“You didn’t talk to me for days,” I remind him.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “This is all new for me and I didn’t know how to handle it.”
“What do you mean?” I question. “You were with Monica for ages.”
He shakes his head. “Not like this,” he tells me. “You and me, this is different. With Monica, it was just about appearances. Someone easy who was able to keep all the other girls at bay. But with you, this is real.”
I search his eyes to find them already on mine. “Really?” I question, wondering if he’s maybe as confused about the whole ‘L’ word as I am.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “You scared me. Seeing you like that, vulnerable and unprotected. Anything could have happened to you. To all three of you.”
“I know,” I sigh. “It was stupid.”
“Fucking stupid,” he amends.
“You can’t tell me that you’ve never gotten high at a party before.”
A sheepish expression crosses his handsome face and just like that, he’s been caught out. “Just promise me, if you need to get high again, tell me first. Not that I want to encourage you to do it, but if you must, I’ll get you the good stuff and I can make sure you’re safe while you’re crawling around on the ground.”
“You know where to get the good stuff?” I scoff.
He smirks down at me. “Don’t doubt me, Spitfire,” he says. “I’d hate to think what kind of shit you were smoking on Friday night. Who’d you get it from anyway?”
“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
“Henley,” he warns.
I roll my eyes. “Spencer.”
“Spencer?” he growls. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Hey, I told you that you didn’t want to know, but you insisted,” I tell him before pressing my lips together and raising my chin back up. I gently press my lips against his and the feeling of home instantly settles over me. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “It was spur of the moment and despite how fun it was, I don’t think I’ll be doing it again.”
“You have no idea how happy that makes me.”
“I was a bit of a bitch last night,” I admit.
“You had the right to be,” he tells me. “I shouldn’t have blocked you out like that, but I was just…I needed a moment to cool down.”
“It’s ok,” I say. “But I’m going to need you to kiss me again.”
Chapter 9
Noah and I lay in my bed after spending the last half an hour, pressed up against the shower wall, getting reacquainted with each other’s bodies. The fact that the shower just happens to wash off all the egg from our war was a lucky bonus as cleaning ourselves off was the furthest thing from our minds.
I lay in his arms, dreading the massive clean up of all the egg and nerf bullets around the house which will, no doubt, take me all afternoon, and that’s considering I can pull myself away from him long enough to actually do it. I can just picture it now, one little egg is going to get missed and my house is going to end up smelling like a rotten fart until I get down on my hands and knees and search it out.
My fingers trace the beautiful lines of the lily tattoo on his chest as I listen to the rapid beat of his heart as he comes down from the wildness of what just went down in the shower. “We need to fight more often.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” he murmurs with his fingers trailing up and down my spine before he pushes up on to his elbow. “Come on,” he says. “You haven’t eaten.”
I squish my face back into his chest, pushing him back down on the bed. “No, I’m good here.”
“Even though your stupid fish has been watching us the whole time?”
I can’t help but crane my neck around him to look at Frog, to find the little guy staring straight at us. I shrug my shoulders. “What can I say? The bastard’s horny. It’s not like he has a little fishy girlfriend in there.”
“Ok,” he says in disgust. “You made it weird.”
“Just telling it like I see it.”
He shakes his head. “You’re an idiot, you know that, right?”
“Of course, I do,” I tell him, rolling over the top of him until I’m straddling his thighs and looking down at that magnificent work of art. “And that’s exactly the way you like it.”
All he does is smile and that one little gesture is enough to have my heart racing once again. “You sure you don’t want to go get something to eat?”
I shake my head. “I’m happy here.”
His eyes light up with excitement and just when I think he’s about to pull me down and start our fun all over again, he lets one rip and pulls the blankets over my head. “How about now?” he laughs.