Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Phoebe
I took a moment to stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, my hands on the sink to steady me as the boat rocked.
And there I stayed while a commotion happened above me, really taking myself in for the very first time since I arrived on the island.
I looked different to the woman who left England behind.
My hair, usually always straight, had that beachy curl to it now, and my tan had brought freckles out across my nose and cheeks I hadn’t noticed in years.
The pale, ivory skin of the broken girl who’d arrived here had been replaced with the sun-kissed glow of a woman who’d somehow managed to make herself feel whole again.
All thanks to him .
My not-so-little secret who had just been exposed to the very people we’d tried to hide it from the most.
“Would you just listen?” I heard Henry call out.
My Henry.
Not Cohen, like he was to the rest, but Henry.
The tall, brooding, dark, handsome guy the world saw on the outside, but the soft, sweet, caring man on the inside who now made the likes of Reed Easton look pathetic.
There’d never be anyone who could make me feel the way he had over the last few days, not even in fiction.
Closing my eyes, I tried to focus on the conversation happening somewhere above me, about me.
“I’ve had enough of your bullshit. You’ve been lying to me from day one of this trip.” Andy.
“What the hell is going on?” Jace .
“Nothing!” Henry .
“You don’t get to do that.” Andy . “Tell him. Tell him what the fuck you’ve been doing.”
Then a muttering of conversation took place I couldn’t quite hear until…
“Don’t you dare fucking speak her name again, Andy, or I swear to God, you won’t know what’s hit you.”
The sound of Henry’s threat made me move. I couldn’t let him do this alone. For once, he deserved someone to stand by his side because that’s the only place they wanted to be, not out of some sense of duty.
Pushing the bathroom door open, I charged up the small flight of stairs until I stood on the deck with the sun blazing down on me, and the whole scene unfolding before my eyes.
Andy and Henry were toe to toe, with Henry towering over him, his body ready for the fight, tense, barely tethered together, while Andy stood beneath him, staring up, daring him to make his next move.
Jace pushed at both their chests, trying to separate them, but they were walls of stubbornness, neither one moving an inch.
Bailey and Rhea stood off to the side, Rhea’s arm wrapped around Bailey protectively as the pair watched on.
“Guys, come on,” Jace strained, trying to push the men apart. “This will only end in tears, and I’m not the kinda guy who packs Kleenex for a day out. Fuck, you two don’t skip chest day, do you?”
“What’s the matter, Cohen?” Andy taunted, ignoring Jace. “Don’t like hearing the truth?”
Henry glowered down at his best friend. “You don’t want to ruin this.”
“Ruin this?” Andy barely held in his sardonic laugh. “You think there’s a brotherhood after this.” He jabbed at Henry’s chest. “You promised me, Cohen. You promised her .”
“We’ve been over for months! When will you get that through that thick head of yours? I’ve had enough of you thinking you get a say in who I do and don’t spend time with.”
“So, you admit you’ve been screwing around with Phoebe all this time?”
Silence descended over the catamaran. Everyone focused on the men in front of us… until Rhea and Bailey slowly turned my way as though seeing me back on deck for the very first time. The friend they’d helped escape England. The one who’d lied to them so easily.
I took each of them in, not knowing what to do or say. All I could think about was breaking Henry’s trust. Exposing this secret. Letting him down.
Because he mattered to me. More than I ever meant him to.
With steely determination tearing through my blood, I turned back to the guys. “If there’s something you wish to know about me and the decisions I’ve made these last two weeks, Andy, here I am. Go right ahead. Ask away. But you don’t get to talk about me as though I’m not here or part of this.”
He slowly turned my way, and I saw his surprise playing out in his expression. “I have no beef with you, Phoebe. You don’t need to be involved in this conversation.”
“Pretty sure I just heard my name in your argument, which means I’m already involved whether I want to be or not.”
“You should walk away.”
“And you should learn not to tell people how to live their goddamn lives all the time.”
Henry closed his eyes and exhaled a breath, his chest heaving in and out slowly before he looked up again and slowly tilted his head my way.
When our gazes connected, I became desperate to go to him, but I somehow held myself in place, rock steady, solid, determined not to fuck this up for both of us—especially him.
Had anyone ever fought for him before?
Stuck up for him since his parents died?
Or had he led a life of servitude ever since, making sure everyone around him felt his gratitude for their kindness, even if that kindness had turned self-serving along the way? Had anyone really cared about Henry’s wellbeing? His thoughts? His wants? His desires? His needs?
It didn’t look like it, which only made me want to stand by his side even more.
I glared at Andy. “If you love him the way you say you do, shouldn’t you want him to be happy, no matter who it’s with?”
“Phoebe, I’m warning you?—”
Henry pushed against Andy’s bare chest so hard, Jace had to duck, and Andy barely stayed on two feet.
“You don’t get to warn her about shit,” Henry bit out as he stepped up to him.
A giant against a smaller man playing with fire.
A modern-day David versus Goliath. Only this time, I wanted Goliath to win.
David could go fuck himself.
Sometimes the bigger man needed to beat the little guy with the big mouth down.
“You gonna hit me, Cohen?” Andy taunted, pulling himself back to full height again.
Instead, Henry worked the muscles in his jaw and said nothing.
“Over someone like her?” Andy scoffed.
“Keep. Her. Out of this,” Henry warned.
“Why? Does she matter to you or something?”
I took a step closer, about to interject, when Henry beat me to it. “You want to know the truth? I’ll give you the truth—all of it. She fucking matters, okay? She matters more than I ever thought she would.”
Everyone froze at his admission, while all I could do was stare at Henry, wide-eyed and suddenly breathless as goosebumps rose all over my body.
I mattered to him.
This thing between us had meant something.
“Is that what you wanted to hear, Andy?” Henry went on.
“You want to know that we’ve been hooking up?
That I can’t keep my damn hands off her?
That everything I thought I didn’t want on this holiday, I now want with her?
You want to know about the nights we’ve been sneaking around?
About the way I’ve held her hand around half this island, kissed her everywhere?
You want to know about the secrets we’ve made together? ”
“You son of a…” But he at least had the decency to trail off before he finished that particular insult as he continued to stare up at Henry and shook his head. “You’d really sacrifice our friendship for this?”
“If this is what breaks us, it isn’t much of a friendship, is it?”
“After everything we’ve done for you.”
“My happiness is not for sale, Andy. It never has been. If you’re asking me to stay miserable for the rest of my life because it’s a debt I owe you, I can’t give you that.”
“You think I want you to be miserable?”
“I think you want to keep punishing me for the mistakes I made with Lillie, yeah. You know full well who I am and what I stand for. You know I never meant to hurt her.”
“Hurt her? You broke her heart, Cohen. She’s been fucking miserable for months because of you!”
“And I’ve apologised over and over and over and over.
I brought you on this trip to make you happy.
I’ve given everything I can to you, Nina and James, even to Lillie.
Fuck, especially Lillie. I’ve shown you all the regrets I have, and I can’t do any more than that.
I just can’t. Not without breaking myself apart in the process. Is that really what you want?”
“She’s my fucking sister, you bast?—”
“Woah, woah, woah, woah, now.” Jace, using force he hadn’t shown before, somehow wormed his way between the pair of them again and used all his strength to push them apart. “I’ve just about had enough from the both of you.”
Jace mumbled some other stuff to them under his breath, eyeing each of them with the same wary yet determined expression, but all I could hear were the same words on repeat in my mind, over and over again, as though nothing else mattered.
She fucking matters, okay.
She matters more than I ever thought she would.
“Just get me off this goddamn boat. I can’t bear to look at him a second longer,” Andy snapped, bringing me back to reality.
Like a petulant child, he stormed off and made his way over to the netting of the catamaran, with Jace hot on his heels, leaving me, Henry, Bailey, and Rhea standing there, watching them go.
Henry looked so dejected, so broken, I didn’t know whether to go to him to hold him together or give him space to think things through.
“Phoebe…” Bailey’s soft voice broke through my thoughts. “You okay?”
I nodded my weak assurance, not knowing what else to do or even say.
I’d lied to both my friends so much on this trip, the guilt of it all should have knocked me off my feet.
In a way, it did, but I could also never come to regret the moments I’d spent with Henry.
The man I hadn’t known I’d needed when I’d thought men were the last thing I’d needed at all.