The Jealousy Game {Completed}

Chapter Fifteen - Repercussions

~Chapter Fifteen - Repercussions~

******NOAH’S POV******

 

That afternoon, as soon as I got home, I could feel it in the air. It wasn’t a smell, or a noise. It was an instinctual feeling, just something permeating the air.

My family knew.

Slowly, with dread, I made my way into the kitchen, where my mom and dad were sitting at the table. My mother’s face was shadowed by her curly blond hair, and my dad’s had creases in it like he had run his hands through it too many times. They looked up when they saw me, and gestured to a spare seat at the mahogany kitchen table. Ella was noticeably absent. Which could only mean one thing.

And it sure as hell wasn’t good.

I sat down slowly and laid my backpack beside me, next to my shoes. “I guess you guys know.”

“It’s all over the town,” my father, Matt Fordman, said, his hazel eyes so similar to my own raking my features. “It’d be impossible not to know.”

“Look, let me explain—”

“Why did you do it, Noah?” my mother asked, her voice small and disappointed. It made my heart ache. “Logan Hawkins? Do you know who his father is? He could send you to prison.”

Everyone knew that Logan’s father, Patrick Hawkins, was a big-shot lawyer. One of the best in the state. Along with Marley’s dad, but that hardly seemed to make a difference now.

I looked down at my hands, knowing they were right. “I know, mom.”

“Why Logan? Why Marley’s boyfriend?” she asked tiredly, rubbing her eyes as if she were exhausted, or had a headache. I could still hear the disappointment in her voice, something I never wanted my mother to feel. Their quiet, gentle voices were worse than if they had been yelling at me. But my parents weren’t like that.

I hadn’t even mentioned the Jealousy Game to them yet. How the hell was I meant to explain that to them now? After everything? It seemed so childish.

“You wanna know what else I heard today?” mom asked, looking up at me with her bright blue eyes.

“What?”

“About you and Marley’s relationship.” I froze, and a thick feeling of dread started to build in my stomach. Dear God, no. “How long did you think you could keep that from me, Noah?” She seemed genuinely hurt. “I’m a music teacher at the high school. I don’t live under a rock.”

I swallowed thickly and kept my eyes glued to the tablecloth. I couldn’t bear the burden of her gaze. The obvious sadness in her voice that she hadn’t been told that the people she had always pinned together as the “Number-One Couple” had gotten together without her knowledge.

“I guess I should explain everything to you guys,” I said slowly, looking at my mother and then my father.

“I think that might be a good idea, Noah,” my father replied.

And, just like that, I told them about the plan Marley and I had hatched, and then everything that happened. I told them about my ulterior motives, and how I only had Marley’s interests at heart.

And then I told them how there was a huge possibility I might’ve fallen for Marley Adams.

It had happened so quickly I had barely had time to process it.