Her hair was dripping. “I don’t want to want you either, you know. The thought of you leaving and possibly never seeing you again is so scary. I wish I didn’t feel this way.”
She smelled even better wet from the rain. I really tried not to kiss her again, but the need was even more intense now that I knew what it felt like. I needed to taste her one last time before what would be one of the toughest conversations of my life.
Wrapping my hands around her cheeks, I brought her face into mine and devoured her lips. This kiss was different than the last. While the first had been frenzied and desperate, this time I kissed her slowly and passionately, my tongue stroking hers gently. Her fingers tangled in my hair as she pulled, seeming desperate for more. My eyes closed as I cherished every second, every little moan that escaped her.
After several minutes, I gently bit her bottom lip before forcing myself back.
“Please don’t stop.”
“I have to.”
“Why?”
Taking both of her hands in mine, I led her over to the spot next to me on the sofa.
“I have to talk to you. I don’t want to put it off anymore. It’s something I wasn’t necessarily going to tell you, because I wasn’t expecting to be in this deep. Now that I am, I feel like I owe you an explanation for why I’m here.”
“Why you’re here? You’re scaring me. What’s going on?”
“Please don’t be scared.”
“What is it? Are you sick? I’ve always had this scary feeling that maybe—”
“No. Nothing like that. I’m fine. Healthy as a horse.”
Heather sighed in relief. “Okay…”
“I’ve been keeping something from you. While you may not fully understand why I didn’t say anything, I need you to know that I came here with the best of intentions.”
“Intentions?”
“My choosing this place wasn’t a coincidence.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
There was no easy way to say it. “Heather…” I took a deep breath and braced myself. “I knew your sister.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
* * *
HEATHER
My eyes wouldn’t stop blinking.
Did he just say he knew my sister?
The only thing that would come out of me was, “What?”
“I knew Opal.”
A rush of panic hit me.
Noah…and my sister?
“Did you…did you and my sister…”
“No!” he said adamantly, seeming to realize where I was coming from. “No…God, I need you to know that. Nothing ever happened between us. We were not romantically involved in any way, shape, or form. So please don’t think that. But I did meet her, and I need to tell you the story.”
The room felt like it was spinning.
“I can’t believe this. What…”
“Your sister, she was living in Pennsylvania for a while. She walked into my studio one day, wanting a portrait shoot.”
Okay.
That made some sense.
Noah squeezed my hand. As confused as I was, his touch calmed the shock a bit. I looked at him, waiting for more.
“She said she was trying to get into modeling and needed a full portfolio.” He paused. “Anyway, we scheduled it. She came back about a week later, and we did the shoot.”
“You took photos of my sister…”
“Yes. They were all tasteful, a mix of headshots and simple poses. She was fully clothed. It wasn’t anything crazy. My studio at the time was attached to my house. I have a different space now. Anyway, she met Olivia and everything. I was still married then.” He took a deep breath, seeming to gear up for more. “Despite knowing that fact, your sister started to message me after our business had concluded. You have to believe me when I tell you we never had any contact besides that one shoot. But in her messages, she said really inappropriate things.”
Oh no. “Like what?”
“Like she couldn’t stop thinking about me and she felt we had some kind of cosmic connection—also some sexual things. She just kept contacting me through my business email, professing her feelings for me and suggesting we meet up. The first couple of times I responded very simply and dismissively, and after a while, I stopped responding at all. Her messages kept coming anyway. I didn’t know what to do. It was bizarre and unlike anything I’d experienced before. Even after I asked her to please stop contacting me, she kept doing it. It was all very Fatal Attraction. I think she was delusional.”
Holy shit.
My sister was without a doubt not well. But when she was taking her medication, she would have good patches. The problem was, you never knew when she would randomly stop taking care of herself. As much as I didn’t want to believe it, this story sounded like her.
I let him go on.
“Olivia saw some of the messages, and it really tested us. She knew I was telling the truth, that nothing had happened with Opal, but it was hard for her to accept that a woman was sending me sexually explicit messages and professing her love. It agitated an already bad situation.”
“So Opal kept emailing you? Then what?”
He nodded. “Then one day it just…stopped. There were no more messages. At the time I was really relieved, because I never knew if she would eventually try something crazy.”
“That was it? It stopped, and you never heard from her again?”
“Not exactly.” He squeezed my hand harder. “That was it for a while. I thought it was over. But one day several months later, I received a call from an investigator in Connecticut. It was…after they’d found her. She’d left a letter at the motel. It was addressed to me.”
Covering my mouth, I gasped and whispered into my hand, “Oh my God.”
I had managed to keep my composure up until this point, but now my tears fell. Noah wiped them away with his thumb and went over to the counter to grab a tissue for me.
I sniffled. “What did it say?”
“In the letter, she wrote how sorry she was for upsetting me. But that wasn’t the purpose of her writing. She was reaching out to me for my help.”
“Your help?”
“She listed your address here on Lake Winnipesaukee and asked me to look after her sister—you—when she was gone. Even in her state of mind, she was worried about you.”
My heart felt ready to shatter. My lip trembled. “That’s all she said?”
“Pretty much. She explained that she couldn’t handle life anymore and needed me to help look after you. It wasn’t very long. I have the letter, if you ever want to see it. I didn’t bring it because I wasn’t planning to tell you why I came. But I can easily get it.”
Still in shock, I shook my head. It was hard to believe, but I knew it was true.
“I have no idea why she chose me, Heather. I hadn’t heard from her in months, but for some reason, she chose to write to me in those last moments and ask for my help, and it’s haunted me more than you know. Maybe it was part of her same delusional idea that I’d played some important role in her life. I will never know the reason she picked me.”
I stared out at the rain pelting the window. “I’m still confused.”
“Ask me anything.”
“She died six years ago.” I turned to him. “Why now? Why did you come now?”
Noah let out a long breath. “That’s the question, isn’t it?” He looked down at my hand in his for a moment. “I’ve lived with a lot of guilt over not getting her help. Despite how crazy it was that she messaged me like that, I never dreamed her issues were as serious as they were. I never thought to try to find her family or get her to a doctor. I had just wanted it to stop. In retrospect, I absolutely should have done something. When I found out she had taken her own life, it fucked me up. I became even more withdrawn from my marriage and fell into a depression.”
I could relate to that guilt. So often I’d blamed myself for not doing something more to find my sister and help her. I’d never imagined she would take her own life, and that was a very na?ve way of thinking.