My Fault

“Unless I’d heard wrong, she hadn’t even finished high school, but you could guess that after one glance at her shorts, her T-shirt, and her black Converse. All she needed was to pull her hair back in a ponytail to look like the typical teenager waiting impatiently for someone to open the doors of some big box store so she could buy the latest TikTok trend all the fifteen-year-olds were freaking out about. Still, I couldn’t take my eyes off her hair; its color was strange, somewhere between dirty blond and red.”

Nick Leister’s internal monologue reveals how he sees Noah when they meet. His first impression is negative, and his references to her clothing, hairstyle, and imagined pastimes of choice affect a judgmental narrative tone which captures the enmity Nick feels toward her. At the same time, the last line of the passage foreshadows the way Nick’s interest in Noah will develop, introducing the theme of The Relationship Between Love and Hate.

“What a damn idiot! As I climbed the stairs, stomping as loud as I could, I couldn’t stop thinking about the ten minutes I’d spent with my new idiot stepbrother. How could he be such a dickhead, a stuck-up psycho? God, I couldn’t stand him, and there was no way I could deal with living with him. It was bad enough that he was my mother’s new husband’s son, but after what had happened, my annoyance had reached stratospheric levels.”

Noah’s internal monologue and body language in this scene reflect an angry tone and a tempestuous narrative atmosphere. She stomps up the stairs like a child, capturing the negative way that Nick’s behavior is impacting her. Furthermore, her use of words like “idiot,” “dickhead,” and “psycho” show that she sees Nick as her adversary instead of her brother or friend. This moment contributes to the theme of the relationship between love and hate by establishing the immediate enmity of Noah and Nick’s contentious relationship.

“It was all I could do not to stand up and walk out with no explanation. I’d had enough of the happy family for one day; I needed to bounce and stop trying to fake interest in all that bullshit.”

Nick’s response to the family dinner outing provides narrative clues to his fraught familial past. His need to escape, illustrated by his references to standing up, walking out, and needing to bounce, shows how trapped and ineffectual he feels. He also refers to the family outing as “bullshit” and describes his interest in it as “fake”; this diction affects a condescending, frustrated tone and reveals Nick’s disinterest in catering his desires to his family’s needs.

“‘Noah, you have no idea what you’re getting into.’ He took a step forward, and I could feel the heat radiating off his body, ‘At home, you may be my stepsister, but outside those four walls,’ he continued, so soft only I could hear it, ‘this is my world, and I won’t put up with any of your bullshit,’ I didn’t let him intimidate me. There was no way I’d ever allow him to see how much his words and his behavior scared me. I’d lived a life of violence. I wasn’t going to put up with it anymore.”

The tension between Nick and Noah in this scene underscores the complexities of their relationship. Nick tries to use his physicality to intimidate Noah, which shows his desire to overpower her. He also uses direct, abrasive language in an attempt to dictate Noah’s behaviors, impressions, and decisions. However, Noah’s refusal to let him dominate her and the allusion to a “life of violence” show that she won’t be easily cowed, setting up the “push-and-pull” dynamic between Nick and Noah.

“I ran a finger carefully over that tattoo, so tiny compared to mine, and felt how both of us got goose bumps. Noah twitched unconsciously, and I felt something strange, uncomfortable, in the pit of my stomach.”

Nick has a physiological response to discovering Noah’s tattoo. The tattoo creates an uncanny link between the protagonists—they both have the same knot inked on their bodies. Nick is trying to describe how he feels in this scene but is struggling to articulate his emotional response to finding the tattoo. This internal conflict demonstrates Nick’s discomfort with their connection, while the matching tattoos foreshadow how their relationship will develop.

“This so-called Dan had Noah’s face in his hands and was kissing her and she couldn’t stop laughing. I guessed she had known someone was taking their picture. So he’d cheated on her. I turned off the screen and put her phone in my pocket. I had no idea why, but I wanted to toss it in the bottom of the ocean. Something got to me when I saw that picture of Noah kissing another guy. I suddenly wanted to punch anybody who decided to get in my way that night.”

Nick has a violent emotional response to discovering that Dan betrayed Noah with her best friend. This moment shows that Nick only knows how to express himself through violence and aggression as he imagines throwing the phone into the ocean and punching anyone who comes near him. At the same time, these lines foreshadow how Noah will learn to channel his intense emotions into loving and protecting Noah.

“‘That’s it?’ she’d asked me, cheeks flushed, eyes bright with longing. What the fuck did she want me to do, though? If she wasn’t who she was, I’d have taken her straight to the back seat of my car. If she wasn’t so damn hard to put up with, I’d have given her the best night of her life. If she wasn’t…If she wasn’t turning my whole world upside down.”

Nick and Noah’s first kiss furthers the novel’s explorations of the relationship between love and hate. Nick’s repetition of “If she wasn’t” is a literary device called anaphora, which, in this case, illustrates his confused state of mind after kissing Noah. He is trying to make sense of what she wants and what he feels, but his repetition focuses on keeping Noah at a distance.

“When I had seen her race, I had felt completely powerless. I had no idea where she’d learned to drive like that, but she had sure beaten Ronnie’s ass. I had to admire the way she’d taken that second curve—not even I would have had the balls to hit it at that speed—but all that told me was how little survival instinct she had.”

When Nick sees Noah race, he catches a glimpse of her mysterious past and understands her a little better. He realizes that she is courageous and bold—a revelation that’s captured in his references to how she took the curve. However, her fearlessness also makes Nick curious, as he believes it is because she has no “survival instinct.” This moment foreshadows the evening later in the novel when Noah tells Nick about her father and the trauma of her childhood.

“Hooking up with Nicholas wouldn’t solve anything. It wouldn’t undo Dan’s cheating on me, it wouldn’t fill up the solitude of living in that place without family or friends, and it certainly wouldn’t help the two of us get along any better. That episode with Nick could only mean one thing: problems.”

The novel uses Noah’s internal monologue to capture her desperation for autonomy and control. When Noah is around Nick, she feels powerless to resist him. At this moment, she is trying to ground herself in the logic of her thoughts to override the passion of her body. She uses anaphora, negation, and the imperative to try to convince herself that Nick isn’t good for her.

“Mom and I didn’t see each other after the trial, but it was impossible to act like she didn’t exist. My sister talked about her all the time and told her things about me. That was the worst thing because it meant I could never really break off the relationship. The pain would always be there, hidden deep in my soul. In the end, she’d always be my mom.”

This reflective passage from one of Nick’s chapters offers an expositional insight into his traumatic past. Nick is reflecting on his complicated relationships with his mom and half-sister in an attempt to make sense of their current dynamic. In the latter two lines, he employs a decided, resigned tone which conveys his outlook on his trauma—he’s convinced that these negative experiences will continue to impact him and doubtful that he’ll be able to resolve his relationship with his mom.

“I sat up, stretched a leg across his lap, and rested on top of him. He looked hypnotized and sat up to squeeze me in his arms. Our kissing was deeper now, more eager, and his hands were all over me. But just as I thought I would melt, I stopped, opening my eyes, my mind a blank. That was what he did to me—made me forget everything—and that was exactly what I needed.”

Noah’s physiological response to being intimate with Nick conveys the complexity and the intensity of their relationship. Noah is fully engaged in this intimate scene, demonstrated by her act of sitting on his lap. Her diction displays her profound attraction to Nick and her seeming powerlessness to resist him. She conveys her attraction by likening her mind to “a blank” and saying that her body is melting, showing how her body, not her mind, is in control in this scene.

“I shook my head, wishing this wasn’t happening. I wasn’t ready to confront Dan. There was a part of me that still wished everything was as it had been before, that wanted to turn around and let him hug me, kiss me, tell me how much he loved and missed me. I desperately wanted to be with someone from my previous life. Even for just a few seconds, I wanted to be the Noah Morgan I had been before getting into a car and heading off to a new city to live a life I didn’t want.”

Seeing Dan again complicates Noah’s Search for Home and Belonging. Since he cheated on her, Noah has been trying to forget Dan and focus on the present. However, his disloyalty has negatively impacted how she sees herself. For this reason, she momentarily longs to rekindle their relationship because she wants to go back to being the person she was before she moved, a desire that implies that breaking up with Dan has ushered Noah into a new phase of her young adult life.

“Since we’d first hooked up, everything had changed. Our irritation with each other was now an unquenchable longing, and it put me in an awkward situation. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I was sure being in an actual relationship with Noah was no good for a guy like me.”

Noah’s internal monologue contributes to the theme of the relationship between love and hate. This moment marks a shift in Noah’s outlook on her and Nick’s relationship. She is reflecting on the ways their relationship has changed and imagining what their relationship might become. She and Nick are therefore situated on a threshold between their contentious past and their loving future.

“Whether I admitted it or not, I wanted to know how Nick was. I don’t know when or how or why, but I felt suddenly worried about him. Things seemed to be going smoother with us. He hadn’t tried anything with me since he’d touched me in the kitchen […] and a part of me was bitter over it. The only time my life felt good in LA was when I was in his arms. He made me forget everything else.”

Noah’s concern for Nick captures the ways that her regard for him is changing and her attempt to make sense of her intense and conflicting feelings. She uses caveats and qualifiers like “whether I admitted it or not,” “I don’t know when or how or why,” “seemed to be,” and “part of me.” These linguistic patterns enact Noah’s desire to understand her emotions and why she’s able to feel simultaneously “bitter” and “good” when she’s around Nick.

“I wanted him to hold me. Deep down I wanted him to stay with me. I wanted us to be in love or at least to know each other better. Nick was a total mystery to me, and I was to him, too. I couldn’t let him know that a part of me wanted him to tell me he loved me or to take me somewhere we could really be alone instead of leaning against a tree at a party.”

Noah’s use of repetition and rhythmic language affects an eager, desperate narrative tone. She repeats “I wanted” throughout the passage, showing how intense her feelings are and how emotionally trapped she feels being unable to express them. The references to love and desire in this passage also convey how Noah’s hatred for Nick has grown into affection.

“I was in the bathroom in Nick’s hotel room. I’d taken off my white dress and was looking at myself in the mirror in my underwear. He’d lent me one of his T-shirts so I could be comfortable as I talked with him, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the scar on my stomach. My scar had always been a problem. It was why I never wore bikinis and never let anyone see my stomach. Just the thought of it horrified me.”

The image of Noah looking at herself in the mirror offers an organic gateway into her interiority and her traumatic past. She is looking at her reflection and studying her scar, something she usually avoids to keep from confronting her pain. This moment marks an emotional turning point in her personal growth journey as she looks straight at her scar. Meanwhile, the reference to her white dress conveys purity and innocence, connecting to her childhood when she was hurt by her father.

“The past few days with him had been amazing. I’d even started to open up to him, but after tonight, it was over. He was revealing he was just a jealous tough guy trying to mark his territory, and I didn’t like that one bit. I’d been terrified when he’d grabbed my shoulders, and I’d seen how furious he was.”

Noah employs clear, direct, and simple language which shows how firmly she’s made up her mind. She acknowledges both the good and bad aspects of her dynamic with Nick but also recognizes how his violent behavior affects her. Her decision not to be with him illustrates her independence, boldness, and self-possession.

“To get her back, I’d need to rethink my relationship with violence. Noah had finally opened up to me, and we’d gotten closer. I had told her about my sister. I’d come to understand what it meant to love someone. I knew it, I knew I loved her now, I needed her to breathe…How could I have been so stupid? Noah was the last person I wanted to see cry, the last person I wanted to hurt.”

Nick’s use of repetition, rhythm, and anaphora demonstrates the depth of the revelation he is experiencing. Nick is going through a pivotal emotional change in this scene. He acknowledges the surprising way that his and Noah’s relationship has begun to change him while recognizing that further change still needs to happen. His repetitions of “I knew” thus capture his determination to remake himself and to embrace his future with Noah.

“Looking at myself in the mirror, I told myself I did need a distraction, that there was no point staying there and ruminating on a problem it was best to forget. I put on my makeup, and Jenna left to do the same at her place. I focused on what I saw in the mirror. I didn’t want to leave a second free of my worries. Once my makeup was on, I spent another half hour fooling with my hair and then tried on almost all the dresses Mom had bought me, most of them still on hangers with the price tags attached.”

The images of Noah looking at herself in the mirror, doing her hair and makeup, and dressing herself in new clothes resonate metaphorically as well. Noah is trying to change and let go of her recent negative experiences. She does so by covering her usually bare face, changing her hair, and donning the expensive, unfamiliar clothes she doesn’t usually wear. Her makeup, hair, and clothing become a sort of armor that Noah uses to hide her pain and ignore her trauma.

“What had happened to her? Who was the real Noah Morgan? With those thoughts in my head, I lay down next to her, pulling her into my chest, wanting to protect her from everyone and everything. Something had happened to her. I was going to find out what.”

When Nick sees Noah’s scar for the first time, he becomes even more deeply invested in her. The scar, a sign of trauma in Noah’s past, offers Nick a hint of what Noah has lived through. When he sees the scar, he sees a vulnerable part of Noah and is desperate to understand and protect her.

“‘I’m tired of playing this stupid game,’ he said, one hand against my stomach. ‘I wasn’t lying when I said that what happened in the Bahamas would never happen again. I’m here for you if and when you need me, Noah…You want me, and I want you.’”

This moment of dialogue marks a turning point in Nick and Noah’s relationship. Because they have an enemies to lovers romance, Nick and Noah have largely avoided telling each other how they feel. In this scene, however, Nick uses clear, direct language to communicate his feelings to Noah, illustrating both his personal growth and his attempt to further develop their relationship.

“I knew the time had come to be sincere, but I was scared to unearth those memories. Just the thought of breaking down again as I had in that closet filled me with despair. But Nicholas had told me he was in love with me, so how could I resist?”

Noah’s decision to open up to Noah marks a step in her journey toward overcoming past trauma. She acknowledges her discomfort with talking about her past but also decides to be brave and trust Nick. At this moment, Noah is considering making herself vulnerable to Nick, but her conflicting emotions show how fraught this decision is for her.

“Things were finally the way they should be: Noah was mine, she was happy, and I was, too. After years without trusting a woman, I had chosen one who was complex but perfect, one who could give me back all the love and trust that I had lost at such an early age. I started to see that Noah and I had a lot in common.”

Nick’s relationship with Noah helps him to reconcile with his traumatic past and establish a new sense of home and belonging. His use of words like “happy,” “perfect,” “love,” and “trust” convey a heartfelt tone. This passage also captures the ways in which love might help the individual to survive life’s challenges and to feel safe.