“No!” I said. “I’m not letting you in. You lied to me.”
“Lied to you? About what?”
“About everything!” I said.
“Charlotte, can you please open the door so we can talk about this like adults?”
“No! I’m not letting you in here. You’re a murderer.” I said the words out loud, half because I meant them, half because I wanted to hurt him the way he’d hurt me.
“We’re back to that again, are we?” He didn’t sound hurt. He sounded irritated. Which let me know his walls were back up – earlier, back at his apartment, when he’d been fucking me, trusting him had been the most important thing to him, the thing that had brought us closer together. Now he sounded like he couldn’t care less if I trusted him or not.
And even though I should have been expecting it, even though I’d told him to leave, even though I’d decided he was dangerous and I should have nothing to do with him, it hurt.
It hurt so bad it was like a physical force, almost like I’d had the wind knocked out of me. My legs suddenly felt like jell-o, and I leaned against the front door for support.
“Please,” I said softly. “Please, just go away.”
“Charlotte,” Noah said, his voice firm and commanding. “Open the door.”
It was like I was on autopilot, reaching out and turning the lock, letting him in before I even realized what I was doing.
And then he was standing there, looking so sexy it took my breath away. He was wearing perfectly cut jeans and a soft-looking navy blue sweater that brought out his eyes and hugged his broad chest and cut biceps.
“Finally,” he said, sounding impatient. His eyes raked up my body, taking in my short shorts and tank top. I became aware of the fact that I wasn’t wearing a bra and that my nipples were hard under the thin material.
Noah became aware of it too, his mouth twitching into a knowing grin. “Were you expecting me?” he asked.
“No.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Are you sure?” He reached out and grabbed my arms, pulled them down to my sides so he could see my body.
Our eyes locked on each other, and I felt like I was falling. He was pulling me in, pulling me under, like quicksand. I knew it was wrong, I knew I shouldn’t feel this way, but I couldn’t stop it. It was a force, one more powerful than I had the strength to fight.
Snap out of it, Charlotte.
I wrenched my arms out of his grasp.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“To explain.”
“So do it.” There was nothing he could say to explain, and I knew that, but I couldn’t help but feel a flicker of hope. It burned inside of me, a tiny little flame, looking for anything it could grab onto.
Noah glanced over my shoulder into the apartment. “Can I come in?”
“Are you serious?”
He didn’t answer, just looked at me and sighed. “Yes, Charlotte, I am very serious. Are we going to talk, or are you going to stand there and be mad at me all night?”
“I’m going to stand here and be mad at you until you give me a reason not to.”
“Then let me in so I can explain.”
“You can explain from out there.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Then I guess you can’t explain.” I went to shut the door on him, but he held his hand out and stopped it.
“Fine,” he said. “Come out with me.”
“Come out with you?”
“Yes, Charlotte, let me take you to dinner. You obviously don’t trust me to be alone with you in your apartment, so let me take you to a public place.”
I paused, considering. A public place wouldn’t be so bad. What could Noah really do in a restaurant? He couldn’t hurt me. And if he tried to pull any of that sex bullshit on me, he wouldn’t be able to, not with other people around.
And as much as I didn’t want to admit it to myself, I did want to hear what he had to say.
“Fine,” I said. “Just let me get dressed.”
He smiled, the smile of a man who’d gotten his way. “Take your time.”
I refused to get into his car with him, and he refused to let me pick a restaurant close to my apartment, so we ended up on the subway. I thought Noah would be uncomfortable on the subway, after being driven around in limos and town cars all the time, but it was the opposite. He seemed at ease, even when a homeless man approached us and asked for money.
Noah reached into his wallet and pulled out a one hundred dollar bill and slipped it into the man’s cup. The man’s cheeks flushed and his face lit up and he grabbed Noah’s hand, pumping it up and down.
“Thank you, thank you,” he kept saying. “Now I won’t go hungry, thank you.”
“Aren’t you afraid he’s going to buy drugs?” I asked once the man was out of earshot. “Or alcohol?”
Noah shrugged. “What he does with it is his business. And if he’s so strung out that he needs to panhandle for alcohol or drugs, well, then he’s in a much worse position than I am.”
I paused, considering. I’d never thought of it that way. The way Noah had said it, with such conviction, and the way he seemed at home on the subway, when I’d have thought someone so rich and powerful would have been at least a little bit uncomfortable, made me wonder about Noah’s background.
What had his life been like, growing up? Did he know what it was like to go without? Was that why he’d been so nice to that man?
The fact that I wanted to know drove me insane, and by the time we got off the subway I’d worked myself back into a frenzy of hating him, resenting him, and wishing we’d never met.
When we got to the restaurant, a fancy-looking place called FUZE, Noah opened the door and led me to a table in the back, nodding to the hostess, a beautiful Brazilian woman with long curly dark hair and a tight maroon dress, as we passed by.
She nodded back at him, apparently not concerned at all that Noah was seating himself.
“Regular here?” I grumbled to him.
“Yes.”
“What did you do to get such perks?” I asked as he pulled out a chair at a table in a secluded section in the back. It was set with a crisp black tablecloth and ivory plates etched in turquoise and gold. Wine glasses and elegant water goblets sat at each setting, along with shiny silver flatware.
“Perks?”
“Yes,” I said, taking the chair from him and pulling it out myself before sitting down. “You must have done something to be allowed such liberties.”
“Are you asking if I’ve slept with that woman, Charlotte?”
“No,” I said. “And if I was, it wouldn’t matter. Because I wouldn’t believe whatever you said.”
He sighed. “Are you referring to the pictures of Katie that you found in my office?”
“Oh, those,” I said, laughing sarcastically as I picked up my napkin and set it in my lap. I had no intention of eating – I wasn’t going to be here long enough for that – but I needed something to do with my hands. “I’d almost forgotten about that, what with all the other things I found out you’ve been hiding.”
Before he could answer, a waiter wearing a crisp white shirt and tailored black pants appeared at our table.