized what I felt for her.
I didn’t want to destroy our friendship, and somehow by letting the jealousy eat me alive, I did just that—I destroyed us. Seeing her from a distance, watching her laugh and smile, watching her talk to other people when she wasn’t mine anymore, it all ate me alive.
Wasn’t it fucked up that we spent our entire lives already having everything we ever needed, yet we never saw it until we lost those things?
My words from that night kept bouncing back and forth in my mind, eating me alive, while I cursed myself for saying those things to her. I should’ve kept my mouth shut. I should’ve told her how much I loved her, how much I wanted her to be mine.
I should’ve told her that every time my lips landed on her cheek, I wished that I had enough courage and enough strength to just move them a couple of inches to the side, so that they would land right on top of hers.
I should’ve told her that she was my shining star, my past, present, and future. I should’ve groveled, begged, cried if needed, all so that she would look at me with the same adoration and love once again.
But as I stood here in the empty parking lot, waiting to see when she would emerge from the school, I knew that all those were just a lot of should-haves and none of them mattered when I never told them to her, and kept them to myself.
I’d spent years hoping that maybe, just maybe, she would be able to see through me and my act, because I didn’t know how to tell her how I felt. I could say all these things a million times in my head, but words often failed me. Instead of just telling her that seeing her with that guy felt as if somebody pierced my heart with an arrow, I uttered the foulest words, putting that look of sadness and desperation on her face.
I couldn’t remember my life before her, but I knew that the last three months felt like an eternity without her next to me.
Every single one of my good memories was somehow connected to her. I could lie to myself. I could lie to the entire world, but the truth always laid in the depths of my heart that always beat only for her and nobody else.
I just hoped I wasn’t too late.
She managed to avoid me today, just like she did every single other day since we stopped talking, since I stopped responding to her texts, her calls and knocking on the door. And every single time her name appeared on the screen of my phone, my lungs seized, my throat closed, and the pain I had never felt before started spreading somewhere from the center of my chest, through my veins, all the way to the tips of my fingers, like poison.
I looked up at the sky, the gray color decorated with white clouds resembling the sky from that day when I fucked us up. Beginning of March always felt more like winter than the near beginning of spring, and I buried my hands deeper into my pockets, trying to warm myself up.
The front door of our school suddenly flew open, the first students slowly trickling out with the cacophony of voices gradually filling the parking lot. But not a single one of them was her.
I was starting to lose hope, the dread dropping into my stomach, when her familiar blonde hair finally appeared on the steps, her eyes looking more tired than they did this morning.
Despite the cold, despite the violent air slamming into me from left and right, I felt warm, heated up, my blood singing, recognizing her for what she was.
Mine.
She was always mine, from that first moment when we were just kids, and I was an idiot for waiting this long to try and claim her. I should’ve done it years ago. I should’ve taken what always belonged to me.
She marked me on that first day, and I wasn’t the same ever since. She stole my heart. She stole my memories, and no matter what, I would never want them back. If I had anything to say, she would never belong to anybody else.
I didn’t care how many years it took, but Sophie Anderson would one day be Sophie Kincaid—my wife, my light, and my life.
She lifted her head at the same time as I strode toward her. Pinching her eyebrows together, a less-than-pleasant look passed over her face. “What do you want, Noah?”
“I told you already,” I answered, trying to calm my racing heart. “To talk. To explain.”
“Yeah,” she murmured, lifting the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder. “And I told you as well—I am not interested.”
I fucking hated myself for putting that look on her face—indifference. I hated that the smile and shining eyes were not directed at me anymore, that a whole world of pain reflected in her eyes. I fucking hated that she just passed next to me, heading toward the parking lot, without turning to look back at me.
Once upon a time, she told me I was a stubborn bastard who would do everything to get the things he wanted, and she was right. Only difference was—this time, it was her.
I ran after her, falling into step right next to her, earning another scowl from her.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Following you, of course.” I grinned. “I figured since you don’t wanna talk to me, I’ll follow you.”
