Power Games (13 page)

In comparison, Celeste was rotten. Soiled. Ruined. Broken.

Evil.

And so she should be. She didn’t deserve to be happy, to have those accolades. Not after what she had done. Why should God look out for a thief and a killer?

Outside, street shouts drifted up to her window. Celeste glimpsed the moon through the panes, huge and bright.

16

B
roadway’s Gold Court Theatre was buzzing. Noah Lawson’s star billing had attracted fans in their thousands, the production selling out within hours of tickets hitting the stands. On opening night, the atmosphere backstage was electric.

Angela dressed in jeans and a sweater, sneakers and no make-up. Managing to slip behind the elaborate fan tails of a bunch of chorus girls, she located Noah’s dressing room and knocked. The seconds before he answered were endless.

She knew she shouldn’t have come. Not tonight. It wasn’t fair to drop this bomb when he was minutes from a performance.
Are you crazy?
Maybe she was. Maybe she had actually lost her mind. Maybe, despite her justifications, she was embarking on a foolish and terrible thing from whose consequences she would never recover. Since Vegas she had been running on empty. She was stupid and mad and selfish—and desperate beyond her wildest dreams. Turning up like this wasn’t fair.

Neither was it fair to let him read about it in the morning papers.

Noah’s face lit up when he opened the door. Elated, he ushered her through. ‘Hey, this is a surprise!’ He kissed her. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I had to see you.’

‘I have to see you too.’ Noah’s arms closed around her. Unable to resist, she kissed him back—a long, slow, important kiss. It felt like a goodbye kiss, though she could not bring herself to think it. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said. ‘God, I’ve missed you.’

‘So have I.’

‘What’s the emergency? Couldn’t stop yourself wishing me luck?’ He held her tight. ‘I’m crazy about the outfit, by the way. You catching a game after?’

‘Noah, we have to talk.’

‘You’re going to tell me that the last few weeks have been the longest of your life? That you can’t stand to be apart from me ever again? That you—’

‘I’m serious.’

His smile faltered. ‘What’s wrong?’

Angela could sense it written across her face like a disease—betrayal, fear, cowardice—and she could not look at him. ‘There’s something you need to know.’

‘Can’t it wait until after the show?’

‘I’m flying back to Vegas after the show.’

Noah leaned against his dressing table. He folded his arms and regarded her in that way only he had, right into her core, deep into her secrets and her soul.

‘Angela, what’s going on?’ he asked gently. ‘You’ve been blanking me for weeks. I wasn’t going to say anything. I know you’re busy in Vegas, but, shit, it seems like you’re there twenty-four-seven these days, always on some project you can’t tell me about, always avoiding answering the phone, then you show up here out of nowhere and I’m supposed to drop everything?’

‘I know how it looks.’

‘Damn right it does. This is opening night.’

‘I’m sorry.’ God, this was hard, harder than she thought. How could she express it to Noah when she couldn’t find the words to make sense of it herself?

She stumbled, eyes trained on the floor. ‘I was buying time,’ she whispered. ‘Noah, I wanted to explain this to you properly but they beat me to it.’

He held her wrists. His grip was warm and steady.

‘Beat you to what?’ he murmured. ‘What do you need to say?’

Angela met his blue eyes. ‘I’m marrying Dino Zenetti.’

Time stopped. Noah blinked. ‘What?’

‘I don’t love him.’ It seemed crucial to say that first. ‘It’s not like that. It’s …’

‘I didn’t hear right. I thought you said you were marrying someone else.’

‘I am.’

Another knife wound. Another stab. Angela hated how she sounded, as if she was in one of her meetings, setting clear a proposal or delegating tasks. She outlined the arrangement with the Zenettis, why she had spent so much time there, why she had to do it, why she
wanted
to do it if it meant her only shot. She didn’t tell Noah about her father’s illness. She still could not bear to say it aloud.

With every word she uttered, Noah’s disappointment settled like the roots of a throttling plant, changing his features, hardening them. It was worse than his anger.

‘I have no choice,’ she finished.

‘Yes, you do. Choose me.’

‘I am choosing you. I’ll always choose you. We can carry on, just as we—’

He laughed, a harsh, bitter sound: the laugh of a stranger.

‘Now I know for sure this isn’t you talking.’

‘It is me. You know what we have—’

‘I thought I did. Clearly I was wrong.’

There was a knock at the door. He turned, his shoulders stiff. She yearned to go to him and put her arms around him and bury her face in his back, his scent.

‘Five minutes to curtain,’ came the call.

‘Leave, Angela,’ he said hollowly. ‘I can’t look at you. Just go.’

‘But—’

‘No!’ He rounded on her. Fury flashed in his eyes, the final frontier; the last vestige of his endurance smashed. ‘This is it for us. This is where it stops. I can’t do this any more.’ She tried to speak but he stopped her with a hand. ‘How fucking dare you turn up and say this to me? How dare you make this decision after all we’ve been through? After years creeping around because you’ve been too scared to stand up to your father—and now this? This is how you repay me? This is how it ends?’

‘No,’ she begged, ‘that isn’t it, I—’

‘You think this is what I want from my life, an affair with a married woman? It was bad enough having to protect your family’s precious fucking sensibilities. You must take me for some chump—but then you always did. You think just like your father and you always knew I wasn’t good enough. I’d always be content for whatever scraps you’d toss because that’s where I belong, down in the gutter.’

His words hit her like a punch in the stomach.

‘Don’t you throw that at me,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t the one who …’

‘What? You weren’t the one who what? Go on, say it:
you’re punishing me
, Angela. You never heard a single damn apology I gave you. I said sorry a thousand times and it was
never enough. Shit, it was always going to wind up this way. You never got over it. You never forgave me. You said you did but you didn’t.’

‘It wasn’t about forgiveness.’

‘Yes, it was. But you can’t let it go. Even now.’

‘This isn’t about that.’

‘Like hell it isn’t. Always telling me it’s because you’re afraid of your dad—it’s been a good excuse, hasn’t it? You never wanted to commit. You never intended to make this into a real relationship and now I know why. You probably planned this all along. String me on, make me believe, then rip my fucking guts out.’

‘No—!’

‘How does it feel? Is it worth it? Is it what you hoped?’

She went to touch him. He threw her off.

‘Making me watch you with another man. I hope revenge tastes sweet.’

‘Dino’s nothing to me,’ she said, close to tears. ‘It’s an arrangement, that’s all—I’ll never be with him—it won’t be like that, I swear …’

‘Why should I trust you?’

‘Because once upon a time I trusted you.’

He stood back. ‘But you didn’t. That’s just it. That’s why we’re here.’

‘It’s the truth …’

‘The truth? I’ll tell you the truth. I knew it the second I met you and all this time I was just kidding myself. You wanted your glory more than you wanted me.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘Why not? Afraid of the facts?’

‘I’m afraid of losing you! I’m afraid of you opening that door and telling me to get out and never come back and I’m afraid of never being able to see you again. I’m afraid of
feeling like I did all those years ago and I can’t do it again, I can’t!’

His eyes searched hers. ‘You don’t care about me,’ he said. ‘Not like I care about you. I fucking
love
you, Angela. I’m so in love with you I can’t even say it.’

Language deserted her. There were no words.

‘But that doesn’t matter to you. So go on—go do Daddy’s bidding, just like always. I’m letting you go, there, you’re free. I’d suggest you do the same with the past, or one of these days it’s going to eat you alive.’

She opened her mouth but no sound came out.

‘Goodbye, Angela.’

The door closed and she was alone.

From the day they met, they were inseparable. Angela had never met a boy like Noah Lawson. He was everything she wanted to be: spontaneous, dangerous, and made to answer to no one. All the other boys were from rich, glamorous families, defined not by their spirit but by the wealth and opportunity that preceded them. Noah was free.

That summer they did everything together. Took walks, swam in the lake, went to the movies. Angela was fifteen. She had never kissed a boy but she wanted to kiss Noah. She could tell that he liked her. His friends from Hank’s teased him about it; he didn’t think she’d heard but she had. When they turned their attentions on her, commenting on her dress or her long legs or how she had worn her hair that day, Noah went for them, telling them to shut the hell up or they would live to regret it.

At the same time, she was afraid. Noah was experienced. She could tell in the way he behaved, oblivious to the girls who giggled on street corners or the women who stared brazenly at him while he was unpacking the van at Hank’s.

Blond-haired and blue-eyed, he should have been angelic. Instead there was something off-kilter, propelling him from handsomeness to a violent sensuality. She wondered how many girls he had slept with. If he was still sleeping with them, in spite of their friendship …

Was that all it was, a friendship? Some days Angela felt certain of the spark between them, others she convinced herself she was in way over her head. What would Noah Lawson want with her? She was embodiment of everything he said he despised: money and privilege, an expensive education, a house fit for twenty families. Angela’s destiny was clear: she would marry suitably and stay in the same Boston home she had lived in since she’d been born. Noah’s wasn’t.

Some days Noah borrowed his friend’s car and they drove to the lake with the top down. Angela’s hair blew in the breeze. She wanted to put her hand on his arm, strong and bronzed on the wheel, but she didn’t dare. She wanted to keep driving, just the two of them, and never stop. She wanted to run away with him.

He was sparing in the facts he gave. Little was revealed about his family. Noah’s mom was barely around—Angela never saw her. His house was small and rundown but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about things like that. The fact that Noah was from what her father would consider ‘a different class’ never occurred to her. He was her friend. It didn’t matter where he had come from.

‘One day I wanna act in the movies,’ he confided, breaking into a smile. They sat cross-legged in the park, Noah rolling a cigarette, blond hair falling over his eyes.

‘You’ll make it,’ she told him, believing it utterly.

‘You think?’

‘I know.’

‘Not so fast being a pool cleaner.’

‘You won’t be doing that for ever.’

‘Maybe.’

Angela wished he wouldn’t feel ashamed by it. By the same turn she felt ashamed of her riches. She didn’t mind what Noah did. Once, early on, they had been in the market and a woman called Mrs Mason had claimed to know him. Noah had made out like he had never seen her before in his life. ‘You clean my pool,’ Mrs Mason had prompted, observing him quizzically. ‘Just yesterday, you …’

‘You got the wrong person,’ he replied, and had walked away, leaving Angela to follow. ‘I didn’t want to admit it,’ he confessed later. ‘Can we just forget it?’

Months passed. Summer turned to fall and winter turned to spring. The concealment of their friendship was an unspoken acknowledgement. Noah expressed no desire to know the Silvers family, and Angela didn’t force it.

One weekend, her parents departed for Carolina. Orlando and Luca were out. Angela seized the chance to bring Noah home. She had to know he felt the same.

‘This is nice,’ he said, awkwardly perched on her bed.

She closed her eyes as she asked: ‘Noah, are you seeing other girls?’

He didn’t answer. Instead his face moved closer, his fingers rested on her chin. She could feel the tickle of his eyelashes when his lips met hers and the soft, strange heat of his tongue. He smelled of pinecones, fresh and green.

She surrendered to his kiss.

And then the worst thing happened.

The bedroom door slammed open. It was her father. Their trip had been called short. Donald went madder than she had ever seen him, yelling at Noah to get out and to never darken their door again. What had he done to her? Had he forced
himself on her? Angela had cried Noah’s defence but it fell on deaf ears.

Afterwards, Donald was pleased. ‘You’re better off without him,’ he said gruffly. ‘You don’t need him.’ Angela was grounded. For weeks she could not eat, could not sleep. Noah didn’t visit. It was as if the friendship had never happened, their closeness blowing cold as the chill winds that came in from the harbour.

It was only when Donald told her the awful truth, the truth she had feared all these months but had steeled herself against, did she learn to harden her heart.

By the time she emerged, Noah Lawson had skipped town.

‘It goes to show I was right,’ Donald told her. ‘At the first sign of trouble, boys like Noah Lawson run a mile. He wanted you for one thing and one thing only. When he realised I was in his way, he cut his losses and bolted.’

She cried and cried. Orlando teased her. Luca didn’t notice.