Chapter 38
ALEX
Still | Niall Horan
‘Alex. Alex .’
Sarah’s voice followed him into the garden, only a minute after he’d made it out the dining room without his mother noticing he was ditching the wedding.
Being happy for his brother could exist in tandem with feeling slightly ill at the celebration of love.
He sped up. No chance she’d be able to catch him in heels.
‘Alex!’
When he turned, he found her mere steps away from him, shoes in one hand and what looked like a dark book in the other.
‘ What , Sarah?’
‘Can we talk?’ Now that she had his attention, her voice was quieter than he’d expected.
With a huff, Alex started walking again, stopping only when Sarah sped to appear in front of him. He knew he was acting like a child, but god, everything inside him fucking hurt with her standing so close.
‘At least listen to me.’
He could do this. One last twist of the knife to remind him they were an astronomically bad idea. Closure. So he stood in place. Arched one eyebrow.
‘I’m sorry for making you think I didn’t care about you. About us.’
He said nothing, even if her words tugged at him, desperate for them to be true.
‘Spending time with you is the happiest I’ve been in ages. Not the sex, although that’s pretty fucking phenomenal,’ Sarah said. A small part of him wanted to smile at that, but he resisted, face remaining stony. ‘You know what I’ve missed this week, Alex? More than the actual sex, I’ve missed how you always find a way to make me laugh after. I’ve missed you sending me dumb art memes as an excuse to start a conversation so you can ask about my day. I’ve missed—’ She took a breath. ‘I’ve missed your smile. Not your smirk, although I think I love that too.’
She didn’t mean it. Not that word. Not the way he did. Even if hearing it made his heart kick up a notch.
‘Your real smile. When you’re happy and relaxed, not just amused. You don’t let a lot of people see it, I think. But you let me.’
Because he had relaxed around her. Because he’d felt safe with her. Him. Not everything he projected.
‘If you don’t still want me, why did you touch me earlier?’
Alex stiffened. He’d hoped she’d write it off as an accident. ‘I didn’t.’
‘When you gave me the mic.’ Sarah’s eyes were shrewd, assessing him, watching for a lie.
‘That was a mistake.’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘How would you know?’ he shot back.
‘Because I know you, Alex. I may not know shit like your favourite colour or movie or the first time you broke a bone. But I know you . The way you move. How intentional it is. You don’t do things by accident. I know other things too. The way you laugh and how much you love Celine and the way you go through life lying to people so they won’t see you. But you let me. And god, Alex, what a gift.
‘You’re gorgeous and charming and funny and everything you want people to think. But you are so much more to me. And if this is it… If you can’t find your way back to me, if you really don’t want me, I still want to thank you for letting me in.’
Sarah wore a soft smile as she spoke. It made him desperate to believe her, but he couldn’t stop picturing her face when she’d spoken about moving to Barcelona. How okay she’d been with leaving him after—
‘But if there’s the slightest chance, I don’t want this to be over,’ she said, interrupting his thoughts.
And a week ago, he would have jumped at the chance to keep sleeping with her. At the thought of more time to convince her they could be something. But now…
‘Fuck that,’ he snapped. ‘I’m not going to keep sleeping with you while you wait for someone you think is worth giving more to. I l—’ He kicked at a rock, swallowing the word that had been threatening each time he saw her. ‘I like you too much to do that to myself.’ It may have been his last shred of self-respect, but he was going to cling to it.
‘Alex.’ Her tone was warmer now, and he hated that he knew every inflection of her voice. ‘You haven’t been listening, have you?’
Another rock. A scuff appeared on the soft leather of his shoe.
‘ Alex. ’ Her bare feet moved into his field of vision. ‘How could you hear my speech and not think I like you? I like you so much.’
‘Yeah. Sure.’ He looked up, refusing to be overwhelmed by her wide eyes. Her plush lips. ‘That’s why you wanted to move a thousand miles away from me. And while we’re on that, how does Barcelona fit into all this? You want me to keep your bed warm for a month until you leave?’
‘I’m not going.’
It took a moment for her calm, measured response to filter into his brain. And then he was inexplicably pissed. Because without the possibility of Barcelona, he could have had another week with her. He wouldn’t have known how easy it was for her to consider leaving him. And now she was going to be here, and he’d have to see her all the time, and that ache filling his chest would never go away.
‘Why not?’
‘Because someone I care a lot about said I was better than that.’ Her eyes, normally ripping into him, were so tender in the moonlight, but he couldn’t bring himself to soften, to let her see him open and exposed like he’d become accustomed to.
‘Why did you want to go in the first place? If you care so much about me, why were you so ready to leave?’
‘Because I couldn’t conceive of a world where we worked out. Alex.’ Sarah sighed. ‘Look at yourself. I’m still not entirely convinced you’re human. And that was fine when it was just physical. It was kind of a power trip, actually. But then I got to know you. I got to see that you’re thoughtful and sweet, and you like looking after people. I got to imagine what it would be like to be looked after by you. And when my heart got involved, the insecure little girl in my head did too. Suddenly there were stakes, and not having you at all felt less ruinous than getting attached and getting my heart broken again. And the people you’ve dated… They’re not me, okay? I know I’m hot when I put the effort in, but on the daily you’re going to see me in leggings and oversized shirts and no makeup. And the women you’ve been with in the last few years? They look an awful lot like the person my ex cheated with.’
Anger washed through him at the comparison. ‘I would never —’
‘I know,’ Sarah said quickly. ‘But do you see how I got a little in my head about it? I know you’re nothing like him, Alex. You are…infinitely better than him, in every way. But if he thought I wasn’t good enough…’
‘What about me?’ Alex asked. The heat had gone out of his voice now, replaced by a stirring in his chest at everything she’d been carrying. Because he got it. Understood that strange dichotomy of knowing you could be attractive and funny and everything another person could want. But still believing no one else would think the regular you underneath it all was worth anything. They both knew how to perform. Alex had just perfected the act, integrating it flawlessly into every facet of his life.
‘What about every time I told you how attracted I am to you? Every time you made me laugh? If you know my fucking smile is only real with you, why didn’t you listen to me ?’
‘Because I fucked up, okay? Because I refused to see the things you were showing me until it was too late.’ She paused, eyes thoughtful, before holding out her hand, that small black book still clutched in it. ‘Will you just look at this?’
Alex set the long-forgotten champagne bottle down on the grass and grabbed the sketchbook roughly, flipping the cover open to find a small print of a painting, a landscape in shades of gold and blue. ‘What is this?’
‘Flip backwards.’
As he turned the pages, he saw elements of the composition devolve. A gold wheat field became strands of hair. The multi-hued sky unblurred to form deep blue eyes. Sandstone boulders smoothed out into skin stretched over muscles. And between the remnants of the painting, other studies. Pale skin and lavender nails contrasting against stark black tattoos. His fingers pressing into her stomach. A soft smile gracing his lips. Her hand in his hair, holding his face between her thighs. A few full sketches of him. Including one dated—
‘What are you trying to tell me?’
‘That for weeks now, I’ve thought about you constantly. And before that…even when I told myself I didn’t like you, even when we’d just met’—she nodded at the open page, the date in the corner marking it a week after that fateful hook up at Neon—‘I thought about you more than I should have. I want you, Alex. If you’ll have me again.’
He did. He wanted her like crazy. In the haze of hurt of the past week, in the rollercoaster of emotions since their conversation had begun, it was the one thing that hadn’t changed. So it was probably good that she stood slightly too far away for him to grab her. But then she stepped closer. Less than an arm’s length away. And resisting her plush, softly parted lips had always been impossible for him. Even more when she breathed his name and reached a hand towards him.
So he gave in.
Another half step and one hand was on her waist, the other on her face, the sketchbook joining the champagne on the grass with a dull thud .
Then the taste and smell and feel of her consumed him.
His fingers touched brick, and Alex was dimly aware that he’d pressed her into a wall. It was enough to wake him up.
‘You mean it?’ he breathed against her lips. ‘Because I’m not doing this again if it isn’t real.’
‘I mean it,’ she whispered back, angling her head so she could look up at him. ‘I want to go for dinner with you. I want to go to gallery openings together and show you my paintings before anyone else and walk your dog and go to the farmers market and cook steak with you. Alex, I want everything with you.’
And it all lined up so completely with everything he’d been imagining in the last few weeks. Everything he’d spent so long thinking wasn’t meant for him.
‘You stopped calling me Aleksander.’
‘You hate it.’
‘Not when you say it.’ Alex brushed his thumb over her cheekbone, savouring the warmth and softness of her skin.
‘You stopped calling me Princess,’ she said.
‘You don’t like it.’
‘I think I like it a little too much, actually.’ His thumb slipped down to her lips, so he felt the warmth of his name when she breathed, ‘Aleksander…’
An embarrassingly needy sound escaped his throat as he drew her back in, kissing her soundly. Her hands roved under his jacket, tugging at his shirt and sliding over his ass.
‘We should— go upstairs—’ she panted, as he brushed his lips down her jaw.
Alex smiled against her neck, parting his teeth to nip at the skin there and enjoying the shiver that rippled through her. ‘I thought you didn’t hook up at weddings.’
‘Is it still a hook-up if you’re my boyfriend?’ Her voice had never sounded so sweet . And even if it felt tragically juvenile, he wanted that descriptor desperately.
‘If I’m your boyfriend,’ he said, with another nip, this time at her collarbone, ‘before we go upstairs, we’re going back into that dining room. It’s been a shit day, and I want to dance with my girlfriend at my brother’s wedding. I want to kiss you in front of my family. Maybe let my mother grill you a bit.’
He supposed it was a test. If she said no, if she was still determined that this be a dirty little secret, maybe he could still walk away. But then she said, ‘Sounds fair,’ and he could hear her smile, could feel it lift him up.
And this—holding her, kissing her, being with her—was enough to wipe away the pain of a full day spent watching her, hating himself for wanting her.
Ten minutes later, when Alex saw his brother stare lovingly into his new wife’s eyes, it didn’t send any hurt or envy or disgust through him. Because he finally had it. The thing they’d found that he’d been desperate for. The woman in his arms—appallingly bad at waltzing, which he hadn’t thought was possible, but found tremendously endearing—was his. And he wasn’t letting her go.