Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Phoebe
Henry
Where are you?
Phoebe
In my room.
I wanted to ask him if he was okay, how he felt, and whether or not I’d had my last kiss with him without even knowing it.
I had so many questions, so many unanswered thoughts and worries floating around inside me, I could barely think straight.
He’d held me on the boat like he never wanted to let me go, and I didn’t want him to.
Henry kept touching my face, staring into my eyes, running his hands over my shoulders, down my arms, across my body, as though he’d been trying to memorise every part of me before he had to let me go.
Part of it felt like reverence, the other like goodbye.
Henry
Let me in.
He was here.
My heart rocketed at even the idea of it, and I rushed to open the door to see him standing there as handsome as ever, still wearing the same shorts and T-shirt he’d been wearing when we’d parted ways.
I had no idea how much time had passed. An hour?
Two? Taking him in now, it felt as though I’d been away from him for a year, I craved him so badly.
“Hey,” he said before he stepped forward, pushed his hands into my hair, and pulled me into a kiss so frantic I could barely breathe.
He spun me around, and the door slammed shut behind us as I gave myself over to him, not knowing who needed it most, only knowing that it felt right to be in his hold again, letting him take me wherever he needed us to go.
“Where are the girls?” he asked breathlessly against my mouth.
“Out. For the night.”
“You didn’t want to go with them?”
“Not if there was a chance you’d come find me to do things like this.”
He pulled away from me slowly, running his thumbs over my cheeks as he took me in. “Were they okay with you about everything?”
I nodded, lashes fluttering. “They said they knew what was going on, and they didn’t want to confront me about it in case it made me stop having fun with you.”
“They knew?”
“Apparently we weren’t acting as well as we thought we were.” I smiled sheepishly, drawing a smirk from him, too.
“No Oscars for us, then.”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “You put in quite a few good performances along the way.”
Henry huffed out a small laugh. “Want to take a walk with me?”
“Where to?”
“I don’t care. I just want to be able to put my arm around you and hold you in public for a while before this whole thing is over.”
Over.
That one word had my stomach plummeting again. It wasn’t like I didn’t know the end drew closer and closer with every breath each of us took, but that didn’t mean I had to like it, because I didn’t. The thought of never seeing him again crippled me to the point of rendering me speechless.
“Don’t think about it,” he whispered, as though reading my mind. “Let’s just enjoy what we have left.”
I nodded in his grip once more and swallowed down any emotion that threatened to ruin this moment. “Let me change quickly.”
He glanced down at my denim shorts and strappy vest. “You’re fine as you are. I don’t want to waste a second with you.”
“You can’t glue yourself to me for the next two days, Henry.”
“Wanna bet?” That smirk of his returned, igniting a giddiness within me that wanted to agree to any request he made while I still could.
“Then, lead the way, I suppose.”
With one last, lingering kiss, he did, taking my hand as though it was the most natural thing in the world for either of us to do, and we walked out into the apartment grounds together, not hiding anything from anyone for the very first time.
It took me a while to stop glancing over my shoulder to make sure none of the others could see us, until Henry went from holding my hand to wrapping his arm over my shoulder and pulling my body into his side—my new favourite place on earth to be, where all I could smell, see, taste and feel was him.
I wrapped an arm around his waist and held onto his hand that dangled by my shoulder, and the two of us walked around the streets of Mykonos like a couple with nothing left to hide.
No one else to care about but us.
That old friend of mine, guilt, tried to claw its way into my mind and ruin the moment every now and again, but it became easier and easier to push it away once I realised Henry was the most relaxed he’d ever been.
As though something had clicked into place for him, and he didn’t care about anything or anyone but us.
As though the dark demon I’d first met full of anger and resentment had melted away to reveal someone who didn’t want to let me go.
We walked the streets together, taking in everything around us with brand-new eyes.
He bought me late-night, Sicilian lemon ice cream from a vendor, then fed it to me spoonful after spoonful, never looking away from my mouth every time I wrapped my lips around the little utensil, a small breath of appreciation falling from him with every moan of satisfaction I gave.
We ventured inside a trinket store, and the ageing woman behind the counter called us over to her and handed Henry a necklace with a single blue-eyed jewel on the end of it.
She began to tell us of the power of the piece, and how in Greek culture, evil eye jewellery is believed to be a talisman against bad luck and negative energy, particularly envy and malevolent gazes, acting as a protective charm.
He bought it for me there and then, even though I tried to protest, and handed over his credit card for the woman to scan without a thought while he wrapped the delicate, gold piece around my neck and locked it in place.
When he spun me around in his arms, he ran his thumb over the eye that sat just above the valley of my breasts.
“Something to keep you safe when I’m not around,” he said quietly. “An evil eye to guard my angel eyes.”
“RTM,” I whispered.
“Young love,” the woman called out in her heavy accent, waving Henry’s credit card his way for him to take. “You can’t put a price on it.”
Henry gave me a subtle side-eye and a smirk that said she’d just put a price on it anyway, but he didn’t seem to care or even ask what the necklace had cost before he took the card back, thanked her for her help, then wrapped his arm around my shoulder again.
Eventually, we came to the beach at midnight, and the moonlight on the horizon watched over us both as we removed our shoes and stepped down onto the cool sand together.
My heart pounded in my chest with a nervous energy I struggled to hide.
Something about this night felt heavy yet heavenly as we made our way down to the shoreline.
“I have something I need to say, and it’ll sound corny as hell, but I need you to hear it, okay?” Henry said as he took in the inky, lazy waves that met his feet.
“Okay.”
“Thank you, Phoebe. For making this holiday everything it’s turned out to be. You were everything I never knew I needed.”
I studied him, taking in the strong muscles of his jaw, the slight furrow of his brow, and the way his nostrils flared as he inhaled heavily before slowly releasing it all.
I’d slowly come to understand a lot of Henry’s expressions in the time we’d spent together, but I had no doubt there were a million more I’d yet to see, and I wanted to know them all.
To understand his every twitch, his every sigh, his every breath.
I wanted to be top of the class when it came to studying him, but he had far too many layers for me to peel back in an entire year, never mind the day and a half we had left.
“You brought me back from the dead, too, you know,” I admitted.
He turned to look down at me, those eyes meeting mine, making me feel special and lightheaded without really doing anything at all.
“Before this trip,” I added, “I don’t think I’d ever really done anything solely for me. Because of you, because of the deal we made, I’ve learnt what I want matters, too.”
And what I want now more than anything is you, not just for tonight, not just for tomorrow, but forever. Is it possible, Henry? Could it happen?
Those were the things I wanted to voice but couldn’t. I refused to hold him hostage to my demands when he’d already let someone else trap him into a loveless relationship before me. If Henry wanted something more after all this, he’d have to be the one to declare it.
We were the wrong people at the worst time.
But we still felt amazing like this.
“If I could do this whole thing again with you, I wouldn’t waste a second pretending I didn’t want you the first time you opened your smart mouth to me,” he practically whispered. “Will you stay with me tonight?”
“I’ll stay until we run out of time, Henry.”
He frowned, bringing his hand up to my face before pinching my chin between his finger and thumb and angling it up to him. “If I could freeze it, I would.”
Before I could respond, Henry lowered his mouth to mine, and we kissed under the stars, making magic with so few words but a million unspoken emotions.
Emotions that terrified me.
We went back to Henry’s apartment that night and didn’t come up for air until the morning, every moment filled with soft stares and hard feelings.
We spent the rest of our time together like that, wrapped around one another, sunbathing in hammocks, with my back against his chest as we watched the sun set, rubbing lotion into each other’s skin until our bodies hummed with satisfaction.
We barely left each other’s side, and the girls never once asked me to ditch him or spend more time with them.
Bailey and Rhea looked on at us as though we were a love story they enjoyed finally getting to read.
Us being together might have been more public now, but that didn’t mean we wanted to share our time with anyone else.
Then came the day we’d been dreading.