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His hands dropped away, and I watched him feel for the suitcase, pull the handle up on it because he was truly leaving. I couldn’t believe it…or want to.
“Noah, what are you going to do? Where are you going to go?”
“I called a cab. I’ll go to Connecticut first. After that? I don’t know and I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”
He paused, a muscle in his jaw twitching, his voice gruff. “I know this hurts. God, believe me. My heart feels like it’s ready to explode for the pain I’m causing you. But it’s better. You can’t see it now, but it is. I have to go and make myself worthy of you, Charlotte. If I have to fight and claw my way through hell, I will, if it means we can be together the way you deserve.”
I stared, unable to find the words. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or say. Goodbye? Am I supposed to just let you walk out of here? No.” I moved in front of him, blocking him from his bag. “I know I have to go to that audition. I can feel it waiting for me. That tour. But how am I supposed to leave you like this? I thought…” The tears were breaking through the shock now. “I thought you’d come with me.”
He held me this time, his arms wrapping around me, his words against my cheek. “I’m going to find you, Charlotte. I’m going to come back to you as the man you deserve. Whole. Don’t say goodbye to me. Wait for me. Please. It’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of you. Wait for me. Trust me. I will come back to you. I swear it. Okay?”
I clung to him. “No, I can’t…”
He held my face that was wet with tears, his own hazel eyes shining.
“I love you, Charlotte,” he said brokenly. “I love you more than my own self, and that’s the only reason I can walk out that door tonight.”
I closed my eyes, feeling his lips on my mouth, his hands holding me, the pain vibrating off of him. He deepened the kiss for a moment and then let go, a small sound of anguish tearing from his throat. And then his hands fell away.
I kept my eyes closed a long time, seeing nothing but blackness. When I opened them again, the house was empty. Noah was gone.
act iii: cadenza
Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.—Helen Keller
chapter thirty-four
I stepped onto the sidewalk in the early morning hours. It was still quiet. The air felt thick with humidity, maybe rain. I unfolded my cane and tapped my way down the sidewalk until I felt the curve of the curb.
My knuckles ached where I’d struck Deacon. I concentrated on that to keep from turning around and going right back. Because those bones should have been broken. My hand didn’t hurt enough. I hadn’t hit himhard enough.
“What are you doing?” Charlotte had asked, her voice breaking and filling with tears.
Saving us,I wanted to say, but that sounded too heroic, and I was anything but. I had failed to protect Charlotte. Deacon, I realized, had hit me much harder than I had hit him. He hit me where it hurt the most, and Charlotte had almost paid the worst price.
I kept walking.
I rounded the corner, out of sight of the townhouse, should Charlotte think to come after me, and fished my cell phone from my pocket. I’d told her I’d called a cab, but that was a lie. I had no plan, no idea what to do next. I told my phone to call Lucien.
I was still wearing a tux, for Christ’s sake, though I’d long ago torn off the bow. I ripped the top three buttons of my shirt open as I waited for the call to go through, feeling like I was suffocating. Lucien’s sleep-thickened voice answered.
“Allô? Noah?”
So much concern. And I’d treated him so badly. This man, who’d been like a second father to me. Who’d put up with me, who hired assistants for me while I systematically fired them or drove them away. But for one. He’d brought me Charlotte, and had I ruined that too? All the bullshit I’d barricaded myself behind was falling away, leaving me naked and exposed out there on the street. Lost.
“Lucien,” I croaked, my voice sounding as broken down and raw as I felt. I said something I hadn’t said to him since the accident. “I need you.”
I hadn’t been to Lucien’s high-rise condo in a decade. I vaguely remembered tasteful art—mostly glass sculptures and Waterford crystal—and the smell of his Dunhill cigarettes. As he led me inside, the scent of that smoke and his expensive cologne were like a shot in the arm of pure nostalgia.
He sat me down on a leather chair—if it was the same as I’d remembered, it was a deep green color—and lit a cigarette.
“So,” Lucien said, exhaling. “Tell me.”
“I left Charlotte.”
“So I have observed. Why?”
“To save us.”
