Jude stabbed himself in the side.
I still couldn’t make sense of it—the images in my memory bled into one another, and the feelings, too. Terror and rage, fear and panic. So I described what happened on the dock to Noah—he had seen it, but from a different perspective. Maybe together, we could connect the points.
“There were dead fish under the dock,” I said to him as his eyes sharpened. “Just floating in the water.”
Like the Everglades, I thought, remembering Noah’s words. We had been trapped in the creek. I had to get to Joseph but couldn’t. There were only two choices: fight or flight, and I couldn’t flee. I was backed into a corner. So without thinking, my mind fought.
My fear killed everything in the water around us. Alligators. Fish. Everything. And I was afraid at the marina, too. I was terrified of Jude. He didn’t die, but in trying to kill him, did I kill everything around me too?
Did I kill the police officer? The one who tried to help?
My throat burned with the thought and my stomach twisted with guilt. But then I remembered—
John. He also died of a stroke. And I hadn’t even seen him that night. I might be responsible for the rest of it, but not him.
My mind churned, trying to work through it. I glanced up at Noah, wondering what he was thinking, so I asked.
“I wasn’t there,” he answered, with that same vacant look.
I moved toward him then. Slid my arms around his neck and drew him against me. Noah winced at the contact. I ignored it. Now that we were this close, I could see what I missed before.
Noah acted like he felt nothing because he felt everything. He seemed not to care because he cared too much.
I smiled against his lips. “You’re here now.”
60
NOAH’S VOICE SLICED THE AIR LIKE A RAZOR blade when he spoke. “I’m here because you’re alive, Mara. If he had killed you—”
“He didn’t,” I said, and the words lingered in my mouth. “He didn’t kill me,” I repeated, and edged my back up against the wall as the words transported me to the marina. I saw myself prone and bleeding on the dock.
I could not look away from the deepening gashes on my wrists.
Not fatal.
But Jude knew. I could tell by the way he was staring at the cuts as he held my forearms, studying them. To make sure I bled, but not too much. He didn’t want to kill me. He wanted something else.
“Jude left me alive,” I said out loud. “On purpose. Why?”
Noah ran a hand over his shadowed jaw. “To live so he could torture you another day?” He smiled, and it was full of malice. “If only I’d had enough time in central holding to make friends.”
I looked up, surprised. “You were in jail?”
Noah shrugged, his shoulder moving against mine.
“When was this?”
“When I found out they were sending you here and there was nothing I could do. The situation demanded something . . .” Noah searched for the right word. “Outlandish. I had to convince my father that I would be an embarrassment to him—a public one—every second I couldn’t be with you.”
“Wait—was this after the Lolita incident?”
Noah gave a brief nod.
“Noah,” I said cautiously. “What did you do to that poor whale?”
He cracked a real smile, then. Finally. I wanted to make him smile like that for the rest of my life.
“She’s fine,” he said. “I only pushed someone into her tank.”
“You didn’t.”
“A little bit, yes.”
I shook my head in mock disdain.
“He was encouraging his budding sociopath child to bang on the glass,” Noah said, his voice matter-of-fact.
“What were you even doing there?”
“Looking for a fight. I needed something that would make the news.”
“Oh my God, it did?”
“I was this close,” he said, and held his thumb and forefinger a fraction apart. “Edged out by a corrupt politician.”
“You were robbed.”
“Indeed. My father paid them off, I think.”
I watched Noah closely when I asked my next question. “So your father knows about us, then?”
“Yes,” Noah said evenly. “He does.”
“And?”
Noah raised his eyebrows. “And what?”
Boys. So impossible. “What does he think?”
Noah looked like he didn’t understand the question. “As if that matters?”
Ah. He understood the question, he just didn’t know why I was asking. “It does matter,” I said. “Tell me.”
“He thinks I’m a fool,” Noah said simply.
I tried not to show how much that hurt.
Apparently I failed, because Noah took my hands in each of his. It was the first time he touched me like this, like it mattered, since before Jude took me. His touch was impossibly gentle as he unwrapped the bandages on my wrists, but it still hurt and I began to protest. He hushed me. He lifted my hands to his mouth. His petal-soft lips brushed over my knuckles, then my palms. Noah looked into my eyes and owned me.