Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Phoebe
Rhea
Just checking you’re safe and still with grumpy pants. I haven’t heard any police sirens nearby, so I’m assuming you haven’t killed each other yet.
Phoebe
All good. He’s actually not so bad after a few tequilas.
Rhea
I bet he isn’t ;)
Phoebe
Behave.
Rhea
I’ve text Bailey. As soon as she responds, I’ll hit you up so we can head back to our apartment. Even though the sun will be coming up any moment now.
Phoebe
Thanks, Ree-Ree. Love you.
Rhea
That name is absolutely NOT allowed to catch on.
I dropped my phone on the bed and glanced down at Henry licking tequila off my belly button for the fourth, maybe fifth time within the last hour.
He hadn’t been joking when he’d said we were going to enjoy a few shots of the stuff, and when I’d said I felt exhausted after our last romp in the sheets, he’d declared he had the perfect pick me up to battle my tired eyes.
“You managed to buy us a bit more time?” he asked, looking up at me through hooded eyes as he pressed tequila-soaked kisses to my stomach.
“She’s waiting for Bailey to give the all clear to return,” I told him, lying there, my belly twitching every time his lips met my skin. My cheeks were aching. I hadn’t smiled this much in years. “Then”—giggle— “then I can go.”
“Let’s hope Andy knows how to make it an all-night thing, then.” He slid up my body until he was hovering above me. “That way, I get to keep you until morning.”
I reached up to brush his hair away from his eyes before letting my arms fall around his neck. “It’s almost morning now.”
“So, what’s a few more hours.” Henry pressed a tender kiss to my lips, the moonlight illuminating the room with a middle-of-the-night glow. He’d opened the balcony doors at some point, and a soft breeze blew through the gauzy curtains while music rang out from his phone on the bedside table.
The moment he noticed “More Than a Woman” by the Bee Gees playing in the background, Henry began mouthing the lyrics at me, his hair falling forward and his smile coming easily.
“What are you doing?” I scrunched my nose up, trying not to laugh.
“Singing to you. Kinda.”
“If only people knew what a dork you really were, huh?”
“My reputation is the world’s problem. Who I really am is mine, and I’m okay with being me.
In fact…” He leaned down to kiss my neck.
“I really fucking like being me right now.” He placed another kiss against my sensitive skin before he carried on singing along with the Bee Gees, asking me to always be his baby, saying we could take forever just a minute at a time.
“Don’t you ever get tired?” I asked, trying not to focus on the way the adoration of the lyrics falling from him lit another spark of something in my chest I had to force back down.
“Of you? No.”
“Remember when you hated me?”
Henry moved to look down at me again. “I never hated you. I just hated wanting you.”
I stared up into his eyes, not knowing what to say or how to handle the way my veins sang every time he praised me in an unexpected way like that.
The song on his phone changed to one I didn’t recognise, and Henry’s face fell, a small huff of humourless laughter escaping him before he dipped his chin to his chest and shook his head.
“Shit,” he sighed, rolling off me until he was sprawled on his back, staring up at the ceiling, running a hand through his hair.
“What’s wrong?”
“This song.”
I listened to the voice, crackling and too outdated to be a modern tune I recognised.
As though he’d become lost to another time and place, Henry started mouthing the lyrics.
The male vocalist spoke about how if the woman needed something to play with, she should go ahead and find herself a toy, because playing with his heart made him furious.
But if she wanted him to love her, he would. All she had to do was say the word.
The music floated around the room as I turned on my side and pressed a delicate hand to Henry’s chest. I wanted to ask him what it meant, to ask him where he’d just disappeared to, but I didn’t know him well enough to pry.
This thing between us was an arrangement of the physical, not the personal.
Not the emotional. We were nothing more than a summer fling, and I had to remind myself of that instead of wanting to stick the fingers of my intrigue into every dark crevice he tried to keep hidden from everyone around him.
But then he turned his head, catching my eye, holding me hostage.
“My dad told me he used to sing this to Mum back when he was trying to date her. Every Sunday morning, I’d head downstairs, and Dad would be listening to this on repeat while Mum would be fussing in the kitchen, rolling her eyes at him. ”
“It’s a beautiful song.”
“It’s a sad song.” He looked up at the ceiling again.
“Everyone wanted Mum when she was younger: the rich guys, the bad boys, the ones with bright futures, the ones with nothing to offer at all.” A small smile played on his lips.
“But Dad lured her in with song lyrics, small gestures, and a few smart moves here and there. When she wasn’t sure whether to commit to him, he sent her this song.
She told me that was all it took for her to realise he truly was the only one.
” Henry turned to look at me again. “No one else put her in her place the way he did. She loved that about him.”
The reverence in Henry’s voice made tears form in my eyes, and I blessed the muted light, hoping he wouldn’t see them as pity or anything that made him feel wrong for opening up to me.
“I haven’t listened to this since they passed,” he admitted quietly. “Then it comes on randomly, tonight of all nights. Here. With you.”
I ran a single finger over his broad chest. “I still think it’s beautiful. Who sings it?”
“Aaron Neville, “Tell It Like It Is”.”
Not long after, the song ended, replaced by something that made Henry blink away his nostalgia, inhale deeply, then blow it all out. “Shit.” He ran his hand over his eyes before he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Did I just get sentimental in front of a chick?”
“Chick. How old are you? Fourteen? Wait.” My hand froze in place. “How old are you?”
“I’m, twenty, Phoebe.” My face fell for only a second before Henry’s soundless laughter made his body shake, and he pressed his hand over mine, holding it against his heart. “I’m fucking with you. I’m twenty-eight.”
“Don’t scare me like that.”
“Come on. No twenty-year-old could fuck you like I do.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please.”
“Don’t act like you’re not impressed. I see behind the fake hate you put out there.”
“Is that so? What gives me away so easily?”
“Well, firstly…” Holding my hand in place, he turned on his side, facing me and propping himself up on his elbow, copying my pose.
“Do you realise what you’ve been doing the last few minutes?
” He brought my hand up to his mouth and pressed a single kiss to my index finger.
“You’ve been drawing hearts on my skin the way you draw hearts around Rick Eden’s name. ”
“It’s Reed Easton, and I have not.” Humiliation awoke within me, threatening to claw its way up my throat.
He pressed another kiss to my finger. “Don’t look embarrassed. It’s?—”
“Don’t you dare say cute,” I cut in.
“Cute.” He grinned, pressing another kiss there.
With a dramatic flair, I groaned, closed my eyes, and flopped down onto my back, using my other arm to throw over my eyes. “Stop. Just stop torturing me all the time.”
Henry’s deep chuckle made my insides swirl with euphoria, even when my embarrassment tried to take over.
“But torturing you is fun,” he said, letting my hand go to bring his body closer to mine. His naked chest came against my side, his dick against my thigh.
“Sadist,” I muttered petulantly, even though I didn’t feel petulant at all. It was a role I took on easily around him, guarding my own heart from the way it threatened to beat too wildly in his presence. Sometimes I worried he could hear it.
“I think you like it more than you let on.” His voice took on that sexy edge again that usually preceded him becoming horny.
I was about to pull my arm away from my face when he held it in place and leaned down so his mouth was next to my ear. “Leave it there. Keep your eyes closed. Let me even up the score a little.”
Before I could ask what he meant, he trailed a finger up my stomach, between the valley of my breasts, until it came to a stop above my beating heart, which only beat faster while I waited for his next move.
“Tell me what you feel.” Slowly, ever so carefully, the pad of his finger started to move over my left breast, and it took me a second to realise he was tracing letters over my skin—a word I couldn’t make out.
I tried hard to concentrate on the flow of his finger instead of how good it felt to be touched by him, and my lips parted when he came to a stop, only for him to go back to the beginning to start all over again.
“You got it yet?”
I rolled my head against the pillow. “No. I… wait. Was the first letter R?”
“Yeah,” he breathed, moving on to the next. “And this one?”
“T?”
“Good.”
When his finger finally completed the third letter, I scowled beneath my arm before peeling it away and staring up into Henry’s eyes. “M?”
He nodded, tracing the three letters over and over again on my skin.
“R… T… M? What do they mean?”
Henry lowered his face to mine. “Remember this moment. My version of telling you I’m highlighting my time with you and storing it away to come back to when the days back home are rainy, and you’re no longer there.”
No longer there…
The thought shouldn’t have pinched at my heart the way it did.
“RTM,” I whispered.
He drew each of the three letters on my skin again, only this time when he finished, he drew a heart around them all before he leaned down and pulled me into another kiss that stole my breath and made any worries about the future disappear.
“Reed Easton’s got nothing on me, babe,” he muttered against my lips, forcing me to break out into a fit of laughter I couldn’t contain.
He had no idea how much I agreed.
Or how I wanted to add another letter to his sweet declaration: F.
Because I had no doubt in my mind I would remember this moment forever.
No matter what laid ahead, or how hard the goodbye turned out to be.
Henry Cohen had made an impression on my heart. One I knew would stay there either as a trophy or a scar for the rest of my days.