Oh, bonus points for him for remembering that she went by her maiden name. I could see that she felt the same way, given how her smile warmed. “I’m doing very well, and please, call me Caroline.”
“These are for you,” he said, offering her the bouquet. “Thank you for inviting me to your home.”
“Thank you! They’re beautiful. I’m going to go put them in water.”
“Maybe I misjudged you,” I whispered to him. “You’re kind of killing it.”
“Never underestimate the movie star,” he whispered back as my mom returned with her flowers in a vase. She placed them in the middle of the dining room table.
“Please, sit down,” she said.
We all took our seats, and my mom offered the pasta to him first. He took it and had just started serving himself when she said, “Oh! Before I forget again, I found something today. Now I know where I recognized you from.” She got up, leaving the room.
Weird. I wondered if she’d looked him up online or something.
He got a text and checked his phone. “Whoops. I forgot to call Kyle back last night, and now I have a thoroughly vetted list of California’s best oncologists.”
“Yeah, we were a little busy,” I said.
“We were,” he said with a sexy smile, and I debated whether or not I could kiss him senseless before my mom came back.
But she returned right then to majorly mom-block me. When I saw her, my smile slipped off my face. My ears started ringing, and my heart stopped beating. Like, literally stopped and then slowly started up again, so slow that I thought I might pass out.
She was carrying my scrapbook. My Felix Morrison scrapbook that I’d kept throughout middle school and half of high school.
This. Was. Not. Happening.
“I’ve been packing up Juliet’s room, and I found this. She spent so much time on this scrapbook. I threatened to take it away from her more than once if she didn’t do better in school and spend less time looking up things to print out.” She was so joyful. She thought she was helping. Doing a good thing.
Not ruining my entire world.
“What’s this?” Noah asked when she placed it in front of me, reaching out to touch it. I wanted to scream, to tell him not to look, to grab it and run away so that he’d never see it. But it was like being trapped in a real-life nightmare. I was paralyzed in place, unable to move, unable to blink, unable to do anything besides just sit there and watch.
Even if I had been able to act, it was already too late. He opened it and I saw the microseconds when his expression changed—from curiosity to confusion to understanding.
His whole visage darkened. His betrayal and pain were etched into his face. “What is this, Juliet?” he demanded.
CHAPTER THIRTY
My mother might not have known exactly what was happening, but she had the good sense to excuse herself, leaving us alone.
“Noah, let me explain—”
“What is this?” he repeated, his teeth clenched together. I’d seen him angry before, but never at me. I didn’t know how to take it.
Even if it was well deserved. “It’s a scrapbook I kept when I was younger.”
“Of me. Of Felix Morrison.” He said the name with disgust. “You told me you didn’t know who I was. The first night we met, you said you’d never heard of me.”
I reached for his hand and tried not to flinch when he jerked it away, out of reach. I had to explain this. To make him see. “I know I did, but I thought you were being arrogant that night. Now I know it was just to protect yourself from what you thought was a crazy stalker fan, but I was so annoyed that I just wanted to knock you down a few pegs. Which I shouldn’t have done and maybe I should have confessed earlier, but what would have happened? You would have walked away from me and never looked back. And I didn’t want to lose you.”
“You used me. You lied to me and then had me help you learn how to kiss.” I wished he would yell instead of utilizing this deadly calm voice he was using and his blank face. “Did you fake your phobia, too? Were you trying to trick me into being with you? Was this some scheme? Was the whole thing a lie?”
“Nothing was a lie. Besides me saying I didn’t know you. Everything else was the truth. A hundred percent. I promise.”
“Your promises don’t mean a whole lot right now.” He stood up, clearly meaning to leave.
I couldn’t let that happen. I grabbed for his wrist, and he stopped only to pull himself from my grasp.
“Please don’t go. We can work this out,” I begged.
“How?” he asked. “I thought I’d found this unicorn—this unexpected woman who was perfect for me and wasn’t blinded by my celebrity. Who didn’t care about the roles I played. Who cared about me. As a man.”
“I can’t say that I don’t care. But I only loved those characters because you were so good at performing them.” I saw immediately that that was the wrong thing to say and tried to fix it. “You are not some character to me. This was never about Felix or Malec for me. I couldn’t care less about what you do for a living. You’re just Noah to me.”
Finally, there was anger. “That isn’t true! There’s a four-inch notebook on your table saying that isn’t true!”
“I’m not the same person I was when I was fifteen. I know there’s a difference between fantasy and reality.”
“I don’t think you do,” he said, his voice back to being cold. “And right now, apparently neither do I.”
He was nearly to the front door when I called out, “You can’t go. I wanted to tell you everything, but I was too scared to. I didn’t want to lose you. I’m begging you. Please don’t do this.” My voice was edged with unshed tears. I was struggling so hard to keep myself in check, to not break down.
His shoulders curved in, and relief shot through me. I thought that was it. That I’d gotten through to him and we would talk about this and I would find a way to make it up to him.
Instead he seemed to shake off my words and without turning around, he said in a low voice, “Don’t call me. Don’t come to my house. I’m done.”
Then he walked out the front door, closing it behind him.
I collapsed onto the floor in a sobbing heap, crying so hard I thought my chest might split open. My throat felt raw, shredded, and my whole body shook with my tears. My heart ached so badly I didn’t know that it would ever beat the same way again. Him shutting me out of his life was what I was most afraid of and it was what had happened.
I’d ruined everything.
Life had to go on, but it was like all the color had been drained from the world. It didn’t help matters that I was living alone. It let me really steep myself in my depression.
Shelby came over the night after he walked out of my mother’s house and just held me while I cried and told her all the ways I had messed up and how I didn’t know how to live without him.
“I’ll tell you how. You get up in the morning and take a shower and keep living your life. You build your business. You find a new roommate. You move on, and hopefully every day it will hurt a little less.”
She never said I told you so, but maybe she should have. Because she’d been right about everything. Again. And I’d lost the person I loved most in the whole world.