Page 58 of Your Fault

I was speechless.

“Nick will never race again, not after what happened last year,” I finally managed to say.

“Well, it’s just a matter of time till you see for yourself.”

As soon as I could, I left. I didn’t want to keep talking to her; I didn’t want to keep listening to her. Nicholas wouldn’t race again. We’d both promised each other we wouldn’t make that mistake. Those races had made Ronnie my enemy, and then he’d almost killed me, not to mention schemed with my father to kidnap me. What had been fun at first had turned terrible and dangerous, and that was why I didn’t believe a word Jenna was saying.

When I got home, it was almost dinnertime. I went in, trying not to make noise, and heard my mother in the living room. I didn’t want to talk to her, so I crept into the kitchen, grabbed a ready-made salad from the fridge with a Coke Zero, and hurried up the stairs. Right as I was placing everything on the bed, my phone rang.

Another unknown number.

Shit. That could only mean one person. I let it ring, feeling my pulse speed up. I still felt guilty for telling Nicholas’s mother that I would meet her to talk about him behind his back, but the social worker had called Nick to tell him she’d decided his sister could stay with him for a few days, and he was elated about it. There was no turning back. Maddie wouldn’t arrive till Thursday, there were two days left, but I knew as soon as Anabel set foot in LA, she’d want to see me.

The phone rang again, and again I didn’t pick up. Then a text message came through.

See you at the Hilton at LAX at noon. A.

Shit. Anabel Grason had just sent me a message. I erased it as soon as I read it. I didn’t want there to be any proof of what I was about to do. I felt awful, as if I were betraying Nick, and deep down I knew that I was. But apart from wanting his sister to spend a few days with him without a social worker around or the clock ticking down, I wanted to know what that woman had to say, what her angle was, apart from pumping me for details about her son.

I typed a short and simple response.

OK.

I lost my appetite after that, as well as what little dignity I had, at least in regards to that woman.

“Come on, Noah, pick one,” Nicholas said, exasperated.

“I’ll go for beige,” I said after thinking it over for a long time.

Nick rolled his eyes.

“If it’s beige, we’ll just leave it green, the way it is,” he said, taking the sample out of my hand.

“Green?” I said with disgust. “You’re going to stick a little girl in a green room?”

The woman who was helping us and had waited patiently while we chose a color for Maddie’s room decided it was time to interrupt us.

“Green is very stylish, even if you’re still on the fence… How far along are you?” she asked, looking at my stomach and smiling.

It took me a few seconds to figure out what she was insinuating.

“What? No, no!” I shook my head.

Nicholas turned serious and stared icily at the employee.

“Oh, I thought…” she said, looking at Nick, then me, then my belly again.

She’d thought I was pregnant and we were choosing the color for our baby’s bedroom. Our baby… God, why did I have to think about that? It gave me an uneasy feeling.

“We’re choosing a color for my six-year-old sister’s bedroom,” Nicholas said, putting the samples on the counter. “Do we look like we’re about to be parents? My girlfriend’s eighteen and I’m twenty-two. Why don’t you think before you start drawing stupid conclusions?”

I was shocked. What was that outburst about?

“I…I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

I understood how she was feeling. The look Nicholas gave her was the same one he gave me when I was upsetting him.

“It’s fine. We’ll go with white. You can tell the painters to come out tomorrow,” I said, trying to calm things down. Nicholas’s blue eyes looked furious, but he didn’t say more.