Never Have I Ever (42 page)

“The next night, she called me in tears. She told me the reason she chose Ethan over me was that she had been six weeks pregnant.”

Oh, God.
“Past tense?”
I asked cautiously.

Noah nodded slowly. “It was Ethan’s. For a short period of time I was hopping back and forth from L.A. to San Francisco for contracts so much I hardly found the chance to talk to Selene let alone see her. I did the math. Those couple of weeks fell in perfect alignment with the date of conception. Selene called me distraught the day after she and I parted ways… because she miscarried.

“Instead of being sympathetic, I gave her what-for. I cursed her up one side and down the other for not telling me—not so much about cheating on me with Ethan, that part was a non-issue compared to her stupidity for letting me bruise her, manhandle and mark her when she knew she was pregnant. I called her every name in the book, said horrible things I didn’t really mean.

“Ethan was once again incensed. She told him beforehand. It wasn’t planned, of course, but he fully intended to step up to the plate and take care of Selene because he loved her and he wanted to love the kid. When he found out the reason for the miscarriage he went postal on me, which only made me yell at Selene more. After it was all said and done she couldn’t handle the situation. A week later, Selene was dead.”

There I was, expecting some extra nugget of knowledge about Noah’s past. I wasn’t at all braced for the complete story in one free-flowing narrative. At the end of Noah’s recount all I could do was forcibly swallow the mass quantities of anger caught in my throat. The whole event was not Noah’s fault at all; it was Selene’s. Though I joked about fatal flaws to Anya and Declan, it became all too real to me that if Noah did have a fatal flaw, it was his compassion. Noah was just too soft of a heart to find the ability to blame her. The last time I checked nobody in the world was proven psychic scientifically. Selene agreed to the session that night despite knowing she was pregnant. It not only made her a self-seeking bitch, but a horrible human being.

Noah released a relieved breath. “You’re still here.”

Before I knew it, my hands were fishing through my purse for my phone. I silently and anxiously pulled up the web browser on it to begin the Google search that might change my life forever.

“No running,” I mumbled to the shining screen.

“Okay, I just dropped a bombshell on you and you’re checking
Facebook
?”

I gripped the phone a little tighter, but continued my frantic search. “No. I’m going to do something unbelievably stupid.”

“What are you doing?” He sounded worried.
“Piper?”

I found the website I was looking for and tucked the phone close to my chest. When I looked up at him, it was with the fire of intent I never dreamed I could muster. “I have to tell you something,” I said. My voice wavered. “And I don’t know how you will react; I can’t imagine you’ll be too pleased, though.”

Noah reached out and brushed his hand across my cheek, only pausing briefly to tuck my hair behind my ear and lock his piercing gaze onto my very soul before returning the backs of his finger tips to stroke my face. His features grew soft and serious.

“Piper, I want you to listen to me very closely. Not only am I speaking to you as your lover, but also as your Master now. You please me in everything you do. It is physically impossible for me to be in the same room with you and not touch you. Your very existence gives me an electrical charge of pleasure every day. It’s a razor sharp high to my otherwise dull and predictable life. Nothing you say in this moment will change my mind about that.”

Those words were single-handedly the sweetest and most romantic thing anyone ever said to me. Because of those words I was willing to risk losing him for the sake of his peace of mind. And mine. I slowly took his hand from my face, slipped the phone into it, and wrapped my fingers around his so we were both holding it. A moment later, I released his hand and sat a little further back on my barstool.

“Take a good look.”

Noah turned the phone over. The webpage he was looking at was that of an artist profile for the Sydney gallery in which Selene’s most recent paintings resided. It came complete with her picture, a brief—more than likely fake—biography, and her next scheduled appearance: Tuesday.

“This is—how did you…”

“I met her on our last day in Sydney.” My hands came up to cover my mouth for a moment, almost as if in prayer. I wasn’t sure whether I was about to laugh or cry. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I was scared of how you’d react.”

Staunch, heavy silence grew between us as he just stared at the phone for another twenty seconds or so, processing the information in front of him.

“Please, say something,” I said. I laced my fingers together into one large fist against my mouth.

He looked up at me. “She changed her last name. It used to be Ortiz.”

That was it? Selene was alive and all he had to comment on was how she changed her last name?

“Pardon?”

“Think very carefully; was she wearing a wedding ring when you met her?”

“Uh—N-no, not that I saw.
Does that matter?” This was decidedly not the reaction I anticipated.

Noah glanced around the room, pulling his thoughts from someplace distant I was unable to reach. “Five years and she hasn’t found someone else then.”

I half smiled. “You’re not mad?”

“Are you kidding? Piper, this is brilliant!” He grabbed the back of my head and swiftly pulled me in to kiss my forehead with a loud smack of his lips. “Thank you.”

“Wait—what?”

But he was gone from me in a flash. He discarded my phone onto the counter before disappearing from the living room and into his bedroom faster than I’d ever seen him move. I followed behind and watched as he dashed from one side of his room to the other, collecting first a suitcase, then rummaging through dresser drawers for clothing and other necessities for a trip.

“You’re leaving,” I said. Dinner plans were off then.

Noah looked back at me briefly, barely torn from his focus on packing. “She’s alive, which means”—he snatched two ties from a hook beside the door—“which means I can fix this.”

“You’re going to Australia?
Now?”

“Yes. Come with me. I’ll figure out flight details on the way to the airport.”

“Is that a command?”

“A request this time since this is such short notice.”

“Not a chance if it’s all the same to you. I’m sorry, this doesn’t sit right. She told me not to tell you. The last thing you need is a cat-fight on your hands. Not to mention Ethan lied to you about her killing herself. In what universe is this okay?”

“It’s not okay, which is why I need to go. Before I confront Ethan, though, I need to talk to her. I can fix everything.”

“She made it pretty clear to me she didn’t want anything fixed.”

The fluctuating joy and panic on his face shed light on how driven Noah was about going. Seeing him bristling with so much untamed energy was new for me.

“Selene must have changed her name to hide since she didn’t have a wedding ring,” he mused aloud. “Ethan still loves her. That’s why he’s perpetually pissed at me. If I manage to talk some sense into her then I can bring her here to make amends with him. I’ll redeem myself, regain his trust from the whole fucked-up situation and get him off our collective asses since he’ll have her back.
Happy endings all around.”

Oh God, what a hopeless romantic. The world didn’t work that way. There are some wounds time simply cannot heal. “He should be the one trying to regain your trust after this, though.”

“I’ve grown used to being the villain between Ethan and me.” Suddenly Noah snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “Better explanation: You once called me Loki and I took it as a compliment, do you remember?”

“Vividly.”
I still called him that.

“Ethan’s Thor.”

I almost, but not quite, laughed, “You don’t know your Norse mythology very well, do you? They end up on opposing sides of
Ragnarok
.”

He neither confirmed nor denied my question when he replied, “It’s not a perfect metaphor.”

If Noah was Loki, did that make me
Fenrir
: the god’s pet, or
Sigyn
: the wife who held a chalice above
Loki’s
head while he was in bondage to keep the torture of poison from reaching her beloved?

No. Fuck that; the metaphor didn’t make me anybody. I was me, not a goddamned metaphor.

I felt a little sick as I backtracked to my original point, “As wonderfully simple as happy endings all around would be, I don’t think Ethan will see it that way. He helped Selene fake her own death for some reason and sent her to Australia! This feels wrong. There has to be more we’re missing. Please, talk to Ethan first. See if he even wants her back.”

“She was afraid, Piper, afraid and alone.”

“She wasn’t alone if Ethan was willing to be there for her.”

“You don’t have siblings, right?”

“No, I’m an only child.”

“Twenty nine years we’ve been brothers. I know him. I can all but guarantee he sent her away because she begged him to do it. He couldn’t deny her that.”

“It still feels wrong.”

Noah finished his hasty packing, zipped up the suitcase and met me at the doorway to his bedroom.

“Come with me,” he insisted again.

“There’s no talking you out of this is there?”

“Not this time I’m afraid.”

From the sounds of it he had no intentions of running back to her. On top of it, he collared me. He actually collared me. With nothing to fear and all of my trust placed in him, I found the strength and resolve to say, “I want to, even though I’ve told you I won’t. I won’t go because it’s my job to place your needs above my own.”

“What if I told you I needed you with me?” The way he looked at me when he said that damned near broke my heart; all his hope and anxiety meshed with despair and the sudden awareness he had no idea how he was going to convince Selene to return.

Nevertheless, I shook my head. “The other night you said you haven’t been honorable in five years. What you’re about to do proves that statement wrong. I can’t think of anything more blindly honorable than your current intentions. Go find her, but you don’t need me for this. You need to do it on your own.
For you, Sir.”

His blood was pumping good and fast now. He radiated adrenaline. “Have I told you in the last thirty seconds how amazing you are and how much I love you?”

“Probably, but I still like hearing you say it.”

Noah’s lips settled comfortably over mine, a long pause to his otherwise hasty state of being. Once he pulled away, he rested his forehead against mine and closed his eyes for an instant. “Oh, my sweet pet, when I get back I am going to do terrible things to you to break that collar in properly, and then I’m going to cuddle the fuck out of you.”

A familiar warm tremble flitted through me. I breathed out, “I can’t wait…
Master.”

***

Noah left for Australia so fast it sent my head spinning. Provided he caught a flight sometime before dawn, it’d put him in Sydney late Saturday evening. He promised to call me and let me know he landed safely. Afterwards… well, the rest was up to him.

Even though Noah wasn’t there that night, he allowed me free reign of his apartment, promising to make dinner up to me when he returned. As cheesy as it was, for me of all people, I accepted the offer of staying as I rather enjoyed the lingering smell of him on the sheets in his bed. In my heart of hearts I really hoped he found Selene. If there was any way to placate Ethan maybe bringing back his long-lost love was it. With all of the positive energy and all of whatever personal karma I happened to have collected over the years focused solely on the success of this one venture, I curled up in Noah’s bed and drifted off to sleep. While it wasn’t the best night’s sleep of my life, it was equally as worrisome no matter my location. Sleeping at Noah’s at least meant less driving.

A strong knock on the door woke me just after six thirty Saturday morning. I shrugged on the robe with the oriental dragon on the back and made my way to the door.

Ethan stood on the other side when I opened it. He was dressed in a snappy navy blue suit. I was about to ask him if I slept through the whole weekend before I recalled that Ethan never took a day off from work.

I greeted him with a winning smile to mask my irritation at his arrival. “You’re ready to kick corporate ass early this morning, I see.”

I could almost taste the disapproval in his voice as he asked, “Where’s my brother?”

“He’s not here,” I said as noncommittally as possible.

“It is far too early to play games with you. Where is he?”

I folded my arms across my chest and leaned against the door frame. At least the both of us agreed we were tired of the games. “Probably in the neighborhood of thirty thousand feet somewhere over the Pacific by now I imagine.”