Now a Major Motion Picture (5 page)

What she saw when she flung open the door, though, left her speechless, the words melting into thin air and utter incomprehension taking place of the indignation she’d felt a moment earlier.

Noah, his softly sculpted back bare, was facing away from her on his disheveled bed. Ashley was standing in a corner of the room, her jeans in a crumpled ball at her feet and her shirt dangling recklessly from the edge of Noah’s dresser. She was fastening a fuchsia-colored lace bra behind her back.

They both started when they heard the door open. Ashley gaped at Amelia, whose eyes, after taking in the initial scene, never left Noah’s naked body. He fell back onto the bed, his face only beginning to register his shock when she spun on her heel and left the way she came. She ran for the door, a strangled cry struggling to escape her lips.

* * *

The same cry escaped from Amelia now as she let go of the numbing grip her mind had formed around this pain. It was nothing compared to the way she’d felt that night. She remembered how she’d cried—sobs wracking her body for hours—after walking in on Noah with Ashley. She couldn’t fathom how she’d gotten to her apartment on those snow-slicked streets, but when Reese came home from work a few hours later, she’d found Amelia curled into a tight ball in the middle of the living room floor, the phone cord yanked from the wall and her face mottled with the tears that had fallen until no trace of moisture remained in her body.

She didn’t want to talk to him because, no matter what he said, it was too late. In high school, they’d made the decision to wait to have sex until they were married. They’d decided to wait, and they’d kept their pledge all this time, and now the wedding was so close. And then he’d fucked Ashley—
Ashley!
—when he hadn’t even had sex with her. There was nothing he could say to make her understand. When he finally showed up at her door the next morning, she didn’t let him in. But Reese did.

Amelia stayed in the same spot she’d been in all morning—on the floor beside her bed, an empty tissue box by her side, its used-up contents strewn across the carpet. When she heard his cautious footsteps approach, she didn’t move or look at him, not even when he dropped onto the floor beside her.

“Amelia.” His voice was thick, rough. Just hearing it made her feel sick—if she’d had anything in her stomach, she would have lost it right into his lap. Her heart pounded a dangerous rhythm in her chest.

“Lia, I love you.”

She winced at his words. Until that moment, they’d been the fullest, the most real thing in her life. Now they sounded hollow, empty, like they were just words.

“I love you so much. I’m so sorry. I…I don’t know how it happened.”

At that something inside her shattered. She turned to face him.

“You don’t know how it happened?” Her tone was incredulous, her voice icier than the parking lot outside. “Do you want me to explain it to you, since I saw it myself?” She shook her head, clenching her teeth and taking several rapid breaths through her nose. She looked into his red-rimmed eyes, and tears she didn’t know she had left in her slid in rapid succession down her cheeks.

“How could you?” she whispered. “How could you do this to me?”

Tears streaked his face, too, but she was too livid to be surprised. She’d never seen him cry before.

“I don’t know. Believe me, I don’t know. I didn’t want to hurt you. I love you. I didn’t want this to happen. I don’t even know how I got there with her. I…I’d been drinking. With Sean. Amelia, you know I’d never do something like this to you. I really don’t know how it happened—”

“Would you please stop saying that? God, Noah. Really? You were
drunk
? That’s really all you’ve got?” Her voice sounded shrill, and she hated it, hated herself, hated him. A sob rose in her throat. “It did happen. It did.”

Her eyes widened in horror.

“Did you even use protection?” She looked at him, and his face was horror-struck, too, like the thought hadn’t occurred to him. She felt the bile rising in her throat again. “My God, Noah. You could have gotten her pregnant, for all you know. You could have some disease.”

He looked haggard, defeated, nothing like himself.

“I’m so sorry, Lia.” Her nickname seemed misplaced on his lips—too intimate after his repulsive breach of trust. He caught her gaze in his. “I could literally kill myself for doing this to you.”

A choking sound made its way up from her throat. “You might as well.” She stared at him, her lower lip trembling, then dropped her gaze from his. “You’re dead to me now.”

She barely heard a word he said after that. He kept talking, pleading, trying over and over to explain, but having no good explanation. She didn’t look at him again. She didn’t think she’d live through it if she did—she thought her heart might simply stop beating.

Later—hours later, minutes later, she wasn’t sure—he grabbed her shoulders and lowered his face to hers.

“You’re my whole world,” he said in an anguished near-whisper, forcing her to meet his eyes. She winced as she caught a glimpse into their familiar depths, now brimming with his pain, no longer a safe haven for her.

She shook him off, tearing her own eyes away.

“Just go,” she said.

It was the end.

* * *

Once the terrible scene had played itself out in Amelia’s mind, she pondered what she hadn’t allowed herself to think about then.
Why did he do it?
The agony the question brought with it even now shocked her with its intensity, and she raised her head, gasping for air.

What had gone through Noah’s head that night? Had he grown tired of waiting on her? She shook her head, willing that not to be true. More likely it had been pre-wedding jitters—cold feet. Maybe he’d freaked out at the idea of sharing his bed, his whole life, his whole
sex life
, with one woman. She had no way of knowing, but if he had, would he have picked Ashley, a girl he’d never expressed any emotion for other than annoyance, to be with? She doubted it.

Maybe it really was as simple as he’d said—he’d been drunk, too far gone to make a rational decision. The idea of that didn’t make her feel much better.

She stared at the cloud-streaked, darkening sky and tried to imagine the scene that had unfolded before she’d arrived at Noah’s that night.

She couldn’t.

But it had happened. And he’d had no good excuse, no way to deny it. And she couldn’t forgive him for it. She’d wanted to, she’d wished she could, but the betrayal was just too big. She never would have trusted him—never would have looked at him—the same way again. Even now, she couldn’t see him without seeing him with Ashley.

Well
, she thought, watching the last traces of sunlight disappear beyond the horizon,
it’s behind me now
. She pushed herself up from the base of the ancient tree, stretching her limbs that were stiff not from sitting still so long, but from the tension that gripped her body from head to toe. She blew out a breath, wondering what Noah was doing now.

She hadn’t seen him since the January after their breakup. She’d spotted him once on campus after suffering through the most joyless Christmas she’d experienced before or since, but she’d walked the other way. When she’d heard he left school, dropped out in his final semester, she’d felt even worse. He’d worked so hard for his architecture degree. Even though he’d ruined
them
, she didn’t want to see him ruin his life.

On the day of her graduation she’d boarded a plane to New York, a couple of suitcases and a resume the only physical baggage she carried with her to her new life.

* * *

Shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her sweater, Amelia retraced her steps through the deserted park, eyes turned down toward the path to avoid a final glimpse of the gazebo. If she’d learned anything from this experience, it was that she hadn’t put her past behind her. And yet, for the first time, she felt ready to face her future.

She slid Henry’s keys from her pocket and clicked his car unlocked, rushing now, anxious to return not only to her family but to the present time. Now that she’d opened this portal to her past, she didn’t feel a need to step back through it. She could feel the body of her third novel finally taking shape, following yet twisting safely away from the true story of the darkest time of her life.

As she entered Brooke’s warm front room, the smell of baked goods brought by neighbors hit her nose, and she realized she was famished. The air buzzed with the low hum of adult conversation, punctuated by her nieces’ squeals and giggles.

When Henry’s eyes met hers they were full of questions. She shook her head, trying to convey,
“You don’t want to know.”
Seconds later, Rose and Lila latched onto her legs, begging her to play. Welcoming the distraction, she plopped down between them on the living room floor and started helping them construct a giant, foam alphabet puzzle. A few minutes later, Brooke handed her a plate heaped with chicken casserole and homemade bread.

“Want something stronger?” she asked as she handed Amelia a glass of juice.

Amelia smiled.

“I’m fine,” she lied.

“I just wondered…you know, you disappeared for a little while.”

“Yeah, sorry, Mom. I just had to get away for a few minutes.” She paused. “Are you okay?”

Brooke looked at her for a long moment and pursed her lips. “Yeah. I’ll be all right.”

Then Lila crashed onto her legs, almost knocking the plate of food from her lap, and the atmosphere shifted. She laughed and slid her hand through her niece’s curly, blonde locks, pulling her into her side. Brooke laughed, too, and they spent the rest of the evening like that, all packed together into one room drawing comfort from each other’s closeness.

That night, as she stared at the walls of her old bedroom, Amelia had trouble shutting off her mind to get to sleep. Coming here, it turned out, had been essential. She hated that it had happened under these circumstances, but it had given her what she needed to move forward—the blank document in her computer wouldn’t be blank much longer.

The next morning she’d scarcely checked her bag and hadn’t even made it through the security line before she felt an overpowering need to put her ideas in writing. She perched on the edge of an airport planter, frantically tapping notes into her iPad screen…

They might have failed their last mission, but she’d be damned if this was going to fail, too. Liana twisted her body around and stared into the hazy mirror at the gaping split in the seam of the dress’ bodice. Sewn from aged satin with a delicate lace trim, it had been her mother’s wedding dress—worn in a different era, a different world, a world that apparently made more sense, but made no sense to Liana at all.

It was a world before meteors and bubble towns and research sites and space missions had overtaken a land of plenty…plenty of food, plenty of work, plenty of wealth. Or so she’d heard.

The dress was two sizes too small for Liana’s tall, willowy frame. Her mother had been four inches shorter than she was and at least that much smaller in the waist, if this dress was any indication.

“I think if we just add a fabric panel here…” Violette was saying, and Liana tried to concentrate on her words. She wished her mom were here to do this with her, but Beth Riley had passed on two years earlier. Liana hadn’t even heard, until it was too late to travel home. Travel was difficult now and had been more difficult then, with the mission in the planning stages and training so intense.

Thank God for Nick, she thought now, flinching as Violette grazed her skin with a sewing needle. “Sorry,” her mentor and stand-in mother said with a sheepish grin.

“Watch it,” Liana said with a fake scowl. She giggled, trying to cover up her dark thoughts.

Yes, thank God for Nick. As grateful as she was for Violette’s support—for the whole mission crew’s support as she and Nick prepared to link their lives once and for all—without Nick she’d truly feel alone in this world. This frightening, huge, and withering world…

Amelia glanced at the time at the top of her screen and felt a surge of panic that she might not make it to her gate. She crammed the iPad in her bag and rushed to the end of the security line. After shuffling through the agonizingly slow procession to the metal detectors, shoes in hand, she half-ran through the terminal. She was anxious to get into the air and back to her story, unable to wait until she arrived at home for the ideas flying through her head to morph into the onscreen words that would become her next best seller.

Awakening

Noah, October

Noah stared blankly at the woman perched across the table from him, her green eyes intent on his face, an emotion flashing behind them that he couldn’t quite place—was it concern…or annoyance?

“I’m sorry, did you say something?”

He was doing it again.

He’d noticed, as she was speaking, the way the last, rich beams of sunlight streaming through the window at the front of the tiny bistro caught individual strands of her long, brown hair, brushing them with a tinge of red.

He was so caught up in this observation he hadn’t heard the question she’d just asked, obviously struggling to keep up her end of the conversation. It seemed like every date he went on left him feeling lonelier, more withdrawn, rather than having the intended, opposite effect. And there’d been plenty of dates—lately it felt as if every friend, every co-worker he had was on a personal mission to set him up with every unattached girl in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

His date frowned in frustration. “I just asked if you grew up around here.”

It was his turn to frown.

“No.” He volunteered no further information, to the girl’s obvious dissatisfaction. He chewed his lip, aware suddenly what terrible company he must be. He dipped his eyes to the table for a moment before raising his lashes to look at her. One corner of her mouth was twisted into a puzzled grimace as she apparently wondered whether it was something she’d said.