She was sure she’d said something to trigger Noah’s bad mood, so she went over their conversation, trying to figure out where it had gone wrong. He’d reacted to her story, but he hadn’t retreated into silence until she’d told him that his change was inspiring her own. Was Noah the type of guy who wanted to hang on to the bad-boy persona, even if he was changing for the better? She was trying to figure out how to fix the problem when Noah slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road.
“What . . . ?” she asked, but then she looked up. Right there in front of them, on the other side of the highway, stood multiple old-school Cadillacs. They were arranged vertically, their hoods partially buried in the ground, and covered in splotches of multi-colored paint.
“Cadillac Ranch,” Noah said, resting his hand on the steering wheel as he turned to face the cars.
She’d heard of it, but had never seen it in person. “I wish I had some paint.”
Noah laughed. “I read about that online, that people just go into the pasture and paint the cars. How about we stop on the way back?”
“You’re not going to dump me by then?”
He swung his head to face her, looking startled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Aren’t you irritated with me? Isn’t that why you’re so cranky?”
“What?” Noah shook his head. “No, I’m not mad at you, Lib. It’s all on me. I’m sorry for being an ass.” He released a long breath. “I’m not going anywhere, okay?”
“Yeah.” She leaned back in the seat with a sigh. No matter how much she wanted to believe him, history had taught her that no man ever stuck around. But to be fair, she’d done her own share of bailing. “Let’s go.”
Noah took a long look at her before he pulled back onto the road. “We’ll paint one when we come back. Unless we go straight to Seattle from Las Vegas. You can help me pick out a new place and then we can fly back to K.C. to get Tortoise and pack your things.”
She wasn’t sure why his suggestion filled her with so much happiness, but the idea of moving to Seattle felt so right. Of course, it was also incredibly dangerous. Now that her lusty feelings for him had made an appearance, she wasn’t sure how well she could hold them back. Seeing Noah for several days every two or three weeks was manageable, but living with him every day . . . How was that going to work? Common sense told her that their relationship was like a carefully constructed house of cards. One wrong move and the entire thing could come crashing down. Was she really willing to risk it?
But the thought of not going filled her with disappointment. When she added it to her disappointment over the curse, her mother, her friends’ blindness to the true nature of her relationship with Mitch—not to mention their own ridiculous happiness, courtesy of the curse—and her inability to finish her photography project, she felt like she was drowning in it. At the moment, moving to Seattle felt like her only lifeline in her sea of loneliness.
It turned out there wasn’t much else to see along I-40. All the fun tourist sites were miles off the highway. Since they didn’t have time to stop, they decided to push through and try to make it to Hoover Dam before sunset. The drive through New Mexico was long and eventless. Noah was still subdued, though he clearly didn’t want to talk about it, and Libby didn’t feel much better. But they’d had so much fun the day before Libby decided to push her negative feelings aside and try to regain some of their lost joy. She made him play several rounds of the Alphabet Game, which instigated a good-natured five-minute argument about the rules.
“Using license plates is cheating,” she insisted.
“Libby.” He spread out his hand and waved it in an arc. “We’re in the middle of the desert. We have to use license plates or this game will last until we reach Las Vegas.”
Next they resorted to keeping track of states on license plates. After Noah found Alaska, he grinned. “This reminds me of the trips my family took when I was a kid.”
Somehow, despite all the time they’d spent together, they’d never delved much into each other’s pasts. She wasn’t proud of her relationship history and she presumed Noah felt the same way about his own. But it felt strange they’d never shared much about their childhoods. “Tell me a story from when you were a kid.”
His eyes lost some of their sparkle. “You mean growing up as Josh McMillan’s big brother.”
The pain in his voice made her suck in her breath. “Noah . . .”
“What?” He glanced at her. “It’s true. He was four years younger than me, but it didn’t take long for me to fall into his shadow. He was like the most perfect child ever born.” He shot her a grin. “But I’d made it easy for him. It couldn’t be too hard to look good in comparison to me.”
“We don’t have to talk about it.” She should have known by now that there was a reason neither one of them had volunteered information about the past, their childhoods included. Libby’s past was full of regrets and betrayals. Why would she want to dredge it all up again? Obviously Noah felt the same way.
He was silent for so long she assumed that was his answer. Then he swallowed, as though he were preparing himself. “No.” He turned to look her in the eye. “I think you should know. I don’t want to keep anything from you, but I need to work up the courage to tell you some of it. Okay?”
She knew he was referring to something other than his childhood now, but damned if she knew what. But he was obviously trying to build a deeper level to their friendship and she wanted that too.
“Yeah.” She gave him a warm smile. “Okay.”
He sighed and sank back into the seat, his left arm gripping the steering wheel. “I was a pretty wild kid. My mom has videos of me literally bouncing on the furniture.”
She laughed. “I believe that.”
“When I was older, I was diagnosed with ADD, but not until grade school. So I went through the first ten years of my life trying so hard to be good, and never succeeding. I just couldn’t pay attention or even remember to behave. Schoolwork was a nightmare. Night after night of me trying to finish my spelling and math homework. My mother was more understanding, but my father . . .” His voice trailed off.
His right hand lay on the seat next to him and Libby covered it with her own.
He took in a deep breath and let it out, keeping his eyes on the road. “My father was a good man. He just didn’t understand me, but Josh . . . Josh, he understood. Josh was like a clone of my father. So when Josh started school—and of course excelled at everything—I think my father slowly disengaged from me.”
“Oh, Noah.”
“But my mother . . .” The affection in his voice warmed her heart. “My mother stood by me, no matter what. Even as I single-handedly fucked up my life in middle school.”
“How could you fuck up your life in middle school?”
He tilted his head and gave her a wry grin. “You didn’t see my grades.”
“You’re obviously intelligent—you graduated from high school early and started college when you were sixteen—so it couldn’t have been that bad. Weren’t you on medication?”