What He Fights (What He Wants, Book Ten) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (4 page)

I said hasty goodbyes to the table.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Charlotte,”
Clementine called after me.

I pretended I didn’t hear her, hurrying
through the lobby, my shoes sliding over the marble floor that was wet with the
rain people had dragged in on their coats and umbrellas.

Once I was outside, I took in a deep
breath of cool, wet air.
 
The
drizzle had gotten a little stronger, still not a complete rain shower, but
enough for me to feel the drops hit my skin.

At first it made me feel better, and the
cobwebs in my head began to clear as everything came back into focus.
 
I thought I was going to be okay.

But then a sharp pain hit my side, and it
felt like my stomach was rolling over on itself.

I was going to throw up.

I spotted a trashcan a few feet away, and
I got to it just in time, heaving what little was in my stomach – coffee
and a few bits of pancake.
 
Once my
stomach was empty, my body didn’t stop its betrayal.
 
I began dry heaving, once, twice, three times.

When it seemed like I was done, I kept my
head over the trashcan for a minute just in case, waiting.

I was just about to stand up, when I felt
a hand on my back.

“Charlotte.”
 
His voice was laced with concern.

I whirled around.

“Don’t,” I said when I saw him.

“Are you okay?”

I stared at him incredulously.
 
“Am I okay?” I repeated.
 
“You’re kidding me, right?”

“Charlotte-“

“Do not say my name!”
 
My body was filled with rage, rage like
I had never known before, rage I didn’t know I was capable of feeling.
 
I felt like I could kill someone, that
I might kill him if I had something nearby to do it with.

“I’ve called the car,” he said.
 
“Jared will take you back to the
suite.
 
You can wait for me there.”

I didn’t even try to address the fact
that what he’d just said was ludicrous.
 
If he’d thought I was going to go back to his hotel suite after what I’d
just found out, he was insane.
 

“Why, Noah?” I asked.
 
I hadn’t realized I was crying until I
tasted the salt on my lips.
 
My
tears had mixed with the rain, leaving my cheeks damp.
 
“Why did you do that?”

“I didn’t kill Katie.”

I shook my head.
 
“Not Katie.
 
Why didn’t you tell me what evidence they had against you?”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“From what?” I screamed.
 
A woman passing by with a baby carriage
stopped and looked at us, making sure I didn’t need help.
 
She must have decided it was just your
normal run-of-the-mill boyfriend/girlfriend fight, because after a second she
kept going.

He’s a murderer,
I wanted to yell after her.
 
Did you know that?

“From everything.”
 
He kept his eyes on me, and I saw his
face soften, saw a glimpse of the Noah I was (used to be?) in love with.
 
Apologize,
I thought.
 
Tell me you’re sorry.
 
But he stayed quiet.

“Do you know what it felt like to sit in
that room, to be there with Professor Worthington and a woman I’d never met
before, while I saw that evidence for the first time?
 
Do you know how humiliating it’s going to be for me to meet
with her tomorrow?
 
For her to ask
me questions about the things you and I have done?”

His jaw twitched.
 
“Charlotte,” he said.

“Stop saying my name!”
 
There was something about the way he
said my name that felt intimate, and I felt like he’d lost that right.

“Do you really think I would bring you to
this breakfast, that I would put that evidence in front of you, that I would
let a woman you’d never met grill you about our sexual relationship just
because I wanted to be an asshole?”

“Then why did you?” I cried.
 
“Why, Noah?”

“Because you need to get ready,” he
said.
 
“You need to be ready for
when you’re up on that stand, Charlotte.
 
They’re going to throw things at you, they’re going to try to trip you
up.
 
You’re going to be grilled
about your sexual relationship in front of not only one stranger, but a
prosecutor, a jury, a judge, a full courtroom.
 
When this thing goes to a full trial, Charlotte, you’re
going to have to be strong.
 
And if
you thought what happened in there was hard, well, then we’re going to need to
work on thickening your skin.”

I stared at him.
 
“I can’t… “ I said.
 
My throat tightened, a knot appearing
over my vocal cords.
 
I swallowed
and forced it to loosen.
 
“I can’t
do this anymore.
 
I have to go.”

“Charlotte,” he reached out and grabbed
my arm.
 
“Please, let Jared take
you back to the suite.
 
We can talk
about this tonight.”

I wanted to believe him.
 
But I knew exactly what it would be
like if we talked about it tonight.
 
It would be half-truths and ambiguous language, him insisting that he
had nothing to do with Katie’s murder, that everything that had happened this
morning had only been him trying to protect me, to get me ready for the
inevitable destruction that was going to reign over my life.

His hand was on mine now, his skin warm
and inviting.
 
I felt that pull
toward him, the urge to bury my face against his chest.
 
The urge for him to strip me naked, to
feel his hands all over me, to fall asleep with him next to me, to have his
lips on mine.
 

But I pulled away.
 
“No,” I said.
 
“I’m not going back to the suite.”

“Charlotte- ”

I looked at him.
 
“Noah,” I said.
 
“I am going to walk away from you
now.
 
Do not follow me.”

And for once, he listened.

**

I went back to my apartment.
 
It was the only place I had to go.
 

“Hello?” I called as I opened the
door.
 
I’d walked all the way from
Midtown, mostly because I was afraid of what would happen if I stopped, afraid
my thoughts would overtake me and make it impossible to start moving again.

Everything was the same.
 
The tiny kitchen.
 
The entryway.
 
The cheap wooden table Julia had set by the door for our
keys.
 
Everything felt familiar and
foreign at the same time. It hadn’t been that long since I’d called this place
home, since it had been my own little piece of New York, familiar and safe.
 
Now it felt like I didn’t belong here.

The apartment was quiet, but it didn’t
have the kind of stillness it had when no one was home.

“Julia?” I called.

“Charlotte?” a timid voice called
back.
 
I followed the voice down
the hallway.
 
Julia was in the
bathroom.
 
A narrow strip of light
streamed out underneath the closed door.
 
“I’ll be out in a minute.”

I hadn’t talked to her since that night
with Josh, but surprisingly, she didn’t sound upset that I was here.

The door to my bedroom was closed, and I
took a deep breath and put my hand on the knob.
 
I turned it slowly, almost afraid of what I might find
inside.

But my room looked exactly as I’d left it
– the bed was sloppily made, the blinds closed tight.
 
It was slightly dusty, and had the feel
of not being lived in a for a bit, but other than that, nothing seemed to have
been disturbed.

 
I let out a sigh of relief.

I caught sight of myself in the mirror
over my dresser.

“Oh,” I said, shocked at my own
reflection.
 
My hair was a frizzy
cloud enveloping my head.
 
The
makeup I’d put on this morning ran down my face, leaving smudges underneath my
eyes and dried streaks on my face.
 
There were red blotches on my neck, mostly likely caused by a
combination of stress and the rain.

“Hey,” Julia said, appearing at my door.

In contrast to me, her hair was pulled
back into a sleek ponytail, and she smelled of shampoo and soap.
 
Her face was scrubbed clean.
 
I hardly ever saw Julia without make-up
– she was one of those girls who had a makeup closet, the kind who was
always trying out new tricks and buying new products, unlike me, who had one
look that I tended to stay with.
 
Her bare face made her look younger, more vulnerable.
 

She was wearing a white t-shirt that hung
on her thin frame and hit just above her knees, and no bottoms.
 
I wondered if the shirt was Josh’s.

“Hi,” I said.
 
I picked up a package of make-up remover wipes from my
vanity and swiped one over my messy face.
 

If Julia was disturbed by my appearance,
she didn’t say anything.

“Are you back?” she asked.

I hesitated.
 
Something about saying I was back made everything feel so
final. But I couldn’t deny it any longer.
 
To say I wasn’t back was just prolonging the inevitable, allowing myself
to get sucked back into the Noah vortex.

“Yes.”

She nodded, accepting this.
 
She played with the bottom of her
t-shirt.
 
“Do you want to talk
about what happened?”

“I don’t know,” I said warily.
 
I knew we
should
talk about it, knew it was
probably the right thing to do if I was going to be moving back in.
 
But I was so tired.
  
I didn’t know if I could handle
any more confrontation.

“I, um…” Julia looked over her shoulder,
like she was afraid someone was going to overhear her.
 
“I’m pregnant.”

“What?” I repeated, startled.

“I’m pregnant.”
 
She whispered the words, even though we were the only two in
the apartment.
 
“Josh doesn’t know
yet.”

I shook my head.
 
“Julia, that’s impossible.
 
You just started seeing Josh.
 
You wouldn’t be able to tell if you
were pregnant yet.”

I saw the look of guilt cross her
face.
 
So she hadn’t just been
seeing Josh from the other night.
 
She’d been seeing him longer than that.
 
“Okay,” I said, shaking my head again.
 
“How far along are you?”

She held her hand out, and I realized she
was holding a pregnancy test.
 
“I
don’t know.
 
I just found out.”

“And Josh doesn’t…”

“No.”
 
She shook her head.
 
“He doesn’t know.”

I touched her wrist softly, turning it
over so I could get a good look at the test she was holding.
 
Maybe she was mistaken.
 
Maybe she wasn’t reading it right.
 
But it was one of those digital ones, the
kind that took the guesswork out of the whole process, the kind that dashed any
kind of hopes you might have of a mistake.

Sure enough, “PREGNANT” flashed across
the screen.

“What are you going to do?” I asked
gently.
 
I didn’t want to assume
anything either way.
 

“I’m not sure,” she said.
 
“I’ve only been – ” Her eyes fell
on my wrist as I moved my hand away from hers, and she frowned.
 
Then she reached down and picked up my

hand, pushed up the sweater I was
wearing, looked at the faint marks on my wrist which were still there from what
Noah had done to me.

“You too,” she said, tracing them with
her finger.
 
Her voice sounded
awestruck, wary, surprised, relieved, all at the same time.
 

“What?” I frowned.
 

“You too.”
 
She turned her wrist over, showed me the bruises there.
 

“Where did you get those?” I asked.