Page 9 of Noah
Okay, that was weird. “What? How? I just saw him and he seemed fine.”
Rivers shrugged. “Yeah, he’s fine, but it’s this girl he’s picked up. She’s getting too clingy with him and Taylor’s on her way over. We’re already in hot water with her. Don’t exactly need to make it worse by having him show up with yet another girl.”
Right. Of course. Taylor James, their agent, had been on Noah for months to clean up his reputation. Stop getting in front of the press with a new girl on his arm every day. Maybe even start acting like the businessman he’d always wanted to be. Rivers was right; if she was on her way, we didn’t want him stumbling into a meeting towing another new girl in his wake.
And as Noah’s best friend and designate handler, this fell to me.
But maybe it didn’t have to.
“Now? I’m on my way to have a shower,” I lied. “Can’t someone else do it?”
Rivers stepped closer to me and patted my face like the older brother he’d always pretended to be. “They could. But you know they won’t do it as well as you do. He’ll end up fighting them, and then...” His shrug told me exactly what he wouldn’t say.
For all his sweetness to me, Noah could be difficult. And when people got in his way, he ended up making trouble for them.
When I asked him to do something, he didn’t argue.
“Right,” I sighed. “Sure, no problem. Where do you need him, and when?”
Rivers’ eyes grew warmer, a wide smile stretching his lips. “You’re a lifesaver, Bug. We need him downstairs in ten minutes to meet with Taylor and talk about... Well, whatever Taylor thinks we need to talk about. I don’t actually know. And make sure he loses the girl, first.”
He was gone before I could ask for any other details–like how the hell he knew a meeting was happening but didn’t know what the meeting was for–and I shook my head. Rivers was talented as hell and could woo an audience better than anyone I’d ever met. But focus wasn’t his thing.
Good thing he had Lila.
And good thing they both had me to wrangle Noah when no one else wanted to do it.
I straightened up and turned back toward where I’d seen Noah last, wondering where he and the new girl had gotten to and trying to figure out how I was going to get him away from her and downstairs. I couldn’t remember whether I’d been drinking last night but I was sure Noah had been, and that meant he should probably brush his teeth before the meeting. Maybe wash his face and also probably change his clothes. If I could find him quickly enough and drag him back to his–
I turned the corner and nearly ran into the man in question. He’d evidently decided the new girl was still worth something because he had her pinned against the wall, one hand on her face while the other leaned against the wall behind her head. She was looking up at him like he was the most important man in the world, and he was looking at her like...
Like she was everything to him.
When he turned that gaze to me, it nearly knocked me over. He was all fire, all smolder, bright blue eyes aflame with something I’d never seen before, and it shot through me like lightning. I took an involuntary step back, then another, and fought to find my balance again. What had I been doing? Why was I here?
Why was he still looking at me like he wanted to pin me down and eat me up, piece by slow, delicious piece? He’d never looked at me like that before. This was a look reserved for a girl you couldn’t get enough of. A girl you wanted to drag to bed and undress in a hurry, just so you could have her naked in front of you.
At least I assumed it was. I wouldn’t know, as no one had ever looked at me that way.
The thought was a cold glass of water splashed across my face and I jerked my eyes away, breaking the thing building betweenus. The girl was staring at me like I’d just ruined her favorite game, her lips in a pout and her eyes wide, and that brought me back to what I was doing here. I was collecting Noah for a meeting. Making sure he brushed his teeth and combed his hair. Got to the right room on time.
And without any unacceptable company.
And suddenly... Suddenly it was all too much. I couldn’t stand the thought of doing that for him again. I hated the thought of dragging him away from yet another girl and forcing him to make himself presentable, then doing it again later today and tomorrow and the next day. Burying the fatigue and confusion he always brought up in me, turning away from my own needs to see to his even though I never got any recognition for it.
Allowing him to hurt me again and again, in all the million and one ways he hurt me. The paper cuts that never healed. The little jabs that he didn’t even know he was sending at me.
Noah had always been my hero. My protector. The guy who’d had my back when no one else did. And I had somehow gotten here thinking he was still that person. But he wasn’t. He was the guy standing in front of me; the bad boy of the band, always smoking, staying out all night,, bringing another girl home. And waiting for me to clean up after him.
“Need something, Bug?” he asked lazily.
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped. “You know how much I hate it.”
He reached out and poked me right in the belly, that familiar grin lighting up his face. “Why the hell do you think I keep using it?”
I smacked at his hand and laughed, unable to stop myself. “Don’t touch me. I don’t know where that hand has been.”
He tipped his head and glanced at the girl beside him, and the laughter died in my lungs. Of course that was where his handhad been. And oh my God, I was so over this whole scene. So, so finished with the way it made me feel. And there was really only one answer for that, wasn’t there?
