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“Fair enough.” He put his bottle in the sand and leant back.
“Ugh.”
“What?”
“You look like you’re getting comfy. Are you trying to ruin my morning? Because I’m telling you, if your girlfriend shows up, that’s what’s going to happen.”
Noah’s green eyes fixed on me as a smile toyed with his lips. “She won’t. She’s already at work.”
“Good. It’s already partially ruined by your presence. I don’t need her here, too.”
“You can’t blame her for being insecure about me talking to you.”
Um, yes.
Actually, as it happened, I very much could.
Our past was just that—the past. If his girlfriend couldn’t deal with that, then that said a lot more about their relationship than it did about my existence.
“Um, I think I can. It’s been ten years, Noah. It’s not like we’ve even stayed friends, we haven’t said a word to one another until I came back here.” I finally met his eyes, deliberately holding his gaze. “Ten years is a long time, and it’s not like I’ve skipped into town and sought you out. If anything, I’m actually trying to avoid you.”
His lips twitched into a half-smile.
“If she can’t see that, then that sounds like a her problem, not a me problem,” I said. “And I’d prefer it to stay that way. I have no intention of getting involved in your relationship, so tell her to leave me out of it.”
“I’ll try.”
“No, you won’t try.” I grabbed my water bottle and climbed down from my little perch until I was standing in front of him, holding his gaze with mine, trying desperately to ignore the way my heart skipped a beat at the intensity in his eyes. “You’ll do it, Noah. Whatever happened between us was nothing more than a series of teenage summer romances that ended ten years ago. We’ve both moved on. You made that perfectly clear back then, so tell your girlfriend to keep me out of your relationship, or I will. And I won’t be half as bloody nice as you are. You can make a start on the process by leaving me the hell alone, because trust me when I say that you’re the last person I want to talk to.”
I held his gaze for a heartbeat before I turned away and walked back up the beach. It took everything in me to resist the urge to turn around and look at him, because I knew he was watching me go.
If I looked at him, I might just stomp back over there and let loose on him.
Tell him exactly how he hurt me, how I’d never truly moved on because I’d never had closure.
How, for weeks on end, I’d wondered what I’d done wrong to make him ghost me.
How I’d cried night after night until I finally realised that he was never texting me back, he was never answering my calls, he was never going to give me the answer I truly wanted and needed.
How I’d wondered why he’d taken my first everything, been the first person to tell me he loved me, made me fall crazily in love with him, only to break my heart in the most brutal way possible.
No. He hadn’t broken my heart; he’d shattered it.
All of that was exactly why I needed him to leave me the hell alone.
If he didn’t, I might just end up saying something I couldn’t take back.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Okay, I heard some things.” Ash slid into the booth opposite me. “Very interesting things.”
I raised my eyebrows and pushed one of the lemonades I’d ordered towards her. She’d wanted to meet for dinner after her last ceramics session for the day, and we’d ended up in the American-style diner that the tourists loved.
It was a stereotypical one—booming music from the likes of Elvis and swing bands rang out over a black and white tiled floor, red leather seats, a long bar with bright lighting, and walls covered with records and old number plates and God knows what other replicas of relevant memorabilia.
There was even a motorcycle hanging from the ceiling.
I doubted if it was real or just a model, but either way, I’d gotten here before the tourists rushed in and snagged a table that wasnotsituated under the bike.
