Filmed_ An Alpha Bad Boy Romance(67)

I looked at him, puzzled. “Why?”

“He thought I would get robbed and murdered if I lived in Philly, so he wanted me to at least have a nice apartment.”

“That’s nice, in a weird way.”

“Not really,” he said, following me. He sat down on the couch, stretching his legs out onto the glass coffee table. “Back then, he was just trying to protect his investment in me. It wasn’t paternal affection.”

“Have you guys always hated each other?”

“No, not always. He took my mom’s death pretty hard, at first, and I guess he just wasn’t equipped to take care of a kid. That’s why Miss H stepped in.”

“So what happened?”

He shook his head, sipping his drink. “I’m not sure, honestly. He started dating again, which I hated and didn’t understand when I was little. And then he threw himself into his work, and I became an afterthought. I guess it all happened slowly.”

“I’m sorry, Noah,” I said softly, sitting down next to him.

“It doesn’t matter anymore, honestly.”

We drank together in silence then, and I curled my legs up underneath me. The wine was delicious, and left a warm, comfortable glow in my stomach as I finished my glass. He grinned at me when he noticed I was done, and knocked his back.

“Want another?” he asked, standing and taking my glass.

I cocked my head at him. “Should you even be drinking?”

“Alcohol isn’t my problem,” he said, then stopped and looked at me. “But I won’t drink if you don’t want me to.”

I let that linger in the air between us for a second. “Maybe let’s stop at one.”

He nodded. “Okay, that’s fine with me”

I watched him walk out into the kitchen, rinse the glasses off, and place them in his dishwasher. He corked the bottle, put it on his kitchen counter, and then walked out toward me.

“Come here, I want to show you something.”

I stood up and followed him as he climbed the spiral staircase. This time, instead of going directly into the office like we had earlier, he pushed open the door to his bedroom and walked in. I followed, looking around the room like I was entering a secret, holy place.

The room was dominated by a large bed. The sheets and comforter were grey, and it looked a lot like his room had back at his dad’s place in the suburbs. There were more bookcases, and a large flat screen TV mounted on the wall, with a long case filled with movie DVDs. Noah walked over to a bookcase and pulled out a photo album.

“Sit,” he said, gesturing at the bed.

I sat down on the edge and he sat next to me. The album he was holding was old and browning, obviously a cheap drug store book, but he held it as if it were worth millions. He opened it to the first page.

“This is my mom,” he said.

He pointed at a picture that featured a beautiful brunette woman smiling huge, holding the hand of a cute little boy.

“Is that you?” I asked

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Your mom is really pretty.”

“Yeah, she was.”

He began to turn the pages, showing me more pictures. They were mostly of him as a kid doing things with his mom; going to the park, visiting the zoo, birthday parties, beach trips, the usual, normal stuff kids did with their parents. His mother looked like she was full of light and joy, an easygoing, lovely woman with a huge smile. Toward the end of the album, though, it became clear that she was getting sick. She was thinner, and her hair had completely fallen out by the end, probably due to the chemo. The last picture in the book was of his mother smiling huge in a hospital bed. Noah and his father were sitting on either side of her, laughing.

“This is all I have left of her,” he said softly.

“Do you remember what she was like?”

“She laughed a lot. She made everyone around her feel better.”

“I can get that from the pictures.”

“I don’t really remember much of the cancer stuff. I remember the hospitals, but I don’t think I really understood what was happening, even though my dad tried to explain it to me. Then one day, she was gone.”

I reached out and took his hand. He looked at me and smiled sadly, squeezing.

“Here, look at this,” he said. He turned back through the album and pointed out a particular picture. In it, he was wearing a Ninja Turtles costume, but he looked really upset. It looked like they were standing in someone’s backyard. His mom was next to him, and she looked like she was laughing really hard at something.

“This is my favorite picture of her. I remember this, actually. It was Halloween, and I really wanted to be a Ninja Turtle, but she got me the wrong one. I wanted to be Leonardo, but she got me Donatello, and I guess that really upset me. She was laughing so hard at how angry I was.”