Chapter 35 #2
Sitting on the edge of my bed, Henry held his clasped hands together between his parted thighs as he watched me move around my room, collecting clothes and toiletries in my arms before dropping them carefully into my suitcase, not wanting to rush any of it.
The sooner I zipped the case up, the sooner it meant us parting ways for good.
We’d barely spoken in the last thirty minutes, the sober mood souring any conversation we tried to have, so when Henry finally broke the silence again, it almost made me jump.
“Do you know if Bailey and Rhea have said their goodbyes to Andy and Jace yet?”
I folded a dress over my arm as I glanced up at him. “I don’t know if they will. Bailey hasn’t spoken to Andy much since the boat thing. She didn’t exactly approve of the way he spoke to us.”
“He’s not all bad,” Henry said quietly.
“I know.” Because I did. I may not have known Andy all that well, but I knew Henry now, and I knew he wouldn’t keep someone inherently bad in his life if he didn’t want to.
He loved Andy. Almost too much. He’d put his feelings before his own because of it.
“He just needs to learn to be better to you.”
“You’re biased.”
“And proud of it.” I smiled.
He smiled too, but only for a moment before his attention fell back to me folding another dress in half, then dropping it into my suitcase. His soft sigh followed the gentle drop of his shoulders. “I hate all this.”
“Andy will come around,” I assured him.
He looked up at me. “Not him. I hate this. You packing up your things. Knowing you’re not going to be a few doors down from me. Knowing this time tomorrow, you won’t be in my life.”
I froze and stared at him, feeling that familiar ripple of want wash over me at the thought of more.
Then ask me to be in it, Henry. Ask me, and…
My phone, which was resting on the bed closer to Henry than me, buzzed with a text, making me blink and clear my throat, because I couldn’t go there.
I couldn’t let that thought finish itself, couldn’t be weak and vulnerable or put myself out there to a man who’d already been trapped one too many times.
I had to be strong to get through our goodbye.
I had to fulfil the deal we made, releasing him from anything else he hadn’t asked for.
My phoned beeped again with another text as I picked up a handful of toiletries off the bed to scoop into the suitcase.
“Read those for me, will you?” I asked Henry. “It’s probably Bailey or Rhea wondering where I am.”
“I’m not reading your phone.”
“You have my permission.”
“No.”
“Why? It’s not like there’s anything bad on there for you to see.” I raised a brow. “Pretty sure all the naked pictures of me to exist are on your phone now, anyway.” I filled my hands with more things to pack. “Which, by the way, I should probably be asking you to delete sometime soon.”
“You have your souvenirs, I have mine.” He winked, then picked up my phone to swipe his finger over it. I watched, amused, as he took in whatever stared back at him… until his face slowly fell.
I immediately thought of my mother and how she’d probably sent me a text update about my grandfather, or even her and Dad, but then Henry held the phone out for me to take and made sure to look anywhere else but at me.
“Erm. You should probably be the one to read these.”
“Why?” I scowled, confused by his reaction, but I leaned over to take the phone from him anyway.
The moment I read the messages, my skin prickled for all the wrong reasons.
Unknown Number
Can’t believe you blocked my number, Pheebs. You know better than to assume I only have one phone on the go. Seen your holiday pictures on Bailey’s Insta. You’re looking hotter than ever, my girl. When are you home? We’ve got a lot to talk about. I miss you.
Unknown Number
Also, whoever that guy is with his arm around you… you’d better tell him to stop touching what’s mine. I don’t want to have to break his face.
The sick, twisted, manipulative bastard.
His? HIS? I hadn’t been his since the moment he stood in front of me, telling me screwing another woman was something I simply had to ‘get over’.
If he thought for one minute I would ever get back with him, he had a hell of a surprise waiting for him, because I’d rather burn in Hell for eternity than give him another second of my life.
Even the thought of seeing Rob, never mind talking to him, made me want to throw up.
Where once I’d thought there’d been love, now only hatred bloomed.
Maybe not even that, because hatred required a degree of emotion still, and for that man—boy—I had nothing left.
I’d made more beautiful memories with Henry in two weeks than I had in three years with that monster.
“What the hell,” I muttered to myself, wondering which pictures Bailey had posted on Instagram. Were they of all six of us, or just Henry and me?
I stared at my phone, drowning in surprise and mild disgust at Rob’s arrogant messages, when Henry rose to his feet.
“I’d better go find the guys. Our flight is in a few hours and?—”
I looked up sharply. “Wait, you’re leaving?”
He still couldn’t look me in the eye as he cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck, the hint of anger he tried to hide obvious to see. “Probably for the best.”
“Henry,” I said firmly. “Look at me.”
His nostrils flared, and he did so slowly, as though it pained him to do now.
I dropped the stupid phone on top of my clothes and went to him. “You’re not leaving me early.”
The muscles in his jaw worked in double time, his chest bouncing as his breaths grew heavier.
“Rob is the most arrogant, manipulative, disgusting excuse of a man I’ve ever met. I told you what he did to me. You know exactly how he made me feel. Those messages he just sent from a different number than the one I blocked …” I thumbed over my shoulder. “They make me feel physically sick.”
“It’s not my business?—”
“Bullshit,” I cut in. “It is your business. I’m your business. You’re mine. There’s no way I’m going to let him ruin the last bit of time we have together.”
“He called you his girl,” he said tightly, his mouth barely moving.
“And?”
“I don’t share, Phoebe.”
I huffed out a sarcastic laugh and threw my hands out to the side. “Who the hell is asking you to? Certainly not me. I hate the guy!”
“But—”
“There are no buts, so don’t try put them in my mouth.
You want me, Henry? You come get me.” I let my hands fall down by my sides.
“I’m yours for the taking. Have been for the last fourteen days and nights.
” And I will be for all the days and nights after it if you’ll let me be, no matter the distance, no matter the hardships of living far apart.
I’ll do it all for you if you think I can make you even a tenth as happy as I know for certain you’d make me.
Henry seemed at war with himself as his eyes searched mine, the old him no doubt ready to flee at the mere possibility of rejection, the new him fighting to stay with me, with us , for whatever small amount of time we had left.
“You aren’t leaving me like this,” I said quietly, shaking my head. “I won’t allow it.”
“I don’t know the right way to leave you at all, Phoebe. That’s the problem.”
“Then, don’t. We still have time.” I took a step closer. “You can still have me.”
Once more.
Twice more.
However many mores you need.
“I’m still here,” I told him. “I’m still yours. Not his. I’ll never be his again.”
“Mine.”
“ Yours .”
With a sharp intake of breath, Henry charged forward, wrapped his arm around my body, and he hoisted me up against him until my legs circled his waist, and my back slammed against the wall, the power of it almost winding me.
“You belong to me now,” he said on a breath.
“You got that, Phoebe? Mine.” Then he kissed me as though inhaling every part of my existence, forgetting to breathe until a heady moan rumbled in the back of his throat, and he pressed himself into me.
My head spun, and my body tingled with everything I felt: desperation, desire, adoration…
or was that? No. It couldn’t be love. We weren’t meant to create that together.
We were only supposed to be this. Fire and ice.
Two people going to war and using each other’s bodies as battlegrounds.
But as he kissed me with an urgency I’d never been kissed with before, that little voice in my head started to warn me that this did, in fact, feel a lot like that four-letter word I’d never dare to say out loud.
“I can’t do it,” he said roughly against my mouth.
“Do what?” I gasped.
“Say goodbye and not have it hurt. It would be so much easier if we really had hated each other. Maybe we should pretend again.”
“You think that’ll make it easier for you to let me go?” My tongue swept across his top lip. “You want me to call you a piece of shit and tell you I think you’re the worst?”
“Yes,” he panted, grinding into me.
“Fine, then fuck me, you piece of shit, and let’s get this over with.”
Henry pulled his lips away from mine and looked into my eyes, wedging me against him and the wall impossibly tighter as he traced his thumb over my mouth. “I’m going to miss this smart mouth of yours.”
The way he said it, and the reverence in his gaze had tears forming that I refused to shed.
He’d said too many bad goodbyes in his life, and I didn’t want ours to make the list. No matter how much I already knew I’d hurt after all this, I needed him to only ever think of me with fond memories.
I needed him to remember me in all his dreams as someone who gave him something good.
Something to be remembered and treasured.
Still, “I’m going to miss all of you,” fell free from me anyway.
They were the last words spoken between us before the frantic dance of our tongues turned into a slow, languid ballet of touching, feeling, and really seeing each other for the very last time.