All The Ways He Didn't Look At Me

Chapter Seventeen Realization

Anna’s POV

I stared at my refelection in the mirrored walls , one heel tapping impatiently against the marble floor while I reapplied my lipstick with trembling fingers. The color bled outside my lip line, I cursed and wiped it away.

I looked like a woman who had just been thrown out after s*x, which technically, I had.

The elevator dinged and the doors slipped open to the underground parking garage. Cold air brushed against my bare legs as I stepped out, arms folded tightly over herself.

I unlocked my car aggressively and slid inside, tossing my purse into the passenger seat, for a second, I just sat there gripping the steering wheel then I laughed, it was my way of making things make sense.

“Oh my God.” I whispered to myself. “You’re jealous.”

Now this was disgusting. Anna Stone did not get jealous over men, men got jealous over me, that was how this worked.

I had spent almost two years of my life understanding him, learning him and the exact balance between the type of distance and attention he tolerated. I knew he hated clinginess, I knew he preferred silence after s*x, I knew he liked expensive whiskey but never finished the second glass, I knew how to touch with waiting for the tenderness he could not give but I accepted it

That was the thing…

I never ever demanded more from him

Sure, I imagined things sometimes, longer dinners, his hands resting on my thigh in public, maybe eventually becoming the woman standing beside him at corporate events instead of three steps behind him as Head of PR but I had been patient because Noah Fisher trusted no one and trust from a man like that was earned gradually, except now some twenty year old girl walked into his life and suddenly Noah was slamming on emotional brakes he never even used.

My jaw tightened and the worst part wasn’t the warning he gave me, it was the look on his face before it

My fingers tightened around the wheel ss memory replayed itself.

“Let’s stick to the business that brings you here.”

How cold! Was it just s*x for him? All this time and it’s just business? The way he looked at that girl, he’s never looked at me like that

I started the engine finally, the garage lights blurred as I drove out into the Seattle night. Rain slicker across the windshield in uneven streaks while my thoughts spiraled uglier and uglier

The same Abby Carter of all people

I knew enough about Noah’s history to understand the irony, everyone in the company did…the boy from the garage, the dead mother, whether everyone had the right information wasn’t the question, we all knew one story and followed it.

Noah hated the Carters with these violence that lived beneath his skin. You should hear it whenever their name came up unexpectedly.

So why Abby?

Why her?

At a red light, I grabbed my phone and opened i********: absentmindedly. The first thing that appeared was a tagged campus photo from some university account. Jordan Cruise standing on a basketball court grinning while students screamed behind him

And there was tiny,fragile, bruised but pretty Abby in the background

I stared at the picture a little longer

Okay seriously, Noah wanted that?

This?

I suddenly remembered tonight more clearly. The way Noah had gone still when he realized Abby had been sitting in the living room waiting for him.

Damn!

He had brought another woman home on purpose definitely not because he wanted me but because he wanted to prove something to himself

“Oh, you idiot.”I whispered

It was crazy just how many times I had mistaken constantly being chosen for being important when in actual sense, I had never been an exception, I had simply only been convenient

I knew all this because I had said it to him but now that I was saying it to myself, realization was horrible, I felt insulted, I nearly missed the green light

Cars honked behind me, I drove again, my pulse uneven

By the time I reached my apartment, anger had started replacing humiliation, yeah, I preferred the latter. It was easier to carry.

I leaned against the kitchen counter and replayed every interaction involving Abby over the last few weeks, we had spoken about the funeral. I remembered his distracted silences at work, the random burst of laughter and tonight especially…. tonight

I had only mocked Abby because I wanted some type of reassurance, that was all. I just needed a simple reaction, maybe amusement of even indifference instead Noah nearly bit my head off and that meant only one terrifying thing

Abby had already gotten under his skin and men like Noah did not survive things getting under their skin so they either destroyed it first or let it destroy them

I swallowed hard

The mind truly was the deadliest part of a person’s entire being because I thought to myself, so what if Abby Carter was not the sweet innocent girl everyone assumed she was

What if she knew exactly what she was doing

Girls like Abby, the sweet, quiet and emotional girls were worse sometimes. They were the type of girl men just wanted to protect because they looked like they would break the second they were left alone

I spent my entire life learning to never look like that apparently, that had been my mistake. I walked toward the windows, staring out at the city below me

Noah Fisher was everything you wanted to name a villain man, he was cruel, obsessive, brilliant and damaged beyond repair but he was also a man who never have people power over him and if Abby Carter was becoming that person, I needed to stop it before it got worse.

The Noah I knew destroyed himself once he loved something and if Noah destroyed himself? Everyone around him burned too.

I lifted my wine glass to my lips with a smile. “Okay.” I whispered

“Now, I know what the problem is.”