Page 133 of Beauty
Without a word, he pulls out a bill and slaps it onto the table. “I’m done with the games if you are.”
I blink at him, confused, then eye the cash. When I notice the familiar writing, my mouth goes dry.
It seems impossible, but there, with a little heart over thei, is my name.
Sienna 508-574-6824.
My heart starts and stops again.
“You found it.”
FORTY-ONE
SIENNA
“How long?”I whisper. It’s taken me close to thirty minutes to get my wits about me enough to ask. Though for most of that time, I dedicated my attention to getting out of that club. This dollar bill and this relationship have no business being in that space.
I’ve been silent, processing, the whole way home. But now, as the Uber driver stops in front of our building, I can’t stay quiet any longer.
I hold the dollar bill out, my fingers trembling. I still can’t believe he found it. And I can’t get over the bright and bubbly writing. The little heart over theiin my name. The extra message, my plea to Noah. I was so full of hope then. I truly believed that he would find it again.
Part of me wants to scoff at the naïveté of that young woman. Yet I’m holding the proof that she wasn’t so wrong.ThatSienna wasn’t a hopeless romantic. She was a believer.
The dollar is worn like it went through hell and back to get here, and god, do I feel the same. Yet it’s been smoothed out, the corners flattened. As if it’s been cared for. As if Noah hascherished it every moment since he found it. Treated it as his most prized possession.
Noah swallows, his throat bobbing. “Thank you.” He nods to the driver, then grasps my hand. “Inside.”
My instinct is to bristle at his brush-off, but I backtrack as he lowers his head and fixes those blue eyes, so full of emotion, on me.
“Please,” he says. “I would rather be in private.”
I’m not sure being alone with him is the wisest choice, yet I can’t really throw a fit and refuse to get out of the car either. So I let him help me out.
The moment the elevator doors close and the car ascends, I turn on him. “Talk.”
Rather than tense up, his body physically settles. “It was the day I found out you’d been hired as the new CEO.”
I rear back. “What?”
He nods, his lips twisting.
“How the hell is that possible?”
He grins and eases his hands into his pockets. “Another happy coincidence?”
I don’t smile back. I can’t. This can’t be real. It’s too far-fetched. “No, that’s…”
Noah’s expression sobers. “Tell me about it.”
“But how?”
“Aiden wanted a soda.”
I cough out a laugh. “What?”
“Daniel and Hannah wanted matching tattoos, so they dragged the whole group of us to the shop with them. And I—” He shakes his head and rolls his shoulders. “I have no idea why they insisted I come. But all the guys were there. Brooks mentioned that you were taking over the hockey division, and I spiraled?—”
“Because it meant I’d finally figure out who you were, and you didn’t want that?” The words leave me of their own accord, each one laced with the pain that’s plagued me since I discovered that he found me more than a year before I came to work for the Bolts, yet he never reached out. And he never came for me like he promised he would.
