Snowflakes In Autumn (A Novella)

Four

After Noah unlocked the door and swung it open, Faith stepped inside. The first thing she noticed were the bookshelves. There were six in total in the living room, all of them filled to the brim with more books stacked on the top. She set her bags down on the floor beside the door and walked over to them, placing her fingertips on the spine of the first book on the top shelf and allowed her fingers to glide across the row.

Most of them appeared to be textbooks, and every one of them were non-fiction clinical psychology. The row below focused on forensic psychology. The entire bookshelf were books on psychology, each row dedicated to a distinct branch. "Is this what you do for a living?"

She heard a cough behind her before he spoke. "I taught forensic psychology for a few years. After the shooting, I left school for a year, then enrolled in Chicago and followed a different path than the one I was on before. Now I work at a rehabilitation center, along with some consulting work for the police."

"Sounds like a grim job." Though she guessed the shooting had plenty to do with that. "What did you do on your year off from school?"

"A lot of drugs," Noah replied, speaking the words in a sigh.

Faith turned to look at him, taken aback by his confession.

"It was a dark time in my life. Your dad was like a second father to me. I'd met him my first year of college. When I turned eighteen two years later, I moved into the apartment off the garage behind your house. Him and I would stay up until two in the morning having these wild debates. Your mom would always have to come over and drag him out."

So, he hadn't started college at eighteen like her sister, but sixteen. "How old were you when the shooting happened? I thought you were my sister's age."

Noah shook his head. "I was twenty-three and working on my master's. I wasn't even in that class, I just liked to sneak in to your dad's classes when I had an hour off."

Faith felt unable to fully comprehend all this fresh information. "So, you weren't even supposed to be there?"

After shaking his head, Noah shoved his hands in his pockets and took a single step forward. "I wouldn't have changed it for anything, though. If I hadn't been there, you would have been curled up with your dad and sister."

The worst day of his life, and he didn't regret being there. Because he was there, he was able to keep Faith alive. "I want to see the scar."

Noah's green eyes narrowed on her, but his hands left his pockets, and one lifted his shirt, showing a slight round scar on his side.

Faith stepped forward and reached out to touch it. He didn't appear as if he would stop her, but stared at her every movement. That minor part of him felt like hard rubber, a drastic difference from the flesh surrounding it. She looked up at him, noticing his eyes looked so sad.

'How often did he relive that day, those moments, in his mind?' Faith wondered.

"You could have died," Faith said, no longer able to look at him.

"I could have," Noah admitted. "It was touch and go for a while."

"You shouldn't have been there. You shouldn't have taken a bullet for me." She muttered the words beneath her breath, but he still heard them.

Noah tilted her head upwards and forced her to look at him. "I'd take a hundred bullets for you, Faith, and don't think for a second you aren't worth protecting."

She wasn't. His life now was worth so much more than her own and probably was even back then. If she died tomorrow, she'd probably only have four people at her funeral. Many would likely miss Noah.

"You don't even know me anymore."

Noah shook his head slowly. "I'll always know you, Faith. Doesn't matter how much time passes or how far away you are. I'll always know you and I'll always care."

If only she felt the same. Faith always knew she cared for him, in some measure, but she didn't know him. That was why she was here; to know him and remember all the good and bad, and everything in between.

"We were close," Faith spoke, more to herself than him.

Noah took a step back, and it wasn't until then she realized she'd still been touching his scar. "Yes, we were close. I met your dad when your mom had just given birth to you. I was there pretty much from the very beginning of your life. It killed me when I finally got out of the hospital, and your mother had disappeared with you and your brother."

Faith went at sat down on the dark brown suede couch, putting her feet beneath her. "You didn't know we'd left?"

"No," Noah said before sitting on the other side. "For the first few days, you refused to leave the hospital. It got to the point where your mom would just drop you off with my parents. You even missed the funeral because you didn't want to leave me. You were the first person I saw when I woke up after the doctor.

"By the time they released me, your mother had put the house up for sale and she packed the two of you up and left without saying a damn word about it."

How could her mother do that to him? Noah said that he'd been there since she was a baby, yet her mother treated him as an outsider. Maybe she didn't care for him as the rest of the family did, or maybe, and this what Faith hoped, she left Noah in the past because he was so close to her husband it was just too painful.

Noah lifted himself from the couch, walked over to her, and held out his hand. "Come on. I'll show you the guest bedroom."

Faith accepted the gesture and allowed him to pull her up and lead her to a dark hallway. He flicked the light on and continued walking, leading her to the end and taking a left, and flicked on another light.

It was small with just enough room for a queen bed and a dresser, along with one closet that ran the length of the wall. The only actual color it had was the red bedding and a large painting of a lake with a girl sitting on a pier on the wall across from the bed.

"I know it's not much, but I don't get a lot of company, so I never did much with it. If you wanted to stay for longer, we can go to the store so you can make it your own."

Faith turned at his words. They'd never spoke of a timeline, but she'd just assumed he was expecting around a week. "How long did you want me to stay?"

Noah leaned against the doorway and his gray-green eyes looked just below her face, not quite willing to make eye contact. "I haven't seen you for fourteen years, little snowflake. If it were up to me, I'd drive to Rhode Island, pack up the rest of your shit, and bring it right back here. But it isn't up to me."

Faith understood that they were close. She didn't remember, but despite the sixteen years between them, she felt there was a powerful bond. Even now, years later and with little memory of it, Faith could feel it, already stronger than the bond she shared with her mother.

"That's crazy," was the only reply she could think to say.

"Probably," Noah admitted with a shrug. "But when you made it sound like you had nothing to go back to, no offense. I don't know... You're right. I'm just talking crazy. I just thought maybe you'd want a fresh start. That, and now that you're here, you leaving is already crushing me."

His honest confession caused Faith to sit down on the bed beside her, overwhelmed by the emotion resonating from him.

Faith didn't want to crush him, but she couldn't stay here forever, either.