by Sybil Swift
An ache flared through her chest, he still smelled the same. No matter how shallow her breaths became she continued to draw him into her body, until he was inescapable. His arms squeezed tight around her waist. Maybe it was better that she couldn’t see his face—she had the vague idea she’d want to slap whatever grin spread across his cheeks right off.
“I’m leaving in five seconds if you don’t get to talking, Noah. I can’t…I can’t do this.”
“Okay, sure.”
As if her words were magic, he released his grip. But none of her muscles lost their tension when he took her hand and helped her sit back down.
“What’s with the blindfold?”
“You’ll see, give it a beat to get going, okay?”
“You understand this is highly suspect?”
“I fucked up, Chloe. I know, please, just give me a chance to show you that an ass isn’t the only thing I know how to be. It should be starting soon.”
“Just…don’t touch me,” she grumbled, crossing her arms and facing her body away from him.
“Sure, no problem. I got a little carried away before. I only…I missed you. I wanted you back in my arms.”
“Pretty words.”
“Yeah, okay, I deserve that. Throw whatever you got at me. Take your best shot and keep hitting, I’ll take whatever enemy fire I have to in order for you to maybe come around to forgiving me for even thinking…for a single second…that you weren’t exactly what I needed in my life.”
“Oh, you didn’t get sick of me like your track record?”
Even despite the distance, she sensed Noah bristling and he hissed as if she’d hit him. Yeah, it was a low blow, but she couldn’t help feeling vulnerable in their current position. He should be just as exposed.
“If you mean that you think the only reason I’m here is because I like the chase and that’s the reason I haven’t fallen out of love with you, like in my past, you’re mistaken—”
“Fallen out of love? You can’t say things like love when you’ve never said them or given me any indication that they were true before. You can’t fall out of love without the initial step.”
“I love you, Chloe. Is that better? I’m a stubborn heel for testing the boundaries of what you’d accept from me and I’m sorry. I love you, I’ve loved you since our swim after we painted the house. I loved you even before that, I just didn’t know…well, I wanted to deny it outright. I was so afraid of hurting you, I didn’t give you a choice. I pushed you away. And now that you do have the choice, I doubt you want me, the way I’ve treated you. This is where my sister would chime in saying I’m my own self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“What am I supposed to say to that?” She was at a loss as if her body was free falling and she didn’t have enough sense to throw up her hands to catch herself because she knew eventually she’d land and break both her arms on impact. “You can’t expect me to solve this in a couple hours or even a couple days.”
“I’ll move here if I have to, I have money saved up. I’ll switch my whole life, whatever you need from me.”
The theater was eerily silent as she pocketed her sarcasm and pressed her lips together.
“Please take off the blindfold. I’d help…”
Noah let the sentence hang while her trembling fingers twisted through the knot and she caught the fabric as it fell away from her cheeks. The lights overhead had dimmed even further. And it looked like no one else was stopping into the matinee in the middle of the work week, which wasn’t really a shocker. But she was oddly pleased that no one else was here to witness their weirdness. The large numbers flashed across the screen like in old school movies where they counted down to the main picture.
A movie flashed across the screen. Several snippets of movies, actually, with not a whole lot of transition from one scene into the next one. But they were all from Bond films. And they were all…they were all her favorites. Every single second on film that she enjoyed and could rewatch until she went into a coma. Rudely cut, spliced together with some bits getting cut off, but it was still a masterpiece. She blinked, eyes stinging with unshed tears as she forced herself to look away from Noah and not take a peek out of the corner of her eye. He didn’t deserve to get off so easy. Though she could only imagine how long it had taken him to make the endless role of clips.
“There’s four hours of footage. Every scene we ever talked about together.” Noah paused while his hand hovered over her knee before quickly retreating away. “Our relationship couldn’t be casual when I adored you enough to catalog and remember every single one of your favorites, even all these months later. I didn’t know it at the time, but when you speak I hang on every word. And that’s not just in the bedroom.”
She made a small noise of derision and laughed making her breath catch in her chest.
“I know more about you than I want to admit. All the little things, like how you fold your napkin into weird geometric shapes before you leave the table. Or how when you sleep you like to start on your side, move to your back, and wake up sprawled in my arms like a seal on a rock covered with sunshine. I know you love to laugh, but you don’t let yourself do it enough. That you think I’m damaged, but you think you’re way more damaged than I am, as if it’s competition. I know you’re competitive and that loving me went against all of your instincts, so you did the smart thing. But I sensed the change in you that morning, I knew we were…off. And I couldn’t deal with it. I couldn’t face the idea that I was graced with this unlimited knowledge about you, that I felt closer to you than anyone in a long time, but I had no idea what you’d do if I told you that I loved you. And to say I don’t do well with uncertainty is an understatement.”
“So your need for control reared up and bit you in the face.”
“You could say that, yeah. I went on self-destruct.”
“And you think that this is enough to…what? Win me back? Start us on a path to happily ever after? What do you want from me, Noah?”
“Whatever you’re ready to give me, Chloe. I’ll take table scraps for years if it means I still get to be in your life. Sidelines, front lines, whatever. Give me the chance to make us more than casual and I swear I’ll never stop until you’re satisfied.”
“So you’ll never fuck up again?” she asked with an arch of a brow he probably couldn’t see in the darkness. “Because that would be great.”
“Yeah…this is reality, so the likelihood of me doing more damage is pretty damn near predictable. But I promise that when I feel my inner dick head coming on I’ll try and give you warning. And I’ll keep a running tally of ways to appease you after I do my worst, groveling included, being that I’m only human and we’re both walking emotional time bombs.”
Bond was fighting on a top of train car while it whizzed past mountains. She knew the weightless, adrenaline fueled nausea he must be experiencing because it was as if the bottom of the theater was falling through beneath her feet.
“We’re gonna hurt each other. But I want to work on it, work through it. Not just quit when it gets too hard.”
“What’s the next step if I tentatively agree to you trying again with me? Strictly on a friendship basis, until I’m ready for more.”
“Ice cream sundaes, pizza, and a browse around the local used bookstores. Is that okay?”
“After we finish my montage, it’s a start.”
“It’s beginning, more than I’d hoped for to be honest.”
“Well, me too.” She laughed and couldn’t keep herself from reaching for his hand threading their fingers together. “You feel good.”
“Right?” His bright teeth flashed through an explosion, a wolfish smile she knew well that expanded and sat in her belly.
“For right now.”
“That’s all a man can ask for. I’ll cherish every single second.”
“Sap.”
“Goodie-Goodie.”
“I love you.” The words went without a hitch and it was as if she’d always said them. No
thing weird or nervous about it.
And when he said it back she had a sprawling idea of her future that nearly tipped her back on her ass, if she hadn’t been sitting down.
“You know, I write books now.”
“That makes sense.”
It would make sense to him.
“I hope I star in a few of them.”
“You have no idea.”