I spin around, not bothered by my near nakedness in the least. “What does it matter?” I question. “I’m not yours.”
“It fucking matters,” he snaps before shutting his mouth and clenching his jaw. He’s quiet for a short moment and something tells me he’s working hard to control himself from arguing the point, but what can he say? I’m a free agent. I’m not here saying anything about the fact that he was probably with Monica tonight, screwing her pregnant brains out.
“Here,” he finally says, drawing my attention to the glass of water and pain killers in his hands. He passes them to me and I reluctantly take them, hating how much I love the fact that he’s looking after me, even though I really don’t deserve it.
“Thanks,” I grumble, glancing away.
The second the tablet touches my lips, my stomach churns. My eyes widen and I thrust the glass of water back into his hands. “Oh, no,” I panic, barging past him and slapping a hand over my mouth.
No, no. no. This is not happening.
“What’s wrong?” he yells after me as I haul ass up the hallway and barge into the bathroom, hating that I’ve probably just woken his parents.
I make it just in time to throw myself down in front of the toilet and hurl up the entire contents of my stomach which mainly consists of green liquid. And let me tell you, it certainly doesn’t taste as sweet coming up than as it did going down.
“Fuck,” Noah curses, flying in behind me and scooping my hair out of my face. He reaches across to the counter and pinches one of Tully’s elastics before doing his best at tying my hair up.
“No, Noah,” I moan between gags as it seems to just keep coming. “Go away. I don’t want you to see me like this.”
“Well,” he chuckles. “It’s too fucking late now.” I groan and he runs his fingers down the side of my face. “I’m not going anywhere, baby.”
With that, he grabs me two wet, cold washcloths. One to clean myself up with and the other to hold against my head. To be honest, I’d probably prefer to take a shower, but knowing me, I’d probably drown in it somehow.
When my stomach settles, I drop down to the ground, laying my face against the cold tiles. “Don’t do that,” Noah cringes with disgust. “Rivers was in here for ages this afternoon.”
“Ewwww.” The thought of what he did in here has my stomach clenching once again and I hurl myself back up and over the toilet bowl, but as I’ve already emptied my stomach, all that’s left for me to do is to dry heave.
Great. I can’t believe I’ve just hurled in front of Noah Cage. Good work, dipshit. If I didn’t fuck up my chances before, I certainly have now.
“Sorry,” Noah murmurs, slightly pleased with himself. I guess that was his payback for my comments over the past half an hour.
Noah scoops me up off the floor and takes me back into his room. He looks down at my shirt with a cringe and pulls it up over my head before taking the shirt off his back and slipping it over my head. “You’ll sleep in here,” he tells me.
I shake my head. “Bad idea, daddy.”
He groans, probably hating that I’m calling him that. “Would you rather I wake up in the morning to find you’ve choked on your own vomit during the night?”
I nod. “At this point… yeah.”
He rolls his eyes and leads me back to his bed. “You’re so damn dramatic,” he tells me. “Now get your ass in bed and go to sleep.”
I do as I’m instructed and keep right over the opposite side of the bed, hating that we’re so close yet so damn far away. I don’t sleep and my gut is telling me that neither is he, but I’m terrified of rolling over to see the haunted look in his eye.
All it would take is for me to reach out to him, to just hold him for the night. No one would have to know, but it’s not right. He’s with Monica now, despite the fact that he can barely tolerate the girl. He wants to do the right thing and he has a child to think about now.
I can’t resist. I just need to peek.
I roll over to face him. His arm is propped under his head as he stares up at the roof, ignoring the fact that I’m staring at him like some kind of creeper. I was right, he looks haunted. He’s clearly torn about what to do here – what his head is telling him to do and what his heart is screaming for.
“Noah?” I whisper into the darkened room. He turns his head and those green eyes that I’m getting so damn used to are stormy and wild.