Chapter 95: Idiot

NOAH

I sat on the edge of the bed, the luxurious silk sheets feeling like sandpaper against my skin. The suite was quiet, but not the peaceful kind of quiet. It was the heavy, charged silence that happens right before a storm breaks. My heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs, and despite the air conditioning, I felt a sheen of cold sweat on my neck.

Anxiety. Dread. Anticipation. They were like invisible wires, pulling me toward the door.

I moved on metaphorically silent feet, cringing at the slight creak of the floorboards. I pressed my ear to the crack of the door, which was left just a fraction of an inch ajar. I was hiding in the dark, eavesdropping on a conversation about my own value, and I had never felt more pathetic in my entire life.

Then, I heard it.

“So. Noah,” Cyan’s voice drifted in, airy and deceptively casual.

“What about him?” Cassian replied. His voice was different when I wasn’t in the room. It lacked the sharp, biting edge he used to goad me; it was flat, clinical, like he was discussing a stock option.

“He’s interesting,” Cyan continued. “You seem… attached.”

I held my breath. My lungs felt like they were shrinking.

I heard the scoff. It was a short, sharp sound that hit me harder than a physical blow. “Attached? To Noah?” Cassian’s voice was dismissive, almost amused by the suggestion. “He’s a distraction. A useful one, but still just a distraction.”

I felt the air leave my chest. There it is.

I closed my eyes, leaning my forehead against the cool wood of the door. The logical part of my brain, the part that had tried to keep me sane since I arrived in Spain, nodded in grim agreement.

Of course he said that, it whispered. What did you expect? Did you think there would be a confession of love? A sonnet? This whole thing had started with a contract. I was a debt to be paid. I was a “won” asset from a horse race. I was his toy, his errand boy, his punching bag. That was the agreement. There was no room for emotion in a Wolfe transaction. It was lust, it was control, it was power. That was all.

But if that was the case, why did it feel like more?

My mind traitorously replayed the last few days. The way he’d looked at me in the paddock, his eyes dark with a possessiveness that felt almost primal. The way he’d nearly impaled himself on a wooden fence just to make sure Alex didn’t get his hands on me. The way he touched me when no one else was watching, not with the coldness of a master, but with a heat that felt desperately, terrifyingly real.

God, I’m such an idiot, I thought, a wave of hot shame washing over me.

I had actually started to believe it. I’d let myself think that maybe, under all that ice and arrogance, there was a man who saw me as something other than a “useful distraction.” I let myself think he cared.

I stayed there, paralyzed, listening as the conversation turned even crueler. I heard him call me “nothing special.” I heard him say he’d just let me go when he got bored. I heard the rustle of clothing and the low, flirtatious murmurs of Cyan as he moved into Cassian’s space.

When the conversation finally ended, I slid down the door, my legs giving out. I sat on the floor, pulling my knees to my chest, staring into the darkness of my room.

Nothing special.

The words looped in my head like a broken record. The anger started then… a hot, sharp, justified spark in the center of my chest. How dare he? How dare he treat me like a person one minute and a discarded cigarette butt the next? How dare he make me feel like I was the only thing in the world that mattered, only to tell his friend I was a “novelty” he’d soon grow tired of?

But then the anger crashed into the jagged rocks of reality.

He was right. He never promised me a thing. He never said “I love you.” He never said “stay with me forever.” He said “I own you.” He was honest from the very beginning. I was the one who started hoping. I was the one who looked for meaning in the way his breath hitched when I touched him.

I felt a stinging in my eyes, a hot pressure behind my lids, but I refused to let a single tear fall. I wouldn’t give him that. I wouldn’t be the weeping assistant heartbroken over a man who viewed me as property.

I hate him. I hate him so much.

I knew it was a lie as soon as I thought it, but I clung to it anyway. It was the only armor I had left.

Footsteps echoed in the hallway. I froze, my heart leaping into my throat. I heard Cassian’s bedroom door click shut further down the hall. But then, there were more footsteps. Slower. Lighter. They stopped right outside my door.

“Noah?” Cyan’s voice was soft, muffled by the wood.

I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I felt like a ghost haunting my own life.

“I know you’re listening,” Cyan said. There was a pause. I could almost picture him standing there, his fuchsia blazer bright even in the dim hall. “I guess you know how Cassian feels about you now.”

I clenched my fists so hard my nails dug into my palms. I felt pathetic. I was sitting on the floor in the dark while the beautiful, confident, “compatible” Cyan stood on the other side, pitying me.

“My offer still stands, you know,” Cyan continued. “I can take him off your hands. You don’t have to stay here and be a ’distraction.’”

I bit my lip to keep from shouting. I already felt like nothing compared to him. Cyan was everything I wasn’t.

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