CHAPTER 15 — WHAT WE DIDNT SAY #3
I held Noah by the waist with my good hand, letting him control the distance.
His mouth opened under mine, but there were pauses, small breaks, breaths where he seemed to be deciding whether to continue.
Each time, I waited. Maybe it was the simplest way to start repairing something: not taking the next step before he offered it.
When Noah realized I was waiting, his fingers fisted in my shirt and pulled me with sudden, almost desperate force.
The kiss changed. The pain stayed, but desire layered over it—not erasing anything, just mixing.
Noah pushed me back against the counter, instinctively careful not to hit my injured shoulder, and that care in the middle of his anger almost knocked the breath out of me.
He kissed me like he wanted to punish me and save himself at the same time, his hands on my chest, in my hair, on the back of my neck.
I let him. When I touched him back, it was with more care than on any other night—not from fear of breaking the moment, but from understanding that Noah had already been broken too many times by versions of me.
“I'm still angry,” he said against my mouth.
“I want you angry too.”
“Don't romanticize it.”
“I'm not. I'm staying.”
The word came out before I realized how much weight it carried.
Noah stopped. His eyes opened inches from mine, and for an instant the entire kitchen went still.
I had said staying, not wanting. Staying meant not leaving after.
It meant not turning the morning into ice.
It meant something I didn't know if I deserved to promise, but my body had already decided before my head caught up.
Noah kissed me again, and this time there was a sound trapped in his throat that sounded almost like pain.
I led him toward the bedroom without rushing, stopping when he needed to, letting him push me against the hallway wall to steal another kiss, accepting his hand on the back of my neck, the other gripping my waist. Each step seemed to carry a conversation we hadn't finished yet.
Each touch said it wasn't enough, it's not resolved, don't go.
In the bedroom, I turned on only the side lamp.
The bed seemed both too big and not big enough.
Noah stopped near it, breathing hard, and looked at me as if he could still choose to turn back to the hallway, grab his bag, leave the penthouse, and preserve what little sanity he had left.
I took off my shirt slowly, no performance, careful with my shoulder.
He watched the movement, but not with simple hunger.
With attention, concern, desire, and hurt in impossible proportions.
“Come here,” he said.
I went.
He touched the tape on my shoulder, checked the edge, adjusted it carefully. Then he kissed the spot just below—not where it hurt, but close enough for my whole body to understand that care and desire came from the same place in him. I closed my eyes, and his hand rose to my face.
“Look at me, Damon.”
I opened my eyes. Noah was so close I could see the tears he still refused to let fall. I touched his mouth with my thumb.
“I missed you,” I repeated, because in the kitchen those words had been a confession, and here, they needed to become proof.
“Even when I tried to turn it into hate. I missed you in my room, on the ice, in the stands, on nights when I won and had no one to look at without seeming weak. I missed you even when I called you a traitor, and that made me hate you more because it was easier than admitting I still wanted you to have stayed.”
Noah closed his eyes hard. When the first tremor crossed his face, I didn't try to silence it with a kiss.
I waited. He breathed once, twice, and then pushed me onto the bed with a rush that felt like refusing to cry before he was ready.
I lay down carefully, and he came over me, controlling his weight, his hands on either side of my body.
The position kept my shoulder safe and left my chest completely exposed to his gaze.
“I missed you too,” he said, and his voice cracked halfway through. “And I hate it. I hate having missed someone who might never fully believe in me.”
“I want to believe.”
“Wanting isn't enough.”
“Then teach me what is.”
His answer was a kiss. Deeper, more desperate.
From there, the night stopped being conversation and became an imperfect attempt to say with our bodies what neither of us could put into words without bleeding.
Noah took off his own shirt and I touched his skin with both hands until my shoulder protested; he caught my wrist, guided my good hand where he wanted it, and kept the other pressed to my chest, as if reminding me I didn't need to destroy myself to want him.
The intimacy didn't come clean. It came tangled with anger, care, and an emotion so strong that each kiss seemed to apologize and accuse at the same time.
I touched Noah slowly at first, relearning his body after the urgency of the other times.
His mouth on my neck, his thigh against mine, the heat of his skin, the way he reacted when I said his name without venom.
He tried to stay in control, but with every careful touch, his defenses cracked a little more.
When I ran my hand along the curve of his back and pulled him closer without rushing, Noah buried his face in my throat for a second, and I felt his breath catch in a way that wasn't just physical.
“Don't be gentle if you're going to regret it,” he said.