The Gambler (16 page)

What had Barry the Bastard done to her? He had an urge to find the prick and beat the shit out of him. “How long ago was this?”

She sighed. “Between my freshman and sophomore years of college.”

“Oh, my God, Lib. You were a baby.”

She laughed. “It seems like that now, doesn’t it? Now that we’re supposedly adults.”

She was right. His own college years seemed like a lifetime ago. Back then he’d thought he would live forever and could get away with anything.

She shrugged, trying to act nonchalant, but he could tell it was forced. “Turning thirty has convinced me it’s time to grow up.”

“I would say growing up is overrated, but I guess we can’t all be Peter Pan.”

She reached over and stroked her hand down his arm, her touch sending tingles of sensation shooting through him. “You’ve been trying. You’ve inspired me.”

His eyes flew open in surprise. “
I’ve
inspired you to
grow up?
”

“Yeah.” She leaned closer. “Megan’s told me what Josh has said about you.”

“Nothing good, I’m sure.” He wanted Libby to base her opinion of him on her own experiences, not on half-truths and opinions she’d learned about in a game of telephone.

“You’ve changed, Noah. You’re taking responsibility. You’re helping your brother. You’ve inspired me.”

He shook his head and said bitterly, “I’m no inspiration to anyone.”

“Who would have thought Noah McMillan was capable of humility?” she teased.

But it wasn’t humility. The kicker was that he was still the screw-up, even after his temporary foray into responsibility.

Who was he kidding? This trip to Vegas was a huge waste of time. He was out of a job, and the company was out of a lucrative contract. He’d lost the respect of his brother . . . again. He didn’t have a shot at winning the woman next to him, and no matter how hard he tried he’d never quiet his father’s last words to him: “You’ll never amount to anything.”

He’d spent the last fifteen years proving just that. Why stop now?

He was exactly where he deserved to be.

Talking about Barry had put Libby into a bit of a funk, but now Noah seemed to be stewing in some emotional mess of his own. She realized she might have given him the wrong impression about what happened on the trip, but it seemed too late to clear it up now. No one had physically harmed her or even coerced her into anything against her will, but it had shaken her to her core nevertheless. Normally it was easy to leave her ugly memories in the past where they belonged, so why had she even thought of Barry? The whole curse debacle was dredging up all kinds of things, it seemed.

She was sure she’d said something to trigger Noah’s bad mood, so she went over their conversation, trying to figure out where it had gone wrong. He’d reacted to her story, but he hadn’t retreated into silence until she’d told him that his change was inspiring her own. Was Noah the type of guy who wanted to hang on to the bad-boy persona, even if he was changing for the better? She was trying to figure out how to fix the problem when Noah slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road.

“What . . . ?” she asked, but then she looked up. Right there in front of them, on the other side of the highway, stood multiple old-school Cadillacs. They were arranged vertically, their hoods partially buried in the ground, and covered in splotches of multi-colored paint.

“Cadillac Ranch,” Noah said, resting his hand on the steering wheel as he turned to face the cars.

She’d heard of it, but had never seen it in person. “I wish I had some paint.”

Noah laughed. “I read about that online, that people just go into the pasture and paint the cars. How about we stop on the way back?”

“You’re not going to dump me by then?”

He swung his head to face her, looking startled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Aren’t you irritated with me? Isn’t that why you’re so cranky?”

“What?”
Noah shook his head. “No, I’m not mad at you, Lib. It’s all on me. I’m sorry for being an ass.” He released a long breath. “I’m not going anywhere, okay?”

“Yeah.” She leaned back in the seat with a sigh. No matter how much she wanted to believe him, history had taught her that no man ever stuck around. But to be fair, she’d done her own share of bailing. “Let’s go.”

Noah took a long look at her before he pulled back onto the road. “We’ll paint one when we come back. Unless we go straight to Seattle from Las Vegas. You can help me pick out a new place and then we can fly back to K.C. to get Tortoise and pack your things.” 

She wasn’t sure why his suggestion filled her with so much happiness, but the idea of moving to Seattle felt so
right.
Of course, it was also incredibly dangerous. Now that her lusty feelings for him had made an appearance, she wasn’t sure how well she could hold them back. Seeing Noah for several days every two or three weeks was manageable, but living with him every day . . . How was that going to work? Common sense told her that their relationship was like a carefully constructed house of cards. One wrong move and the entire thing could come crashing down. Was she really willing to risk it?

But the thought of not going filled her with disappointment. When she added it to her disappointment over the curse, her mother, her friends’ blindness to the true nature of her relationship with Mitch—not to mention their own ridiculous happiness, courtesy of the curse—and her inability to finish her photography project, she felt like she was drowning in it. At the moment, moving to Seattle felt like her only lifeline in her sea of loneliness.

It turned out there wasn’t much else to see along I-40. All the fun tourist sites were miles off the highway. Since they didn’t have time to stop, they decided to push through and try to make it to Hoover Dam before sunset. The drive through New Mexico was long and eventless. Noah was still subdued, though he clearly didn’t want to talk about it, and Libby didn’t feel much better. But they’d had so much fun the day before Libby decided to push her negative feelings aside and try to regain some of their lost joy. She made him play several rounds of the Alphabet Game, which instigated a good-natured five-minute argument about the rules.

“Using license plates is cheating,” she insisted.

“Libby.” He spread out his hand and waved it in an arc. “We’re in the middle of the desert. We have to use license plates or this game will last until we reach Las Vegas.”

Next they resorted to keeping track of states on license plates. After Noah found Alaska, he grinned. “This reminds me of the trips my family took when I was a kid.”

Somehow, despite all the time they’d spent together, they’d never delved much into each other’s pasts. She wasn’t proud of her relationship history and she presumed Noah felt the same way about his own. But it felt strange they’d never shared much about their childhoods. “Tell me a story from when you were a kid.”

His eyes lost some of their sparkle. “You mean growing up as Josh McMillan’s big brother.”

The pain in his voice made her suck in her breath. “Noah . . .”

“What?” He glanced at her. “It’s true. He was four years younger than me, but it didn’t take long for me to fall into his shadow. He was like the most perfect child ever born.” He shot her a grin. “But I’d made it easy for him. It couldn’t be too hard to look good in comparison to me.”

“We don’t have to talk about it.” She should have known by now that there was a reason neither one of them had volunteered information about the past, their childhoods included. Libby’s past was full of regrets and betrayals. Why would she want to dredge it all up again? Obviously Noah felt the same way.

He was silent for so long she assumed that was his answer. Then he swallowed, as though he were preparing himself. “No.” He turned to look her in the eye. “I think you should know. I don’t want to keep anything from you, but I need to work up the courage to tell you some of it. Okay?”

She knew he was referring to something other than his childhood now, but damned if she knew what. But he was obviously trying to build a deeper level to their friendship and she wanted that too.

“Yeah.” She gave him a warm smile. “Okay.”

He sighed and sank back into the seat, his left arm gripping the steering wheel. “I was a pretty wild kid. My mom has videos of me literally bouncing on the furniture.”

She laughed. “I believe that.”

“When I was older, I was diagnosed with ADD, but not until grade school. So I went through the first ten years of my life trying so hard to be good, and never succeeding. I just couldn’t pay attention or even remember to behave. Schoolwork was a nightmare. Night after night of me trying to finish my spelling and math homework. My mother was more understanding, but my father . . .” His voice trailed off.

His right hand lay on the seat next to him and Libby covered it with her own.

He took in a deep breath and let it out, keeping his eyes on the road. “My father was a good man. He just didn’t understand me, but Josh . . .
Josh
, he understood. Josh was like a clone of my father. So when Josh started school—and of course excelled at everything—I think my father slowly disengaged from me.”

“Oh, Noah.”

“But my mother . . .” The affection in his voice warmed her heart. “My mother stood by me, no matter what. Even as I single-handedly fucked up my life in middle school.”

“How could you fuck up your life in middle school?”

He tilted his head and gave her a wry grin. “You didn’t see my grades.”

“You’re obviously intelligent—you graduated from high school early and started college when you were sixteen—so it couldn’t have been that bad. Weren’t you on medication?”

“Oh, yeah. Two daily doses of Adderall, but what most people don’t realize, especially my father, is that medication isn’t some magic spell that kills ADD. It only temporarily tames it. So while I could focus, I was still unorganized and late and left my homework at school almost daily. My mother tried to help me create systems to remember things, but my father wasn’t as understanding.”

“Noah. How could he have been so blind and short-sighted?”

He turned his hand over beneath hers and curled his fingers around her hand. “Libby, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. My father was a good man. He just didn’t understand me. And Josh was so much easier for him to relate to than I was . . . I think he finally decided to leave me to my mother’s devices and focus on Josh.”

“But you were his
son
, Noah. He just gave up on you?” she asked in dismay.

He shook his head. “It’s not as harsh as it seems, Lib. He stopped trying to discipline me for my grades and behavior in school. He still loved me; he just gave more attention to Josh. And really, it ended up being a
good
thing. My mother was much less heavy-handed and it made all of us closer in a way.”

“It’s just not right, Noah.”

He squeezed her hand. “Maybe you’re right, because even though we got along better after he took a hands-off approach, I was still jealous of what he and Josh had. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother, but part of me still craved my dad’s attention and approval.”

“Of course you did.”

“When I was properly medicated—and trust me, it’s hard to properly medicate a teenage boy—I could finally focus on my work and I discovered I was really good at math . . . at a near-genius level. It helped that all my math classes in high school were in the beginning of the day, when I was good and dosed. By the time we figured out I would graduate early, my father took notice. Craving his attention, I told him I had decided to major in engineering. Just like him.”

“Did that make him happy?”

“Ecstatic. I was finally becoming the son he wanted, not the screw-up he tolerated.”

“Noah.”

“No, it’s okay. It wasn’t his fault. You know, I’m not sure I ever want kids. I don’t think parents realize the power they hold. I’ve screwed up everything else in my life. I sure don’t want to screw up my kid.” He frowned and his shoulders slumped. 

He was so wrong. He’d be fantastic with kids, even if he didn’t realize it. And maybe the way his father had messed him up would prevent him from making the same mistake. But now wasn’t the time to convince him. “So you majored in engineering for your dad, but did you like it?”

“By the end of my sophomore year I wasn’t sure if I was in the program because I wanted to be there or because I wanted to make my father happy. But Dad was already talking about me joining his firm. His partner was thinking about retiring around the time I graduated, so I could fill his shoes. But the more my father talked about it, the tighter the noose was pulled around my neck, squeezing the life out of me. I felt like it had been decided for me.”

“Did you at least tell your mother?”

A soft smile eased the hard lines on his face. “My mother figured it out before I even said a word. But when she gently brought it to my attention in high school, I told her she was wrong. I was willing to discuss it with her later, of course, but I still wasn’t ready to give up my new relationship with my dad. And then my dad died.”