“No, it’s all right—it’s not medical. I just know I won’t make a good father, so I’m not going to saddle some poor kid with Noah St. John as a dad.”
Regardless of his mood or the demons in his head, he was always very, very careful. The one time he’d had a scare, it hadn’t been because he’d fallen down on the job but because the condom had torn. Thankfully, the groupie he’d been screwing at the time had been on the pill, so he’d dodged that bullet.
He’d put a private eye on her to make damn certain, because if he had fucked up and fathered a kid, he’d have taken responsibility—financially at least. “I’m actually thinking of getting it taken care of permanently.”
“What?” Open shock. “Noah, you can’t do that. What if you change your mind?”
“I’m not a good bet as a father, Kit. You know that.” He met her dismayed gaze. “Would you want me as the father of your child?”
Her face froze. Not saying a word, she turned to stare out the window.
It felt like a punch to the solar plexus. “Exactly,” he said quietly.
But Kit didn’t stay silent. “You could be a great father,” she said without warning. “It’d involve trying and working hard and being accountable rather than burying yourself in whatever hell it is that makes you so angry.” Her words vibrated with emotion.
The bones in his jaw grinding against one another, he didn’t respond.
“You have to make a choice, Noah.” Harsh words. “I made a choice as a child to not let my parents’ lifestyle damage me to the extent that I ended up a druggie or a self-destructive waste of space. Whatever it is that’s behind your behavior, you made the opposite choice.”
How could he tell her that he was surviving, that it was all he was capable of doing? He could’ve been dead a hundred times over by now. It would’ve been so easy to give in, to surrender to the pain, but he’d refused. “I didn’t,” he gritted out. “I made the choice to live.”
He could feel Kit’s eyes on him, incisive and penetrating… and he realized what he’d said, what he’d nearly betrayed. “Look down,” he said, slamming the door shut on the memories that made him feel soiled and desperate and used up. “I’m pretty sure that’s a mountain lion. You can use the binoculars over on your side.”
Kit didn’t reach for the binoculars. “Noah,” she said, her voice soft, private. “What happened?”
“Nothing original.” He tried a cynical smile. “Drugs and all that—I was addicted as a teen, decided to get clean.” It was a lie, but one he had to tell. It was far better that she think him weak in that respect than that she know the truth. Kit couldn’t know. He’d die before allowing that to happen.
Kit knew Noah was lying.
It was as obvious to her as a flashing neon sign. And given that he knew her low opinion of drug addicts, the fact he’d confessed to that to get her to stop asking questions made her blood run cold. She wanted to take back her earlier harsh words, wanted to start all over again. Because she was beginning to understand that whatever had scarred Noah, it had nothing to do with the usual small tragedies of life, the things she’d seen growing up.
It had been something bad enough to make a boy want to end his life.
Shaken and not knowing where to go from here, she folded her arms and stared out at the view. It was far greener than immediately around Los Angeles. “Where are we?”
“Near a private landing field I know.” A short pause. “Actually, it’s mine.”
He’d given her so many surprises today that she took this one in her stride. “So you’d have a place to land where no one knew you?”
“Yeah.” A lopsided smile. “There’s nothing else around for miles.”
She could see it now, a cleared strip surrounded by what looked like acres of trees. “How much land did you buy?”