Single Dad Christmas (Italian Rivals #7)

Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

“ I T WAS JUST MEANT to be a few people,” Melanie, in the backseat of the car, was explaining, her voice slurred by alcohol. Beside him, Taylor barely looked like herself. She looked…like her mother. She was wearing makeup, a mini dress, and heels, and she’d done something to her hair so it was all voluminous and curled. “To celebrate Christmas. You know how Tay loves Christmas.”

He wanted to tell Melanie—as sweet as she was—to shut up. Taylor had barely said two words since he’d pulled up out the front of a Rose Bay address and the girls had jumped into the car. Her slim legs were pressed together, her hands fidgeting in her lap. His gut was twisted with worry.

“I told your parents I was dropping you off,” Noah said, glancing in the rear-vision mirror so he had the satisfaction of seeing Melanie’s face pale.

Taylor whipped her face towards him, but for once she didn’t say anything. She might have been annoyed that he’d tattled on her friend but given the fact he’d just had to collect her from a clearly adult party, and she had obviously been drinking, she somehow had the judgement to know it wasn’t the time to grind his gears.

“Oh, okay,” Melanie slumped back in her seat. Silence throbbed in the car and Noah, who’d already felt as though his nerves were stretched tight, turned up the volume of the stereo. Metallica pumped out, the loud, bassy tones perfect for his mood.

When he pulled up at Melanie’s house, her parents were waiting out the front. “They said they were going to Alice’s,” they said in unison.

“Yeah, I got the same story.” He addressed Taylor then, “Was Alice at the party?”

She shook her head, without making eye contact with him.

“Melanie?” Melanie’s mother grilled the other girl, anger in her tone.

“No, mum. It was just us.”

“Well, come inside and wash that makeup off. God, you’re hardly dressed,” the mother bemoaned. “Thank you for bringing her home, Noah.”

He nodded once. “See you soon,” he said, and because he didn’t want to alienate Taylor’s friend, who was already annoyed at him, “Take care, Melanie.”

He got back into the car and turned to look at his daughter properly. She’d turned down the music, so it was just a low, background hum now. “What happened?”

“Can you just drive, please?”

He thought about that. He tried to separate his instincts as a dad from his instincts as a human in the world, who knew what sorts of things happened at parties like that. He wanted to pretend that everything was fine, but he couldn’t put his head in the sand. She’d sounded distraught.

“Tay, I’m going to take you home.” He reached for her hand, and she flinched. His gut tumbled. “And I’m not mad at you. It’s very normal to want to try new things at your age, that’s okay. I’d rather you talk to me about it, so I know and can put some guardrails in place, but I promise, this isn’t coming from a place of anger.”

She glanced across at him, surprised. Which was kind of offensive, given how tightly he kept a grip on his temper with her, for the most part, no matter what she said or did.

But worry for her had brought an eerie sort of calm over him.

“Did someone touch you tonight?” It physically hurt him to ask that question. To even contemplate what might have happened. Her eyes widened and her face paled and for a second, he feared the very worst answer he might receive.

Please, please let no one have hurt his baby girl.

“No, Dad. No. It’s not that. It wasn’t?—,”

He stared at her long and hard. He felt like she was telling the truth, but was that just wishful thinking?

“It was just too much,” she said, dropping her gaze to the console between them, then shifting in her seat, so she was all slumped over and tiny. “Everyone was older and really drunk, and the smell…it was…” tears rolled down her cheeks. He ached for her. He didn’t know what to do. He felt so alone. And in that moment, he wished, with everything in his heart, for Louisa. She’d know what to say, what to do. She’d be such a great mother one day.

Different feelings pummeled him then, feelings he didn’t want to contemplate. Feelings like a lightness, when he imagined how different it would have been to have a baby with someone like Louisa, to have done things a different way around. To have been on the same page as your co-parent from the beginning.

He pushed the thoughts aside.

“I was scared,” she said, simply, and then closed her eyes and sobbed. “I’m such a pathetic idiot.”

“No,” Noah groaned, the words like knives in his gut.

“I am. Everyone’s going to know I couldn’t handle it.”

“Hey,” he put his hand on her knee—the only part of her that wasn’t all hunched up. “You did the right thing to call me,” he said, with utter confidence. “And believe me, no one is going to even remember this by the time school goes back. There’ll have been a dozen other parties with a million other things to talk about. Don’t worry, Tay. It’s all going to be okay.”

She was silent for the rest of the car trip. He didn’t want to think about the alcohol fog he could smell surrounding her, nor how she’d stumbled a little when she’d come to the car. He didn’t want to think about how unsafe she was, being drunk in a house of a hundred strangers, most of them over eighteen.

How the hell had she even gotten into the party? Who’d invited her? Who was she hanging out with? He knew nothing about her, clearly, despite his best efforts to be involved.

A bottomless pit, indeed.

Once inside the garage, he cut the engine and stepped out of the car, coming around to her side and opening the door. She was half asleep. Or passed out.

He reached down and unclipped her seatbelt and she looked up at him with the same expression she’d had as a three-year-old who’d been woken early from naps. His heart squeezed and exploded. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for Taylor. Nothing.

“Okay, pumpkin. Let’s get you into bed. Everything will feel better in the morning.”

“Dad—I’m—,” she closed her eyes then and he sighed. He had no idea what she’d been about to say, but it didn’t matter. He lifted her easily and cradled her to his chest, carrying her with the same care he’d exercised when she’d been a tiny newborn baby, and he’d thought she was so precious and fragile that he might accidentally break her.

He contemplated waking her, so she could get changed, but the best thing for her was to sleep this off, so instead, he laid her into the bed, removed her shoes, and placed a glass of water on the bedside table. Then, he leaned down and kissed her forehead, hoping she knew just how damned much he loved her.

“Louisa,” his touch was gentle. Just a fingertip on her shoulder, gliding over her skin. She was so tired. Her whole body felt heavy. Her mind, too. But her heart was light. She smiled into the darkness, through the exhaustion.

“What time is it?”

“I’m sorry to wake you.”

Something in his voice did exactly that, though. She blinked blearily, trying to bring him into focus. “What’s happened?”

Silence.

She reached out for the lamp she remembered seeing on his bedside tables and pulled a cord. A soft warm glow meant she could see Noah’s face. The tension and tightness in his whole body.

“Noah?”

“It’s Taylor.”

Louisa’s gut twisted with worry. “What about Taylor?”

“She’s fine, but I had to go get her and her friend from a huge party. I’m pretty sure she’s drunk. So was her friend.”

“Oh, gosh.”

“So she’s here, and I thought?—,”

“I should go,” Louisa said instantly, even though there was a part of her that rebelled against that. Even though there was a part of her that was angry about that. But Noah’s relief was obvious.

“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s just?—,”

“No, it’s fine. You don’t need to apologise,” she said, thinking how much she wanted him to, even when this obviously wasn’t his fault. “These things happen.” Especially when you started dating men with teenage daughters. “Really, it’s no big deal,” she promised.

“It’s just—I know I said I wanted you to meet her, but she’s—tonight was?—,”

“No, I get it,” she said, something strange and heavy overtaking her heart, ice in her veins. “We already agreed we’d keep this on the down low; meeting her wasn’t part of it. It’s no big deal.”

But it felt like a big deal. As she dressed, quickly and silently, and looked around for the little items she’d casually left out in his house, because she’d had visions of a lazy, relaxed morning together, and all the time in the world to pack up, she felt there was something tawdry about what they were doing, and the way she was being dispatched.

She could totally see it from his perspective, but that didn’t change how she felt, in that moment.

“Okay, that’s everything,” she said, struggling to meet his eyes as she slid her feet into her shoes and looked around at the Christmas tree—now sparkling, because the lights were on timers—and their empty champagne flutes on the side of the kitchen sink.

“Louisa—,” He stared at her and her stomach stitched as she waited for him to say something. But instead, silence just hung between them.

And then, “Dad?”

Louisa’s eyes flared and Noah turned to intercept Taylor, but it was too late.

She stumbled into the room, hair a mess, a picture of long, slim limbs and stunning features. She saw Louisa, but perhaps barely registered her. “I feel sick.”

Sympathy swelled inside Louisa.

Anger at Noah disappeared—for now.

Because this was his daughter, and she needed her dad.

“This way,” he said, guiding her toward a door which Louisa knew housed a toilet. The next moment, the sounds of vomit filled the house. She bit into her lip and stood there uncertainly for a moment and then loaded her Uber account and ordered a car.

In between the waves of sickness, Noah emerged to grab a glass of water and some paper towels.

“My cab will be here in two minutes,” she said, making no effort to move towards him. He wasn’t her Noah now. He was Noah, the father. Taylor’s, not hers.

“Thank you,” he said, simply, and she nodded once before leaving the room and letting herself out of his house.

Her driver seemed to think it was his job to entertain her, and he chatted the whole drive home. He’d asked where she was from, having detected her accent, and she’d responded shortly, with ‘Moricosia’. It turned out to be one of his favourite places to visit, and so the ride was filled with him extolling the virtues of her home country, the beauty of it, the beaches, and in that moment, she was flooded with a sense of homesickness. For her parents, her sister, her old life.

She’d decided not to go home for Christmas. It would have been too high profile even before Ares had met Sofia, but with an engagement announcement imminent, there was no way she could have just had a nice, normal Christmas with her family.

But now she ached to be with them.

At first, she couldn’t understand why. What had happened tonight that was making her crave her family? But once she was back in the solitude of her apartment and had the luxury of being able to think, she easily connected the dots.

Noah and she had created a beautiful thing, behind closed doors, but it was a fantasy. He had a life, a family, and she wasn’t a part of that. She couldn’t be, she wouldn’t be, they’d said that from the outset. It was fine. Except it wasn’t fine, because Louisa felt excluded and lost, and the kneejerk reaction to that was a desire to go home. To go back to the people who always made her feel welcome and whole, the people who considered her to be a necessary part of their fabric.

Everything with Noah had gotten out of hand. It had moved too fast. They’d seen each other every night since that first night. They’d been so intimate, they’d talked so much, shared so much. She knew more about him now than she probably had Ares. It was an unnatural connection they’d forged because of the backdrop of their respective realities.

What had they been thinking? Where did either of them think this was going?

Tonight had not been Noah’s fault, and he certainly hadn’t done anything wrong. On the contrary, he’d done exactly what was required of him, and she loved what a great father he was. But it had clarified something for Louisa, and now that she’d seen it, she couldn’t unsee it: she didn’t belong there, with him, like that. And if she kept seeing him, the way she was seeing him now, it was going to end very badly for her. It was impossible to be together with this intensity and not eventually want more, but Noah wasn’t offering more, and she doubted he ever would.

She knew what that meant, but Louisa didn’t define the conclusion to that thought train. Not then. She went to bed and tried not to contemplate the end which she knew was coming.

The early morning sun coming through the floor-to-ceiling windows roused him, and for a disorientating moment, Noah had no idea where he was. Why was he on the sofa, instead of his bed, with Louisa?

And then, it all came slamming into him. Memories of Louisa standing just a few feet from where he now lay, something shifting in her expression that he couldn’t put his finger on but instinctively knew he didn’t like.

Something that had chilled him to the bone.

But Taylor had needed him, and he hadn’t been able to give Louisa anything. Even a ride home. Or to walk her to the door.

“Taylor,” he muttered, standing up and looking around, his heart rushing because he had fallen asleep sometime after three, when it seemed that she’d vomited all she was going to vomit, and he’d gotten her to eat half a piece of Vegemite toast.

He walked quickly through the house, then softly clicked open the door to her room.

She was in bed, eyes shut, and when he got close enough to see properly, he could see that her chest was moving with each breath she took. So, she’d survived her first drunken night—he hoped it would be the last.

She’d showered and changed into a pair of pajamas—he didn’t know where or when she’d got them, because at fifteen, Taylor did all her own shopping, but they were Christmassy, with a cat on the front in a Santa’s hat and the words “Miaowy Christmas” down the bottom.

His heart lurched.

She was alive, it was still early, and Louisa…Louisa would understand all this, because she was Louisa, and Louisa was, in pretty much every way, perfect.

“Oh, hi,” Louisa opened the door to find Noah standing there, holding two take-away coffee cups and a brown paper bag. Every feeling she’d experienced the night before slammed into her, so her heart felt as though it was being crushed beyond recognition.

“I brought breakfast.”

She stared at him, frowning, because she wasn’t ready to see him yet.

“It’s early.”

“You wake early.”

She nodded, standing there without letting him in. She was confused.

“I wanted to apologise,” he said. “I thought pastry would help my cause.”

She opened the door wider, remembering their first kiss, right here. Her heart trembled. “You don’t need to apologise. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No, but the whole situation was a shame. I was looking forward to waking up with you at my place.”

“How’s Taylor?” she asked, clicking the door shut and locking it.

“Asleep, having thoroughly purged her body of whatever choice of alcohol she put into it.” There was a wave of tension in his voice, and she understood it. Worry for his daughter must have been consuming him. But Louisa pulled something protective around herself because she realized how much danger she was in here.

He placed the bag on the counter, then handed a coffee to Louisa. She took it—coffee was hard to say ‘no’ to. “Thanks.”

“I thought I’d do something with her this afternoon,” Noah was saying. “Take her out on the water.”

Louisa’s brow lifted despite herself. “Because sea sickness is what she needs right now?”

Noah grinned. “Could be a good punishment?”

Her heart stretched and burst. She sipped her coffee, then placed it down with fingers that were a little trembly. “Noah,” she said, but he held a hand up, to forestall her.

“Don’t,” he said, shaking his head, moving towards her.

“Don’t what?”

“I can tell by your tone that this isn’t going to be good. Don’t do it.”

Louisa’s emotions had always been free-flowing, but dating Ares, she’d learned—or rather, been taught—to control them. She’d learned not to express frustration, anger, sadness, sorrow. The only acceptable emotion she could show in public was happiness, and even then, not too much. A polite smile, a small laugh, always mindful of cameras and angles. It had been so taxing, but she was glad for that training now as she was able to control the tears that were stinging the backs of her eyelids.

“It’s not your fault,” she said, shaking her head.

“You’re annoyed at me.”

“No,” she shook her head quickly. “I’m—,” but she couldn’t find the right words and she stood there, gaping. “I just?—,”

He waited, patiently, which just made everything worse.

“You’re a father,” she said, with a lift of her shoulders. “First and foremost. I know that, I’ve known it this whole time. But last night, I felt…I saw…your world, and I was like a stranger, looking in from the outside.” Her brow furrowed, but now that she’d started, she didn’t want to stop. “I hated that.”

“You’re not a stranger?—,”

“There are so many limits to what this can be,” she said, determined now. “But we’ve been acting as though…” There, she found it hard to put into words. “We’ve been treating it like this is the beginning of something, you know? But the beginning of what? You have Taylor, and I’m from another country, which is my home,” she said, forcefully. “There’s no long-term happy ending for us, so what are we doing, Noah? What are we doing?” And for the last sentence, her control snapped. She sounded as devastated as she felt. “I’m not annoyed at you, and you did nothing wrong. Last night just clarified everything for me. And I’m glad. Because we’ve only been doing this a week and a half. A week and a half!” She repeated, with a shake of her head, because she felt as though Noah was a part of her body and soul.

“Louisa, listen?—,”

“No, I need you to listen,” she said, and she crossed the room so she could grab his face with both hands and hold him steady. “I can’t go through anything else yet. It’s too soon. Three months ago, I walked away from my life, my future, from the man I thought I was going to marry, and now he’s getting married to someone else, and I’ve been okay with everything, but this, you…if you hurt me…if this hurts me…I just don’t think I can take it.”