“Oh.” She stared at him, trying to reconcile this information with the Noah she knew. He was meticulous, knew every rule, left no stone unturned. He hadn’t even bothered to look up her diagnosis? Had he cared so little about her?
His mouth twisted in disgust. “Liv told me how much pain you were in. I knew that if I started looking into it, I wouldn’t be able to stop until I knew all the details. I couldn’t handle knowing the details and not being able to help.”
Oh.It wasn’t that he’d cared too little. It was that he’d cared too much?
“It was pretty clear you weren’t going to answer my calls, so it seemed unlikely that you were even going to tell me what happened. I figured you’d changed your mind about us.”
“No,” she said, squeezing his hand. “I never changed my mind.” She needed him to know it all, to understand all the things she’d never been able to tell him before. “The morning after that party was the first time I couldn’t feel my legs.” He sucked in a breath, but she continued on. If she stopped now, she’d never get it all out. “It came and went, but it scared me enough that I went back to my mom’s for the rest of the weekend. I’d forgotten she was out of town. By the time I got back to Jersey, my back had started to seize up. I thought I’d pinched a nerve, that I could sleep it off. When you called—”
“I don’t care about the phone calls,” he said, his voice tortured.
“I do. When you called, I was afraid that if I answered I’d ask you to come help me.”
“I wish you had.” He leaned his forehead against hers and gripped the back of her neck like he needed to reassure himself she was there. “I would have come.”
“I know. But I didn’t want you to.” He recoiled, hurt flashing in his eyes. “I didn’t want you to have to be my big brother. I wanted you to be the guy I was falling for, and that wasn’t someone I wanted to see me like that.”
He took her face in his hands, pressing a kiss to her lips. “I hate that you were alone.”
“I should have answered. I’m sorry.”
“I should have known something was wrong when you didn’t answer. I should have come looking for you.”
“You did,” she said, still trying to reconcile everything she thought she knew about the last six years with the knowledge that he had gone to the hospital.
“Not soon enough.”
She chuckled through the tears clogging her throat. “What? You should have searched the tristate area because I declined a few calls?”
“Yes,” he growled. “I should have been there.”
“Overbearing,” she whispered, the ghost of a smile on her lips.
“What happened next?”
She shrugged, the story still sending a shiver of embarrassment through her even after all this time. “I waited too long to get help. By the time my mom got home, I needed to go to the hospital. I was dehydrated and over the counter painkillers weren’t helping anymore. They ran a million tests, but no one knew what was wrong. So, they kept me for a couple of days, got my pain under control, and then sent me home. The doctors couldn’t tell me what it was for another six months. There is no test for fibromyalgia, and no cure. Just ways to manage the symptoms.”
“Your mom said—”
“My mother was wrong. There was no one thing that brought on that flare, Noah. My doctors think it was a perfect storm. You probably don’t remember, but I was in a car accident earlier in the year.”
“I remember.”
“That’s when the pain started, but I just thought it was left over from the crash. And I didn’t make time for physical therapy—I was overscheduled and barely sleeping as it was. They’re not really sure what causes fibromyalgia, but some of it may be genetic, and any kind of physical trauma or stress can bring on the first flare. I’m sure having too much to drink at that party didn’t help, but neither did the intense cardio class I took that morning. Or the stress of taking too many classes and working part time. You did not do this to me. No one did this to me. It just…is.”
Noah pulled her against his chest, holding her tighter than was comfortable. She nestled her head beneath his chin and breathed in his sage and leather scent, planting a kiss on the dip in his clavicle.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he whispered into her hair.
“I’m sorry I didn’t let you be.”
∞∞∞
Noah hadn’t intended to shower with Callie that morning—she needed to get to the bridal suite to get ready for the wedding and he needed to spend some time going over his new score sketches before he met his uncle and Wolf for brunch—but as he stood at the vanity brushing his teeth, she climbed into the shower with a saucy glance over her shoulder.
“Don’t wiggle your ass at me,” he said around his toothbrush.
“You love it,” she laughed.
