Kitabı oku: «Power Games», sayfa 7
14
New York
Tawny Lascelles was partying in a club on Gansevoort Street, less with friends than with tolerable randoms who were out to get papped with anyone who was anyone and, better still, the most desirable supermodel on the scene. Who cared if the hangers-on were genuine, so long as they were the right level of attractive? Which basically meant attractive enough to act as a plumping cushion for Tawny’s irresistible jewel, but not so pretty as to rival her in any discernible way. Tawny did not like to be rivalled.
It was survive on your own in this industry, or don’t survive at all.
Tawny was fresh from this afternoon’s FNYC shoot, her first for Angela Silvers’ tag as it announced the launch of its hyped new range. Working with the upcoming label was her most envied gig to date. She treasured the bitten expressions on her fellow models’ faces as yet another deal went her way. Tawny snagged all the major names. Why? Because she was outrageously stunning, she chilled with the right people and she flirted on that line between innocence and danger that, for all the hard work in the world, models either possessed or they didn’t.
‘Everyone in here’s, like, staring at you,’ teased her wardrobe girl, Minty.
Tawny sighed, sipping vodka as her blue eyes scoped the room.
‘Check out Tess Barnes’ sherbet drainpipes!’ she purred. ‘So unflattering.’
‘I know, sack the stylist.’
‘I like her T-shirt though.’
‘Not as cute as yours.’
‘Serious?’
‘Sure. She’s too bony.’
‘Or I’m too fat?’ Tawny’s retort was quick as a whip.
‘Shit, no! God. You, fat? Come on, you’re the only model that exists right now, far as the bookings go. Tess Barnes is so yesterday. You, babe, are today.’
Minty’s deft brushwork, credited with awarding Tawny the most striking and replicated eyebrows of the decade, was almost as impressive as her charm offensive, which was subtle enough not to be noted by Tawny but sufficiently forceful as to make her utterly indispensable to her number-one client. Tawny, like most models, thrived on compliments. Minty was the best at giving them.
‘I’m bored,’ said Tawny, as Kevin Chase’s new record came on and everyone flocked to the dance floor. ‘Wanna get high?’
The girls vanished into the bathroom. Tawny took a compact from her purse. When she had first been snapped with halos of powder round her nostrils, her manager had freaked and several pussy brands had backed out of their contracts. Now, it was expected—even encouraged. She was a supermodel, not a role model.
Tawny clocked him as soon as they emerged.
‘Great,’ she said. ‘There’s that jerk-off I met in LA.’
‘Who?’
Tawny flicked her mane. ‘Jacob Lyle.’
‘Really? Where?’ Minty’s voice dropped. ‘Shit, he’s sexy, isn’t he?’
‘If you say so.’
‘Not for you?’
‘He’s so full of himself it’s coming out his ass.’
Minty giggled. ‘Should we go say hello?’ she asked.
‘No way—he’s a fucking perv.’
But Minty saw how Tawny narrowed her eyes, checking that if Jacob Lyle were indeed a perv, then he would be perving exclusively on her. It was the same story wherever they went: Tawny had to be the most attractive girl in the room and, eleven times out of ten, she was. What was it with models? They had been given exteriors most girls could only dream of, yet however gorgeous or successful they became, the jaws of insecurity went eternally snapping at their Louboutin heels. Tawny was legendary for her constant appraisal of other women. Despite being tagged the World’s Most Beautiful, the Sexiest American or the Most Significant Style Icon Since Marilyn Monroe, the supermodel existed in fear of her crown being snatched.
Other women were perpetual and dreadful threats. Minty recalled a gallery opening they had been invited to last year, from which Tawny had demanded to leave almost immediately. She never admitted it, but Minty knew. Another woman at the function had been enticing male attention: Celeste Cavalieri, the Italian jeweller. Celeste’s allure was at the other end of the spectrum from Tawny’s: she was thin and petite, with a pixie crop of sable hair and deerskin-brown eyes. Celeste’s beauty was quiet. It did not shout from the rooftops and it did not flaunt or strut. It did not even know itself.
Celeste hadn’t noticed the attention—let alone cared. Tawny couldn’t bear it.
‘Did Jacob come on to you?’ Minty asked now, keeping their exchange on safe ground.
‘Yeah.’ Tawny polished off the vodka. ‘Course.’
‘What did he say?’
‘I can’t remember.’
But that was a lie. Tawny remembered every word. Sometimes she replayed it in her mind and it turned her on so much that she had to vanish into the nearest toilet cubicle and plunge her fingers into her knickers until she came.
‘If you’re so hot on Mr Lyle,’ Tawny commented, ‘he’s all yours.’
It stank of bullshit. The thought of Minty Patrick receiving Jacob’s attentions was unthinkable. Jacob had been enamoured by her, by Tawny; his tongue had practically been hanging out of his mouth. Tawny knew he was a blatant, shameless womaniser, the kind of arrogant that, while you sussed it, was irritatingly appealing, and she recalled the flutter of interest when it emerged he’d once referred to university campuses (Jacob’s preferred haunts for checking out fresh talent, business or otherwise) as ‘cam-pussies’, for the sheer number of girls he bedded. This sort of thing ought to send women screaming for the hills, but somehow, with Jacob’s swag, had them screaming in their beds at night with a dildo vibrating between their legs.
Tawny was the fairest of them all—and she planned to make Jacob work for it.
‘We’re going.’ She grabbed her purse.
‘What? Already?’
‘Tell JP to send a car.’
After another toilet refreshment, the women took the elevator down to the street. It was a cold night and Tawny wrapped her fur tighter as they were ushered into a hovering car. Deliberately she faced away from the road opposite. The only downside to her beloved Tower Club was its neighbouring joint, the gritty, grimy Rams & Rude Girls Dancing Bar. As usual, the memories clung on, dripping poison.
Tawny had been a different girl when she had first arrived in New York.
Another life. One she could never, ever go back to.
She’d had nothing and no one. Running from Sunnydale, the hick town where she’d grown up, Tawny Linden had been an ugly duckling desperate to make something of her future. Maybe she would become an actress, or write a film script, or find a rich boyfriend. Instead, she had been picked up by Nathan, a man who made his living skulking the subway and collecting waifs and strays like old coins.
Beyond her lank hair, train-tracks and wide, trusting eyes, Nathan had seen Tawny’s potential. Bar work, he’d sold it as. Good pay. The start of a new chapter …
She should go with him, he said. He would look after her.
Nathan certainly did—and then some. He looked after her every morning. Every night. Every hour in between, until she was sore and ragged and weeping …
Tawny Linden had been powerless to leave. She could not go back. The Rams was the closest thing she had to a home and, over the coming months, as her beauty surfaced and her duckling became a swan, she began to bat for the big league.
That was when the competition really got going.
It was always a question of which Rams girls the punters wanted that night, who was prettiest and who they were prepared to pay most for. That was how the girls earned their keep. From the beginning Tawny understood she had to be the chosen girl, always, every time—she had to be the hottest, the most willing, the sexiest and the best—in case the Rams decided she wasn’t bagging the dollars and fired her ass out onto the street. She’d have ended up a hooker, just another sunken-eyed junkie begging for dimes. OK, the work wasn’t easy—the men she was forced to service, the things they had made her do—but it was a damn sight better than that.
Thank Christ she had gotten out when she did.
‘You OK?’ asked Minty. ‘You look like you saw a ghost.’
Manhattan rushed past. The Mercedes was warm, the seats plush. Tawny lit a cigarette and opened the window, flicking the butt with red-painted talons.
‘I’m better than OK,’ she said. ‘I’m Tawny Lascelles.’
Minty gave a nervous laugh.
‘No kidding,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you always been?’
But Tawny didn’t reply.
15
Celeste Cavalieri held the diamond up to the light. It twinkled and dazzled between her fingers, a plum-sized explosion of brilliance. She angled it, examining the way it refracted and dispelled the gleam, her eyes trained to hunt out the tiniest imperfection. The clarity was superb, a fifty-two carat Peruzzi with faceted girdle. Bright white.
She would never consider lifting a piece such as this, but the magnetism was always there. It wasn’t about the value, or even the object itself—it was simply the thrill of the steal. Once, Celeste had taken a comb from a woman’s open bag, next to her at an exhibition. Once, she had slipped from a Paris department store with a silk scarf folded away in her purse. Once, she had removed a silver-plated espresso cup from a bistro in Bruges. It didn’t matter what it was. It mattered that she took it.
‘Are you nearly done?’
Celeste jumped. She turned to the museum overseer, who had popped his head round the door. ‘Sorry,’ she smiled, ‘you startled me.’
‘It gets quiet in here, huh.’
‘Sure does.’
He returned her smile. ‘Let me know when you’re ready?’
Celeste nodded. The door closed behind him and she exhaled.
Never again! But every time was the last. Every time she swore she was through. Celeste Cavalieri was revered, a trusted asset to the world’s richest families. As if she had to push that trust, a dare, to see how far it would strain …
She touched the bracelet on her wrist, ruby and silver. Her first ever steal, from a castle in Hungary. She could see it now: buried deep in the forest, its turrets rising like a drawing in a fairytale. The owner had been an ex-banker, living there with his son. Their names escaped her now. Strange people. The son had a stammer.
Celeste had been summoned to value a painting of the banker’s deceased wife, commissioned to the finest artist of the decade. A portrait of a woman, hung dourly in the castle’s Great Hall, the oil thick and dingy and the features encased in shadow …
A channel of cold seeped down her spine.
Carefully, reverently, Celeste replaced the museum diamond in its casket. The jewel shone as a nugget of treasure on the ocean floor, seductive and dangerous.
Exiting the building on Central Park West, she was met by a bustling hive of rush-hour workers and sky-facing tourists. As she hailed a cab, her attention was caught by a bizarre headline on a nearby newsstand. She did a double-take, scarcely believing her eyes. It read:
ITALIAN INDUSTRIALIST INVOLVED IN ALIEN HOAX.
Celeste approached. The accompanying photograph showed Signor Rossetti being escorted from the Veroli house she had run a valuation at back in February.
Detectives stormed the financier’s hidden-away mansion at the weekend and described what they found as ‘a grave and bold deception’. Rossetti and his wife were arrested on suspicion of three counts of fraud, including extortion of money from a group of as yet unnamed conspiracy theorists. Claiming their estate to be a UFO crash site, the Rossettis’ replica was ‘impressive’ and ‘high-concept’, prompting Rossetti to be tagged ‘the Martian magician’ …
Celeste was startled. No doubt about it, the Veroli house had been peculiar, even by the standards she was used to—these old money clans were invariably eccentric, their half-forgotten-about painting, battered coffer of Grandmother’s gems or relic hidden in a drawer fetching enough to sustain any ordinary person for a lifetime.
But this?
She remembered something else, too—the truly unusual part. Among the clandestine meetings she had witnessed, one visit in particular stood out. Celeste had been locked in the Veroli library, stifled behind shrouded windows and permitted to leave the room only under escort. But she was trained to decipher nuance, it was her trade, and no detail escaped detection: a smack of footsteps drifting in from the gallery, a series of closed doors and an American accent, gruff and male, speaking with authority but at the same time deep unease. Celeste had placed it right away.
Republican senator Mitch Corrigan—movie star turned government royalty. Family man. All-American hero. Toast of Washington. What was he doing here?
Rain spitting against glass, Celeste had dragged up a stool and peeled open the drapes. The Veroli courtyard spilled into view. Out on the cobbles stood a billowing structure, a shed draped in tarpaulin, flanked by two sentries in protective helmets and boiler suits. The visitors were given the same, and after a short dialogue were admitted. Twenty minutes later they emerged, faces ashen, eyes thick with horror.
Shocked, she’d stumbled down. What was in there? What had they seen?
Celeste thought no more of it. She wasn’t paid to ask questions. Even so, she’d been intrigued when, a week later, reporter Eve Harley left a private appeal on her voicemail. As a rule, Celeste didn’t liaise with the press and, despite further attempts, hadn’t been in touch. Here, then, was why. A group of as yet unnamed conspiracy theorists …
Senator Corrigan would be wild with fear at the exposé.
‘Hey, lady, you want a ride or not?’ The cab driver leaned out of his window, chewing gum.
Hastily, Celeste bought the paper. People never failed to amaze her. Humans were more complex and subtle fakes than any gem she could uncover. She made her living from citing forgeries, from scratching the surface and finding what lay beneath. Knowing when something wasn’t all it appeared. She herself was no exception.
Climbing into the taxi, she slammed the door hard.
Back at the Plaza, she undressed, folded her clothes into a neat, even-sided block and brushed her teeth, once, twice, a third time. Celeste spent minutes brushing, always did, before and after every meal and sometimes in between. It made her feel clean, and the fiercer she brushed the more she stripped away. She didn’t need her shrink to tell her it was all connected: the theft, the OCD, the insecurities, the throttling habits, the damaging relationship she’d been in for five years now, so that every trip away she was counting the days till she could leave, just to get away from him …
Slipping beneath crisp white sheets, she flicked on the TV and landed on a biopic of Tawny Lascelles—Rise of a Fashion Icon. Tawny was gabbling into camera at a fashion shoot, chatting to reporters at a red carpet line-up then posing on the arm of her latest boyfriend, her dress split to the thigh and her scarlet lips pouting.
Celeste was ready to switch over, but something about the model held her in thrall. She had met Tawny once, a while back. Though she mixed regularly with the rich and famous, she still found their company challenging—all that show and glitz, it wasn’t her thing. Discretion and caution were the hallmarks of her career and over the years she had honed them to perfection. In a crowd she could blend in, become hidden, and that was exactly the way she liked it. Anonymous.
The supermodel had been even more striking in real life than she was in pictures: goddess-like, with long, caramel legs and tousled blonde hair. Celeste had felt outshone by her in every conceivable way. On introduction she had extended the arm of friendship, warmly saying hello, but all Tawny offered in return was a sniff of disdain, as if an unpleasant smell had passed under her nose. She had scanned Celeste up and down, deemed her unworthy of comment—worse, offensive to her in some way—and proceeded to whip round and stalk off without a single reply.
‘Models!’ their host had feebly joked, thrusting another drink in her hand.
Celeste had been able to think of a few other words.
She killed the channel and lay back.
What must it be like to be Tawny Lascelles? Brazen, unapologetic, so absolutely sure in her own skin as to cease to care an iota for what other people thought? Her rudeness was so blatant it almost demanded respect. Celeste had been left open-mouthed, wondering what on earth she had done wrong.
She closed her eyes. Sometimes, when she was alone, she imagined she was a different woman—a woman like Tawny, contained and confident, wholesome and undamaged, resting in splendour like a china doll in a velvet-lined box. A woman like Tawny didn’t harbour darkness. She was a golden girl, a perfect swan. Clean.
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
Broadway’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.
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