He gave a single nod, the clean-cut profile of his face so freaking attractive she had to look away. “Actually, that’s why I brought you out here. Here,” he said, holding out the box. “This is for you.”
For her? The last time he’d given her a present, it had been ice cream. And that had hurt so much that she’d left the cooler sitting untouched on her table until the smell of the long-melted confection necessitated that she throw the whole thing away. “Noah, I don’t think I should—”
“Please, Kristina. It’s not what you think.”
She had no idea what she thought, so she took the box with shaking hands and carefully unwrapped it.
“I wrapped it myself,” he said.
She glanced at him, and found just the hint of a smirk around his lips. “Shut up,” she said. That brought out a little smile. And the echo of their old banter, and all the loss it represented, made her need to look away again.
Layers of white tissue paper filled the box. She set it on the ground, and pulled out the first solid-feeling object. Carefully, Kristina unwrapped it.
What she found in the middle rushed tears to her eyes.
Noah’s mask.
“Oh, God, Noah. It’s…amazing.” And it was. But it was also the most heart-wrenching thing she’d ever seen.
Crisscrossing red slashes marred the left side of the face, and patches of duct tape covered the left eye, left side of the mouth, and wrapped around the left ear. The head on the left side was fragmented and broken, and in three places pieces of the “skull” were missing. He’d secured paper on the underside, and in each of those empty spots he’d written the word, “Gone.”
Instinctively, Kristina grabbed Noah’s hand and pulled it into her lap. She squeezed his fingers so tight she was probably hurting him, but she couldn’t sit there and look at this tortured self-portrait without holding some part of him.
The right side of the face, the side on which Noah retained his sight and hearing, had a smooth surface, but the way he’d done the eye made it appear empty. Cracks from the broken side of the skull stretched across the forehead, thinner on the right side, but drawn as if they were threatening to break apart. The lips were a bluish-red, as if the mask had been deprived of oxygen. On the cheekbone was a small, rectangular tattoo—a black-and-white American flag.
She couldn’t stop staring at the mask and trying to imagine exactly what emotions he felt inside that translated to this.
She clutched his hand against her heart. “I don’t know what to say, Noah. Except that I am honored that you shared this with me.”
A single tear drop escaped her eye. Noah caught it with the fingers of his free hand. “Don’t cry.” He reached in and drew something else out of the box, then handed it to her.
“Oh, God, there’s more?” she asked, having to let his hand go to take the second item. Noah just nodded. She placed the first mask in her lap and began unwrapping.
Another mask.
A significantly different mask.
The slashes still covered the left side, but were much paler, as if they’d faded. The duct tape was gone from the mouth. The skull was broken and cracked as it had been in the first one, but a layer of gauze wrapped around it, as if the wound had been treated.
And was healing.
She heaved a shaky breath.
On the right side, the eye stared pointedly at her, the flatness gone. The lips were a normal, pale red all the way across. The tattoo remained below the eye, but another joined it.
Below the flag sat three block letters: WFC.
What that meant, she didn’t know, but it was obviously important to Noah. Important enough that he saw it as defining him the same way the flag did.
Kristina placed both masks on top of the tissue sitting on her lap and looked at them side by side. Swallowing around the knot of emotion in her throat, she managed, “Both of these are you?”
“Yeah. I started this one the day I told you I didn’t love you,” he said, pointing to the first mask. Kristina’s gaze cut to his face. “I was in such a low place that day, Kristina. Almost the lowest of my life. I was every bit as fucked-up as I said, and I told myself it wouldn’t be right to burden you with that when I was completely sure it would never change. That’s why I pushed you away, and I'm sorry for it. I regret it every single day.”
“Noah—”
“Please let me finish,” he said, his dark eyes serious and intense. She nodded. “My lowest point actually came a week later, after I came to your apartment that night to apologize. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” she whispered, a shiver racing over her skin.