I push my way into the cafeteria, looking up to see Noah already here. He gives me a warm smile and I make my way across to him. “I think you’re right. Forevermore, we shall be known as ‘Hully’.”
A booming laugh pulls from her before a pained groan. “Shit. you can’t make me laugh like that,” she moans.
I pause in the middle of the cafeteria, alarmed. “Crap, are you ok?” I ask as Noah looks over me with furrowed brows, wondering what’s keeping me. He strides over to me as I ask, “Did you go for your walk? How’d you go?”
“Is that Tully?” Noah questions, taking my waist as I nod. “Is she alright?”
“No,” Tully yells out, making it obvious that she can hear Noah through the line. “Tell that big asshole that if he wants to know how I am, he can call me himself.”
I look up at Noah with a beaming smile. “Yeah, she’s fine.”
Those green eyes of his become suspicious and he pauses a moment before dragging me along behind him. I focus back on Tully. “Well, did that cow force you out of bed?”
“Yesss,” she groans, drawing it out. I can just imagine her rolling her eyes as she says it and I let out a breath, feeling a rant coming along. “It’s better when you’re here. She holds me too tight as though I’m going to fall, but you just let me do it myself. I mean, it’s only a few internal stitches. It’s not like I crushed my pelvis and need to retrain myself to walk. I swear, all the nurses here think I’m incapable of doing anything myself, but if they backed off a little, they’d see that I’m fine.”
“They’re just doing their job,” I remind her for the millionth time over the past two weeks and thanking my lucky stars that I didn’t sign up to be her nurse. She’d probably chop my head off. “You’ll be out of there soon and back at home where I’m sure Noah will strap you to your bed and refuse to let you move.”
Noah smirks back at me and I send up a little prayer, hoping that Tully somehow makes it through this recovery without murdering my boyfriend. “Geez,” she groans. “Maybe I’m better off here after all.”
“Exactly my point,” I tell her, though now I’m a little jealous; I wouldn’t mind having Noah strap me to a bed and refuse to let me go. Damn, the things he would do to me.
She rambles on a little while longer and before I know it, I’m sitting down beside Noah, minding my own business as he talks to Jared Frazer, one of the few seniors at Haven Falls Private who doesn’t give a shit about Noah’s status.
I hate this.
School isn’t the same without Tully here. She’s my girl, my person, the one I can talk all sorts of shit to and know I won’t be judged. Add that to the fact that Rivers seems to have done a disappearing act, and not just the disappearing act the boys do when they’re doing a job for Anton, like a full on actual disappearing act. Things are changing and I’m not sure I like it.
I lean back in my seat and tune out the boys’ conversation as they talk about something to do with the races. Boys will be boys, right? There are no races anymore yet they can’t stop talking about it. I mean, is it a rule of owning a penis that you have to discuss cars and tits all the time?
A hand slides its way down and takes possession of my thigh and I can’t help but suck in a breath as the butterflies go batshit crazy in my stomach. Nearly five months and he still makes me feel like the only girl in the world. The kicker is, as I look up and take in his face, he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.
Is this even possible? It’s a natural reaction for him to reach out and touch me, every chance he gets. He reads me like a book yet somehow, he’s blind to the fact that I completely fall apart inside when I feel that electricity his skin sends through my body. I’m a mess when he’s around, but the good kind. I can’t think, I can’t breathe, I can’t function. Everything is him.
My world starts and stops with Noah Cage. He has completely captured me and I’ve fallen as hard as humanly possible.
I can’t help but slide my hand beneath his and hold onto it as I pick at my lunch. I haven’t exactly had an appetite the last two weeks. Noah isn’t completely thrilled with it, but he understands why. Things are fucked up and we’re all hurting from Rivers betrayal; Tully the most.