Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Henry
T wo weeks of seeing her face were going to kill me, and at this point I’d welcome the end. It would be less tortuous than this already.
No distractions, I’d promised myself. This holiday isn’t about anything other than rebuilding bridges—ones I’d fucking burned with my selfish actions.
Turning away from Phoebe on more than one occasion had been the easy choice to make, because looking at her reminded me of why I hadn’t wanted to come on this trip in the first place.
There’d be too much temptation at every turn, and it had only taken one day for me to walk smack bang into the most beautiful temptation of all.
Now she was everywhere I turned, drawing me in whether I liked it or not with her blonde hair, blue eyes, and soft skin.
I did not like it.
I didn’t want any woman’s attention again for a very long time.
Least of all from someone like her.
She was a ten, and her smart-arse mouth made her a goddamn twenty, and those kinds of numbers were too dangerous for a guy like me to play with.
She made me want to pack my shit up and jump on the first flight back to London, if only I hadn’t owed this trip to Andy.
To Jace in some ways, too. This was my effort to make amends.
I couldn’t fuck it up after just two days.
If I could just put a smile on my face and at least pretend to be enjoying our time here, they’d get off my back for a minute.
But pretending had never been my forte, and I apparently liked the weight of regret on my shoulders.
I also apparently couldn’t stay away from the woman still looking up at me as though she expected me to be the one to get this conversation rolling.
Good luck with that, angel eyes.
Those pale blues were going to be my undoing if I didn’t get a hold of myself.
“What the hell was that?” she eventually snapped.
“Didn’t realise I had to state the obvious but, okay, yeah. I just saved your arse.”
“Right,” she said, swallowing carefully, the action making her delicate neck hold my attention for a beat too long. “And while I appreciate that part of it, the attitude afterwards I could live without.”
All I could do was stare into her eyes, wondering how she’d managed to create a whole new hue of blue I’d never seen before. My silence made her uncomfortable, but she had no idea how much worse my words would be.
I had no talent for speaking. Only destruction.
“Are we back to the silent treatment now?” she asked before practically growling, “You’re beyond infuriating.”
“A simple thank you will do.”
“You make it hard to say thank you, Henry.”
The mere mention of my name passing her lips was like a slap to the face.
Fuck, I hated it. I hated it because it sounded too good.
Most people in my life called me Cohen now, and that I could handle.
It kept me detached. It kept me inconsequential.
The only people to call me Henry in that tone within the last decade had been my parents, but Henry falling from Phoebe’s mouth felt like something else.
Something I couldn’t explain, making it too tempting to ask her to say it again and let me watch more intently as she wrapped her lips around my name.
I balled my hands into fists by my side and tried to ignore the racing of my pulse as I stared into her eyes, somehow full of both innocence and fire.
To the rest of the world, she could pass for being a gentle soul, but if you got close enough to her like this, you could see that little flame flickering in the background, waiting to erupt and cause chaos.
“Look.” She sighed, breaking the silence.
“I don’t know what your deal is or why you seem to want to be so combative with me all the time but, yes, thank you for getting my purse back.
I appreciate it. Really. But if you’re just going to continue to treat me like crap every time you’re around me, I’d rather us try and avoid each other as much as possible for the rest of the holiday.
I didn’t fly thousands of miles away from all my shit back home to come face to face with new shit here, and I?—”
“What shit?” I cut in.
She blinked several times. “Excuse me?”
“What shit did you leave back home?”
She stared at me like she couldn’t believe what I was asking, and honestly, neither could I, but curiosity got the better of me, and there we had it.
“Are you serious? You’re really asking me that?” She huffed out a humourless laugh. “What business is that of yours?”
“Probably none, but if you didn’t want me to know, you shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“God, you’re a real… Grr .” She shook her head, and I hated the way she looked at me, but I couldn’t blame her for being frustrated. I frustrated the shit out of myself, too.
While shoving my hands into the pockets of my black swim shorts to stop myself from doing anything stupid, I let out a sigh of my own and watched as she struggled to get her thoughts in order.
“Phoebe?” I said as calmly as I could.
“What?”
“You’re welcome.” And God help me, I couldn’t stop the small smirk that tugged at the corner of my mouth.
Her expression grew angrier before she eventually huffed out her annoyance and turned on her flip flops to march away, tugging the strap of her full bag farther onto her shoulder.
I watched her go until she turned right and disappeared around a line of pink and green bushes and thick trees, leaving me standing alone all over again.
“What the fuck was that about, Cohen?” I muttered to myself.
Not even I referred to myself as Henry anymore. That guy had died right alongside his parents.
I threw my head back, looked up at the clear sky, and ran my hands through the thickness of my hair. All I had to do was stay away from her. All I had to do was keep my distance, and I’d fucked all that up already thanks to some thieving little shitbag.
It had taken me a split second to act on instinct from across the road the moment I’d seen her running out of the mini market, screaming out to the boy in a desperate attempt to save her belongings.
She’d looked too lost and unsure, and I hated to see women like her lose anything.
My need to chase after the kid had taken over before I’d even had a chance to think about how that would look to Phoebe or any of the others, and once she’d caught up to me, panting and breathing in a way that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention, I’d had to replace attraction with anger to try and get my emotions back under control.
Control, Cohen? That’s one thing you’ve never had.
I dropped my hands and let my chin fall to my chest, contemplating disappearing back to my apartment and hiding away from the guys for the rest of the day, when I heard a familiar chorus of laughter from around the pool.
I imagined Phoebe sitting there alone, shaken up by what had just happened, her anger at me making her body vibrate. I imagined the version of events she would relay to the others, given how much I seemed to irritate her, and I knew I couldn’t let that happen.
At least that’s what I told myself.
Telling myself anything different, like how maybe I wanted to make sure she was okay and how I wanted to stand in front of her and just study her face again wasn’t an option.
Better to pretend and keep everyone safe than to tell myself a truth and watch everything I’d built up inside fall apart around me again.
A splash from the pool followed by another chorus of laughter had my feet moving, and I rounded the corner to see Jace, Andy, and those other two girls come into view, each of them sitting on the edges of their sun loungers, leaning in to talk to one another.
The perfect little foursome already coupled up.
It took me a few seconds longer to spot Phoebe.
She sat alone on the edge of the pool, her hands pressed against the white tiles while she stared at her feet in the cerulean-blue water, drifting back and forth as she slowly kicked her legs out.
The sun made her smooth skin glow, and that damn halo of hair up in a ponytail had my fingers twitching to reach out and tug on it until her head fell back and her wide eyes stared up at me, waiting.
The last time I’d found a woman even a tenth as endearing, my whole world had imploded.
But still…
Phoebe seemed to be lost in her thoughts, and I found myself walking over to her on instinct, coming to a stop only when my shadow blocked the sun from her body.
A normal person would have looked up, but not her.
“Go away, Henry,” she said, her attention still on her feet as they drifted slowly through the water, the soft pink of her nail varnish sparkling with the tiny dots of sunshine that caught the ripples she created.
“How did you know it was me?”
“I can smell your arrogance a mile away.”
That traitorous smirk of mine twitched again, but I dropped down beside her anyway, letting my feet sink into the water next to hers.
I left a foot of space between us that somehow felt like a mile.
The thin layer of coconut-scented sunscreen on her skin made me inhale deeply before exhaling slowly, hoping she didn’t notice the way I wanted to savour her.
I shouldn’t have wanted to savour shit.
“Careful,” she said quietly, still not looking my way. “You’re in danger of being civil.”
“Quite the smart arse, aren’t you?”
“Not usually.” She brought her right foot out of the water and held her heel against the surface for just a second before she let it drop back below. “The snark just comes easily around you for some reason. Probably an allergic response to your constant bullshit.”
“There’s medicine for those kinds of allergies.”
“None strong enough to stop you irritating me the way you do.”
“Not sure this is the best way to speak to the person who just stopped you from being mugged outright, but whatever.”
“Right. So… I’m indebted to you now?”
“Absolutely not. That’s not how I operate.”