— Chapter 38 —

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I fell asleep that night with my phone in my hands.

Everything that had occurred in the short timeframe of a few hours had managed to leave me dazed.

Between the worry and the anxious thoughts, I couldn't even remember how I'd gotten home. It felt like one second I was standing in the parking lot of Joe's, and the next I was just... sitting on the couch back in our apartment.

I'd stayed up well into the early morning, pacing back and forth in the living room while trying desperately to make sense of it all.

Noah had been arrested.

He chose to go after whoever was racing tonight, and managed to make it back in one piece... or slightly less of one piece. There was still a gnarly gash hemorrhaging blood at his side. I just hoped his decision to avoid stitching it up wouldn't cost him later on.

The thought of Noah bearing a near-fatal wound like that terrified me to the deepest depths of my being. Wherever he was right now, he was bleeding out. Slowly but surely.

And nobody could help him.

What was he thinking?

There were so many more questions than answers. Why had he chosen to go after them in that kind of weather? Why was Marcus with him? Who were the other two riders? How did he manage to get shot? How wasn't he dead?

They never seemed to end.

I just didn't want to fall asleep.

Part of me had been determined to stay up, just to avoid the chance of him calling me while I was sleeping. The eerie silence of the apartment in Noah's absence managed to help with that, at least.

But even after the first few rays of sunlight had twinkled in through the curtains, there was nothing new in my phone.

No calls. No messages.

Nothing from Noah.

Eventually, I couldn't help it anymore. The heaviness in my eyelids had overcome any resolve I had left to stay awake.

Passing out on the couch, I'd been tired enough to sleep through most of the day. I don't think I'd ever been so exhausted in my life.

It was late in the afternoon by the time I'd jerked myself awake, panic coursing through my veins.

Panic, not because of the relentless nightmare that had been plaguing my mind during my sleep, but because I hadn't checked my phone in hours.

How long did I pass out for? I thought, quickly fumbling for my phone. Stupid, stupid, stupid, Elliot. He gave you one job!

It couldn't have been any earlier than five in the evening—and the apartment was still empty. Noah hadn't come home.

The phone in my hands blared ',' and three labels that only made me more confused.

But that doesn't make any sense. Was he still at the police station?

After a few minutes of trying to figure it out, I heard a heavy knock at the front door.

The very sound made relief wash over me like a flood.

Noah, I thought, all too eager to see him as I practically leaped off the couch. He's back.

Tripping over my own feet—which were still numb from sleep—I got to the door as quickly as my jelly legs could allow. Though, once I turned the silver handle and let in the sight of whatever was on the other side, all my excitement crumbled to dust.

It wasn't Noah.

No, it definitely wasn't Noah.

It was raven black hair. Cold, obsidian irises. Expensive clothes. And an expression that told me nothing.

I caught my reflection in the gleam that crossed the visitor's feline-like eyes. He looked... almost surprised.

"Elliot," he uttered.

My heart sank in my chest. James.

I stammered in alarm, "What—what the hell are you doing here?"

James was a few inches taller than six feet, but his height felt colossal over me at that moment. He stood tall, chin held high, looking down on me. In comparison, I was small and inferior, staring with my eyes wide and my muscles completely tensed.

"I've been trying to find you all day," he admitted. "I called, but... you must have changed your number."

That didn't answer my question whatsoever.

I rasped, "How did you find me here?"

First the bar, now my apartment.

"I went by your house," James muttered. "Nobody was home, so I called Riv. He told me where you were staying."

And the hits just kept on coming.

Looking back at James, I choked, "You went to my house?"

"Like I said. Nobody was home," he repeated. Tracing an unreadable gaze over his surroundings, he pointed out plainly, "I see you moved out while I've been gone."

It all felt so surreal.

Five years I hadn't seen James, and now he was standing right at my goddamn doorstep. I didn't even get time to process.

Pushing the door further open, James said, "I think the two of us have a lot to talk about."

"I didn't say you could come in."

He just moved past me and continued to walk in on his own accord, unbothered. "I didn't ask."

"James!" I yelled.

He swiveled right around to face me.

"What, Elliot?" He yelled right back, catching me entirely off-guard. "Are you pissed off? Huh?"

I clamped my jaw shut.

"Then I guess now you know how it feels," he scowled. "You've been doing nothing but avoiding me. At Angela's party, down at the bar—and quite frankly, you're just being melodramatic. Grow up so we can deal with this like adults because I'm growing tired of dealing with your tantrums."

I was too stunned by his words to even move. Shutting the door behind us, James shoved his hands in his pockets and rested a flat glare on my figure. There was a cut on his cheek from where I'd punched him.

"Do you have any idea how insulting this is?" I began. "You can't just show up here unannounced! Especially after how you left things!"

"You want to talk about insulting, Elliot?" He scoffed. "Oh, that's rich. Really."

"I—"

"No," James cut me off. "What's insulting is taking flowers from someone's grave. What's insulting is mocking someone's grief for a person just because of your own petty frustrations."

His words had rendered the room around me entirely devoid of air.

"You had no right!" James continued, his voice reverberating through the apartment. "Do you have any idea how disrespectful you were, Elliot? Or are you only capable of thinking about yourself?"

Feeling heat brimming my eyes, I forced out, "I wasn't trying to—that's not why—I didn't mean it like that."

"Oh, you didn't?"

"You haven't been around in years," I stammered. "You barely said a word about my Mom after she passed and now you suddenly feel grief?"

"You have no idea what she helped me through, Elliot! You can't judge my sympathy from your own perspective and disregard mine!"

"If you really cared, why didn't you come back to Boston sooner?" I countered, desperately resisting the urge to break down. "Why did you wait until now to come make a point of it? Tell me, James, because I just—I can't..."

I had to take a deep breath to compose myself.

"All this time you've been gone..." I coughed, noticing the heat in my face. "All this time, and you never once bothered to call... I thought if you didn't love me, then at least you would care enough to do that, but you never did. You couldn't even do me the favor of telling me why you left."

His silence prompted me to continue.

I laughed pitifully at myself and choked out, "But you know what the really sad part is? Even after all this time, I've had to wake up every morning and convince myself that it was all somehow my fault... that I did something wrong. That I deserved that kind of pain from you."

James turned on his heel and snapped at me. "You think that's why I left? Because I didn't love you?"

"How was I supposed to know the reason, James?"

"If you think that I threw everything away after all we went through together, then you're an idiot," he said. "Why on earth would you think I didn't care about you?"

"Because you left me."

All this time I'd been trying to hold my emotions back, but the cracks in the damn had finally become too much to bear weight.

And I broke down, letting the hot tears burn down my cheeks.

"You left me!" I cried out, suddenly feeling his hands on my arms. "You left! Out of everyone, you were the one person who was never meant to leave and you did!"

Thrashing in his grip, I yelled through my tears. "Why didn't you care enough to stay?"

Trying to restrain me, James said, "Calm down."

"Don't tell me to calm down!" I lashed out. Thumping the flat sides of my fists against his chest, I was too blinded by my frustration to think through my actions.

I ended up shoving him far enough back that he pulled me with him. Only he wasn't the one who fell.

Tripping over my toes, I found my butt colliding hard with the timber flooring.

James held me tightly by the arm, which lightened the impact slightly, but it didn't change the fact that I was now on the ground.

He'd broken me enough tonight. I just wanted him to leave.

"Elliot, calm down!"

Struggling in his grasp, I watched in anger as he resorted to climbing on top of me, straddling my waist in an attempt to contain my flailing limbs.

So I rather effectively bitch-slapped him across the face.

His head flinched backward at the impact, the sound of the slap echoing in my ears. But fear filled my bones as his harrowing eyes slowly came to rest down on my figure beneath me.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" He hissed.

I scoffed.

"Oh, are you mad?" I asked him. "Are you mad, James? Angry, even? Because I'm pissed too! I'm angry that you think I want to hear anything you have to say after how you left things with me! I'm angry you chose to show up uninvited to where I work and push me to the point of having to fight you in front of everyone! I'm angry that you're at our apartment, once again showing up unannounced and refusing to leave me alone! I'm fucking angry, James!"

"You're embarrassing yourself!" He shouted harshly. "You think you're angry? You're the one who won't give me a chance to explain myself! You're the one who decided to punch me in a crowded parking lot! You're the one who's making this ten times worse than it has to be!"

"Get off me!"

"Are you serious, Elliot?" He continued. I could hardly hear my thoughts over his yelling. "You think I would throw away everything we had just like that? Because I didn't love you? Is that really how little faith you have in me?"

"You did throw away everything we had! You picked up your stuff and you left!"

Pinning my thrashing wrists together, he snapped, "I left for your own good!"

For my own good?

I hesitated.

Trying to escape his grip, I forced words out of my lips. "You think leaving me on my own was for my own good? You think deserting me, breaking my trust, and taking my heart with you was good for me?"

"You think it wasn't that way for me?"

"The difference between you and I is that I never would have left you."

James shook his head. "There are reasons for everything I did!"

"Then explain them to me!" I cried, tears streaming down the sides of my face while the back of my head hit the ground. "What was so important that you decided I wasn't worth it anymore?"

"You could never understand."

Weakening at his words, I stopped thrashing and dropped my hands down to the ground. James was still hovering above me, knees on the ground at either sides of my waist.

I couldn't do this anymore.

Choking on air, I sobbed quietly and looked away from him. "You're a liar."

James took a grip on my chin and forced me to face him. His eyes bore all the frustration he was trying so desperately to keep at bay.

"Don't ever say that again," he warned me, with a tone that I could only describe as deadly. "I'm many things, but a liar is not one of them. I've never been dishonest with you, Elliot. Not once."

I sucked in a long, shaky breath as his words.

So I asked in a whisper, "Why did you come back?"

James pursed his lips.

Then, after a few painful moments, he finally confessed the answer. "I didn't come back for you."

What?

James noticed that my gaze had widened and took it upon himself to explain. "Jayden is getting married next month. I'm in Boston for his wedding."

Jayden. The name was familiar.

"Your brother?" I muttered, finally remembering.

James nodded. "And my father happens to be running for mayor... so I can't say I'm not interested in witnessing that shitshow unfold."

I had to focus hard to recall the memories I had of James's father. His name was Tanjiro, if I remembered correctly. He was about my height the last time James was in town, with a short, black beard and deep wrinkles around his eyes. I didn't think he ever went anywhere without a tailored suit on.

Now that I thought about it, I had seen something about his campaign on the news a while ago.

I said with a solemn tone, "But I thought you were emancipated from him?"

"I am," he muttered. "We might not be tied to each other on paper, but as usual, if my father pulls a string then the rest of us have to follow."

A heavy breath left my nose.

James's father was... a tyrant. James never told me the story in its entirety, but from what I knew, he spent every hour of the day until he turned sixteen under lock and key, in the strict control of his father. No friends. No freedom. Nothing in his childhood that would give him joy.

It was like living in a prison—until James finally ran away from home and went through the hell of getting himself emancipated. That was around the same time that the two of us had met each other.

I bit the side of my cheek and unclenched my fists. James hadn't come back for me after all.

I didn't know how to feel.

"You said 'our' before," James spoke up.

My focus narrowed on his emotionless expression. "What?"

"Earlier," he specified. "You said this was our apartment. What did you mean by that?"

I bit my tongue, remembering that I was roommates with a biker who definitely wouldn't be pleased to know that my ex had waltzed into the place uninvited.

"The guy whose motorcycle you left on at the bar," James figured out, putting the pieces together. "This is his apartment, isn't it? You're living with him?"

I huffed, "What's it to you?"

A spiteful frown graced his lips. "What were you thinking? Why the hell would you choose to live with someone like that?"

"He was there for me at a time when you weren't."

James let in a long inhale and let out an even longer exhale. His observant eyes never once lifted off my figure, as if trying to read my thoughts.

There was a gleam in his eyes. Surprise, maybe? No, annoyance... humor? But there was some kind of condescending pull on his lips.

"He fucked you, didn't he?"

The question made me cough in alarm, eyes shooting wide open.

"No!" I snapped. "What? No, he—we haven't done anything like that. Please don't tell me who I should and shouldn't spend my time with."

Persistent, he pointed out, "But he's done something. I saw the way you looked at him back that bar."

"I-It's none of your business."

"So what, then?" He scoffed, shaking out the back of his hair in disbelief. "I leave, and you decide to whore yourself out to the first person willing to give you attention?"

Fury boiled in my veins.

"Fuck you," I spat, noticing the trembling in my fingers. "I can't believe you're acting jealous after you chose to ghost me."

James chuckled at my reply, a smooth rumble of genuine laughter filling the air. "I have better things to do than waste my time on things like jealousy."

My face heated into a deep shade of red, but I couldn't tell if it was out of anger or from my own deep embarrassment.

He turned down and gave me a simple glance.

"Get your own place, Elliot," he said. "Hanging with a guy like that will only get you in trouble."

I grumbled bitterly, "Not everyone can afford a fancy sports car and a nice apartment like you can. Some of us have to make do with what we've got."

"And you've got a motorcycle thug?"

"Don't talk about him like that," I said. "Like you know everything there is to know about him—you don't."

"And you do?"

My nostrils flared with a frustrated exhale.

Almost as if he were amused by the action, James tilted his head slightly, causing his perfect strands of hair to fall messily over his forehead. A simple half-smile graced his alluring lips.

"Oh," he said, trying to hold back his mean smirk. "I see what's going on here."

I forced out, "What, James?"

He shrugged, cruel humor in his expression.

Taunting me, he asked simply, "You like that street rat, don't you?"

I wanted to be buried alive. Is it that obvious? I thought, feeling a sudden urge to die.

James had always been so cleverly perceptive. Even as a teenager, he'd had a weird gift of being hyperaware of his surroundings and the people around him. Why was he so capable of figuring me out faster than I could figure out myself?

He added, "You can try and hide it all you want, but you never did have the best poker face, Tiny."

"Y-You don't know what you're talking about."

"So you do, don't you?" James laughed, contorting his face into a mean smirk. "Aw, innocent little Elliot Taylor wants to be lovey-dovey with a big, bad, biker?"

"Shut up!"

Struggling to get him off me, James only scowled at me and deflected my attempts to swat him away. He continued to provoke me and jeered, "Is that cheap thug your boyfriend?"

I croaked back, "He has a name."

Everything James had said to me tonight had managed to cut deep.

"Believe me, I've heard," James shook his head. "Edge, right? That's what people call him? How ridiculous. You're really entertained by that?"

Pathetically, I rasped, "Stop it."

"Stop what?" He asked. "You're the one who wanted me to tell the truth, Elliot, and here it is: you're delusional if you think he could ever have any interest in you."

"You don't know anything," I stumbled. "You don't know what he's done for me."

"I know that you're wasting your time," James shrugged. "You're smarter than that, Elliot."

Adjusting the cuffs to his shirt, he gave me a simple look and continued. "Whatever you think you have going on with him... it's just temporary. He's bored, and he's experimenting."

Part of me hoped to god that he was wrong. That Noah, who'd done more for me in the last month than anyone had in years, actually saw me as someone he wanted in his life.

But part of me also knew that it was all too possible for James to be right.