Chapter 30
CHAPTER 30
NOW
PRESSLEY_PROFILE_V1.
I had stared at the blank page for hours, with no movement except the cursor blinking. That first draft was a lot harder, now that whenever I thought or read or tried to write about Henry, all I could think about were his lips on mine. My fingers interlaced with his. The undeniable lust in every single breath we had shared.
And although it must’ve been the man on my mind and not the color of my walls that kept me from producing coherent sentences, I’d opted for a change.
I’d been holed up in the HBP office for about a week since then.
With everyone else around me writing, I felt like I had to be doing the same. After I’d been begging to be one of them for almost a year now. Typing away until my fingers bled, until my lips dried out because I’d forget to drink. In a strange way, I’d missed that.
The office also reminded me of the fact that I wanted to sit in one a few months from now and actually get paid to be there. This profile wasn’t just to graduate with a good grade or to prove something to my parents once they’d inevitably find out about the whole thing. It was to restore my reputation, and to hopefully write something so great, future employers wouldn’t care about that hiccup in my record last year—the minor complaint from the source I had apparently misquoted.
Spending my entire week at the Post had been worth it, though. Not only because it meant no accidental run-ins with Henry, but because I’d actually managed to produce a coherent draft. I was working through lunch, trying to make it into something more than half-decent before my appointment with Eddie in half an hour.
Which wasn’t a lot of time. And it was stressing me out more than it would’ve a year ago. I was distracted, jumpy. I couldn’t keep my legs still.
Alfie got up from his desk beside mine, and suddenly that seemed so much more interesting than the sentence structure I’d been trying to figure out.
The ginger strolled past me with a shrug. “Lunch,” he said, and it was explanation enough. He didn’t bother wasting his breath on an invitation he knew I would decline.
“And then there were two,” Lacy hummed four desks over, playful amusement in her perfect voice. She’d probably be a good singer if she gave it a try.
When I only answered with a forced, uncomfortable laugh, she spun her chair in my direction. “How’s the profile going?”
And I did not expect myself to groan so candidly. By the look on her face, neither had she.
“Sorry.” I tried to recover from my outburst. “It’s just… I’m trying to fix this draft, and then someone asks a question or leaves the room, and I—” The ding of an incoming email cut me off, and I grandly gestured to my screen. “See!”
Lacy huffed, nodded as if she totally knew the feeling. As if she could possibly understand the stress I was putting myself under—the stress of my entire future being tied to one stupid profile about my ex-boyfriend, and that it could salvage the career that had been hanging by a thread since last year. It needed to be perfect.
So far, it was half decent.
“Just one of those days,” Lacy said, giving me an encouraging smile. A shadow danced across her face, her brow furrowed, her mouth twitched, and for a second, I’d imagined a tinge of jealousy in her tone when she said, “You’ll manage, Paula. You always do.”
I hummed gruffly. “Thanks.”
We both turned back to our screens. While Lacy probably continued writing or researching or doing something else incredibly productive, I opened my emails.
[email protected] 1:36 PM
Got your pictures for the profile! I’ve attached the headshots as well as some candids like we talked about. Hope there’s something useful between them and looking forward to reading this thing.
X, Hallie
“It’s work related,” I muttered in Lacy’s general direction, just so she knew. I didn’t know why I felt it was important that she did.
The blonde gave me a confused thumbs-up in return, and my eyes drew back to the screen. I scrolled through the attached pictures half-heartedly.
One of Henry frowning into the camera, then with his lips turning upward reluctantly. I was surprised to see a genuine smile in the next take and wondered what she’d said to get it there. Either way, Hallie was good at what she was doing because those were rare.
I clicked through the folder distractedly, until I got to the candids she was talking about in the email and—sneaky little woman! I hadn’t even noticed her set up camp behind me. Judging by the angle of the pictures, it’s where she must’ve taken them from.
Most of them were zoomed-in photos of Henry kicking, dribbling, shooting at the goal and scoring. In another one, he stood in the middle of the pitch, looked up at the sky, the lens so far away you could barely make out his face on the empty field. Some of the seats filled out the background.
In hindsight, I wished that photo had been the last one, the end of the folder. Though when I clicked to the next, unsuspecting and na?ve, I stared back at my own face. His and mine, as we stood by the penalty spot, the ball between us.
I frowned down at it; he smiled up at me.
I was reluctant to click through to the next one. But maybe I’d only gotten into her selection by accident, and she hadn’t meant to take it, never mind send it to me?
No, unfortunately. I was on that one, too. Laughing up at Henry, a subtle smile on his own lips.
How hadn’t we noticed her up there?
I winced as the next picture materialized on my screen. Henry and me. On the ground. Just that it did not look like the vicious foul it had actually been. At all.
She’d captured that in-between, before he told me this is why I do it , and after we’d laughed until my cheeks had hurt. Where we’d just looked at each other, the faintest trace of a smile on our lips, eyes widened. If Hallie’s zoom had been just a little better, she probably would’ve captured my dilated pupils, the breath stuck in my throat.
Henry’s face, though… her camera had been good enough to see everything written across his face. Like he’d had his guard down for a little over a second, and Hallie had taken a picture of it.
This is how he looked at me?
I couldn’t help my eyes trailing back to Henry, looking at me like he’d just found the center of the world.
Before I could convince myself that I was going mad—that there must’ve been a hundred other explanations for his expression, for the fact he’d looked at me like he’d just found the center of the universe—my phone vibrated against the wooden desk. I was inclined not to answer the unknown number, then remembered it could be work related. I got out of my chair with a pained sigh.
Passing Lacy, she shot me an innocent smile from behind her screen. “Just not meant to be, huh?”
I grimaced on my way out, shutting the door behind me with more force than needed. Not meant to be, huh? I mocked her in my head, raising the phone to my ear. “Paula Castillo,” I said.
“Paula,” they said by way of greeting.
I double-checked the screen at the familiar voice.
“It’s Henry.” He confirmed my fear. “I got a new phone; you blocked my number a while back.”
Maeve had. Months ago. After my second drunk call, right before deleting it.
I huffed in reply, relaxing against the wall behind me. “You mean new phone number ,” I corrected him.
“Oh.” The silence lingered from the other end, background noise the only thing making it through. “I could’ve done that. Yeah.” It seemed he hadn’t even considered the possibility. “Anyway, I need to see you—talk to you. I don’t have much time, but it’ll only take a minute. Can you spare that?”
I made up this thing in my head where I told myself I needed to talk to you.
The thought of what had happened after those words made me blush, my stomach flutter. Clear signs that I should avoid him by any means possible. To keep myself out of a situation where I’d have to rely on our shared self-restraint again—something neither of us seemed to have much of.
“I’m at the Post , actually.” And I didn’t have much time either because I had to be in Eddie’s office with that first draft in fifteen minutes.
So, when my gaze got stuck on Henry, right as he came up the stairs, my stomach dropped. Like by a mile a second—the way it would at the top of a roller coaster; that first second after the cart tipped forward.
I only distantly heard the call disconnecting when Henry said, “Perfect.”
He must’ve just been at the gym because his hair was still damp from the shower he’d taken, and his muscles looked more defined. Although I wasn’t sure if that’s how the science behind that worked or if maybe I was just… too aware of every slither of skin he was showing in the black tank top he wore.
Either way, my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach, where it continued to beat unsteadily at the reminder of our last encounter.
I’d been trying to forget it since. His hair had been equally wet, and he’d looked just as good. His lips had been just as pink, eyes just as green. Freckles around his nose just as perfect.
I clutched the phone in my hand, only to keep myself from going over there to finish what we’d started that night in his car.
Be reasonable , I tried to convince myself. But there was no point anymore. Not really.
“Hi,” I breathed. He came to an abrupt halt a few inches away, like his body had wanted to come closer and he physically had to deny the subconscious request.
I looked up when his head cocked sideways, scanning the hallway like he couldn’t get himself to look at me. His throat worked, eyes flickering from door to door—and I wondered which one would leave an empty room behind it. For no reason at all. “What’s up?”
“Can we talk?” He asked again, gaze finally snapping to mine. “Alone.” Technically, we were alone. But he amended his words quickly. “Somewhere more private.”
The last time we’d been in public I almost climbed the man. To think what might have happened behind closed doors—
“Of course.” Autopilot again. I wouldn’t have said it that way otherwise; eager and willing. I might’ve not said it at all. And as if I hadn’t already been too much of both—eager and willing—I said, “Follow me.”
I steered us toward the room of our first interview right away. It was the only one I could think of that was sure to be free. No one would voluntarily spend a sunny lunch break in there, and I didn’t want to risk delaying whatever time I might get with him alone by searching for another one.
So up the stairs, down the hall, and a right turn later, I opened its door. Empty.
Relief flooded every single one of my senses.
It had taken physical restraint to stay away from Henry after he’d kissed me. Multiple times, I’d been on the verge of marching over to his apartment. So the fact that he was here now… my body thrummed with every single desire I’d been trying to push away for a week.
The way Henry just stepped past me and into the room without an invitation, he might feel the same way. Eager. Desperate.
Please don’t make me kiss you. Because I won’t be able to stop. I won’t want to.
My breath hitched at the thought, imagining his rough voice against my lips, my breasts, below my hips. And the next time I looked at him, standing in the small room, just inches away, that string snapped. Violently lashing out in every direction.
“Listen,” he said, shaking his head like he was trying to escape similar thoughts. “I tried. I really tried so hard not to read anything into last week—”
I didn’t even feel bad for cutting him off. So harshly, desperately, I might’ve been embarrassed if he’d been anyone else.
But he was Henry. My Henry. Wasn’t he?
“Please just kiss me again,” I blurted.
And the way he looked at me, the second it took him to adjust to my request, I knew I was right to trust him with the pure honesty of my words. Because I could see the same thing on his face.
His eyes snapped up to mine, frozen for a moment before he moved. And it was obvious, in every single one of his heavy steps, that he wanted me, too.
“What?” he asked, but a hair’s length away.
“Kiss me.”
He did not hesitate. And with everything that he was, Henry Parker Pressley kissed me again.
With his hand on my cheek and the other on my waist, he kissed me. With my hair in his face and my arms around his neck, he kissed me. With my body pressed between his and the door, he kissed me.
Desperately, longingly, like he was trying to make up for the past week, and then the past year before that, with only a matter of minutes to do so.
Over and over and over again, he kissed me. Or maybe he never really stopped. I thought if I could die like this, slowly suffocating because we wouldn’t come up for air, I would.
His breath stuttered and my hands found themselves in his brown hair, grabbing, pulling, earning me a soft groan against my lips that could make me come undone, just by the implication. My hands fell from his hair to the waistband of his pants.
“Paula,” he panted, and I only allowed his lips from mine for a second. “Darling, hey.” The sound he drew out of me when he disconnected our lips was needy, whiny—half a broken moan. “Here?”
He looked around, not opposed, but unsure when his eyes found mine again.
“I don’t care.” My voice broke. “Anywhere.”
His next kiss landed on my neck. He sucked and nibbled, coerced hushed moans out of me when he held my thigh, pulled it against himself, only for his hand to move to my backside.
“You still taste the same,” he groaned against my skin, voice hushed. “Feel the same, sound the same. Do you know that?” His lips trailed up my neck. “It’s like you’re still mine.”
I almost told him I was.
But my breath was too heavy to speak, my chest rose and fell too hard to get a word out. And when our lips connected again, and another one of my moans got swallowed by his lips, I couldn’t think , never mind speak.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you. After New York. After last week. I—” He groaned into my mouth, teeth digging into my lower lip softly. “I need you. I—” And it seemed he had more to say but gave up when my fingers began fumbling with his belt buckle.
His head fell back at the implication, hands driving up the back of my neck and into my hair. His belt fell open, and he kissed me like he was rewarding me for finally getting it done.
Which made the generic ringtone blaring through the room so much worse.
I shook my head even before our lips disconnected, because I could feel him draw away, and I didn’t like it.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and he sounded like he really was. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” Which was when he took a step back, and my body sagged against the door because my legs had turned into jelly. “Remember when I said I don’t have much time?”
That reminded me of something awful— I didn’t, either.
“How late is it?” I asked, panic lacing my features, need and desperation taking a backseat, when I realized I probably wouldn’t make it to Eddie’s office in time.
“Two.”
“Fuck.” My hand ran down my hair, smoothed out my clothes in an attempt not to look thirty seconds post- heavy make-out . And sixty seconds pre- much more. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
The phone was no longer ringing, which meant Henry had taken the call. My plan was to leave the room and not think about what had happened in it until I’d survived my meeting. I’d already opened the door, was halfway through it.
“Paula.” When I turned around, Henry covered the microphone with his palm, holding the device a few inches from his face. “I’ll call you.”