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Chapter 9
Noah
“Darling.” My mum burst through the patio doors, making me jump out of my skin. I’d just got back, the short walk across the beach a welcome relief, to find the room had been restored to its pristine normality, and now I was sat here with the room phone in one hand and the room service menu in the other, and I was going to go back to normal come hell or high water.
“What?” I barked, all defensive. No clue why.
I knew exactly why, because deep down? I knew what an idiot I was. But then I was a rational human being, and this was not real and would never become morethan it was.
“He’s wearing your clothes. He’s also sat there scanning the room, looking like he’s about to cry. What are you doing, Noah?”
“I’m…” I started. Then I had to take a deep breath and put the phone back on the side. “I’m being reasonable. This will never go anywhere, and I am cutting it off before it becomes something I can’t handle.”
“He’s a lovely man, Noah,” Mum said quietly, sitting herself down on the bed next to me. “And you’re doing what you always do. As soon as things get good? You run away. You burn your bridges before you’ve even started building them. It’s really not on, darling.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I… Just leave me be, Mum. I don’t want to…”
“I’m disappointed, darling. Really so, but there you have it. If you’re not feeling this, if you’re not happy, I will respect your decision. But they are a nice bunch of lads, we’re all having a laugh. They are excited to get to know you and would just be thrilled to have you sit at the table. And Fox? He’s… Well. I won’t say more. Your decision, darling. Get something nice on room service and relax. Calm down. Let things settle.”
I was so tired of letting things settle. I was tired, full stop. I was full of weird feelings and adrenaline, and this was exactly why I avoided hook-ups. Why I preferred to not have sex. Because once you had it? You wanted more. You wanted the closeness, and the intimacy and the kisses and the goddamn future that looked so alluring. Just like the sunset. Then once it was there, everything would go dark and disappear.
This was definitely the right decision, to stop things now before they got out of hand, and I just sat there, on the bed, letting the darkness engulf me as Mum left. The small niggling fact buzzing around my brain that I’d just left him sat at the table and walked out. I hadn’t even said goodbye. The degree of arsehole behaviour was ginormous.
The lamp above the bedside table was on, the roar of the waves from the beach outside, the quiet nothingness of once again being so utterly alone.
Just me. My phone dark, still attached to the charger on the desk. The kettle cold. Even our teacups had been washed and replaced, new shiny things perfectly placed next to the fresh stack of beach towels provided. Everything back to how it was.
Just me. Just quiet solitude. Did it make me feel better? I wanted to scream into the silence, because no. It didn’t. It made me feel shitty on a grand scale.
I picked up the phone again, intending to follow through with my order, then slammed it back down.
I missed him.
What on earth was going on in my head? No clue. No idea. Just a complete maelstrom of confusion which all funnelled into the one picture in my head.
Him. Fucking Fox Riley. The guy who I had fucked and then let fuck me and then I had carried him back to his friends, him on my back repeatedly kissing my neck.
Like he cared.
My hand was stroking that same neck, like I was trying to feel those kisses, all over again. Or perhaps I was trying to rub them from my skin. Like I ever could.
So I sat there, my chest heaving with pain.
I wasn’t in pain. I wasn’t in any medical danger. I was just…
I was confused. So bloody destroyed. Sad.
I was actually sad. Upset to the depth deep down in my bones.
And then I was just sitting there, on the bed, wondering what to do with myself now that I could do whatever I wanted.
I suddenly had no hunger. No need for that bottle of red I had been eyeing up. All I wanted was to lie on this bed and bury my nose in the pillow, the stupid clean pillowcase that no longer smelled of anything.
“Hey.”
Oh fuck. The fact that I flew off the bed, startled to the bone, and the other fact…that he had walked all the way here on that bloody foot, still wearing just one sock?
