Page 17 of My Fault

He stumbled off, bleeding, trying to get as far from me as possible, and I turned back around to find Noah terrified.

Something shifted inside me when I saw her expression. I couldn’t stand her, I could happily have wrung her neck, but, dammit, no one deserved to be drugged without their consent. By the look on her face, I could tell this night had taken Noah past her limits.

I tried to talk myself down, observing her as I walked over slowly. When I was close, she started walking backward, mouth ajar, frighted and trembling.

“Jesus, Noah, I’m not going to hurt you, okay?” I said. I felt like a criminal, and I hadn’t even done anything.

When I left her, I just assumed she’d call her mom and she and my dad would pick her up and take her back home. I never thought she’d climb into the car of the first idiot who came along and show up at a party absolutely unsuited to a girl her age.

“What did he give me?” she asked, looking at me like I was a demon.

I sighed and looked up, trying to put my thoughts in order. My father had just called to ask where the hell Noah was. Her mother was worried, so I said I’d call her right back. I told him Noah was with me, at Miles’s house, and we were watching a movie with his sister.

It was a lie, made up on the spot, but my father could never know what had happened tonight or where. I’d gotten out of too many bad situations for him to learn that nothing had actually changed. It had been hard for me to keep my private life under wraps, and I sure wasn’t going to let someone like Noah spoil it.

It hadn’t even been a day, and she’d managed to be a bigger pain in my ass than any woman I’d ever had the pleasure of meeting.

“You all right?” I asked, ignoring her question.

“I want to kill you,” she answered. I could see her eyelids were drooping. I needed to get her on the phone with her mom ASAP before the situation got worse.

“Yeah, let’s take a rain check on that,” I said, grabbing her arm. “You’ll be all right. Try to relax.”

When we reached my car, I opened the passenger-side door and waited for her to sit down. Then I took out my phone.

“You need to tell your mother you’re fine and not to stay up for you,” I said, looking for Dad’s number in my contacts. “Tell her we’re watching a movie at some friend’s place.”

“Up yours,” she said, head lolling back, shutting her eyes.

I grabbed her face and opened her eyes. She looked me with such hatred I wanted to find something I could kick, break, and shatter into a million pieces.

“Call her or this is going to get ugly for real,” I said, imagining what might happen if my father found out what had happened tonight. Not to mention Noah’s mother.

“What are you going to do to me?” she said, her pupils getting more dilated. “Leave me behind so someone can rape me? Wait…you already did that once.”

I get it—I deserved that—but there was no time for sarcasm.

“I’m dialing her now. If you’re smart, you’ll tell her what I said.”

A few seconds later, I heard Raffaella’s voice on the other line.

“Noah, are you okay?”

She looked at me before responding.

“Yeah,” she answered, to my relief, “we’re watching a movie. We’ll be home a little late.” Her eyes turned up toward the roof of the car.

“I’m so glad you went, sweetie. You’ll love Nick’s friends, just wait…”

I looked aside when I heard that.

“For sure,” Noah said.

“See you tomorrow, babe. I love you.”

“You too. Bye.”

I took the phone and slipped it into my pocket.