I wondered if I’d ever looked at Della, or any of the other girls I’d been with, the way I was looking at Lotte. Was it because our relationship was founded with Ames, or was it her?
She was soft, but stubborn. Graceful and inquisitive and gentle. When I looked at her, I thought of ocean blue and peaches and secrets and mistakes I’d made and because I couldn’t resist, I pulled the small notebook I kept in my jacket pocket and dropped it on the table.
“Can you open your hand for me?” I asked.
She chewed on her lip but lifted a tentative hand to the table, laying it so her palm was up again.
I pressed the pads of my fingertips just so into her palm, opening her up a little bit more for me. “Like that,” I said with praise on my breath. I had only pencil on me, no colors, but I could at least get it out of my head and onto paper.
The way my pencil glided across the paper gave me a certain kind of calm. Like laying in a bed after a long day. It was rhythmic but not monotonous; there was a music in the sounds my pencil made.
It didn’t take long to get the immediate sketch down, and only required a few glances at her hand to get the lines right, but before our food arrived at the table, I had Lotte’s hand on my paper.
“Oh, wow,” she said, sounding a little breathless. Her fingers came into view, pulling my notepad toward her as she leaned over the table. Several loose tendrils escaped from her braids, covering her eyes, and I watched her take in the drawing as I felt another fit of inspiration. The line of her cheekbone, where her jaw narrowed to a dainty point, made me want to keep drawing.
I nearly laughed. It’d been so long since I’d had even the smallest bit of desire to do this, to observe and memorize the way the shadows played on someone else’s skin.
Elation was the one word that came to mind. It was back, that desire to create. I’d thought I’d lost it, but it’d been here, in the lines of the woman I shouldn’t want, the woman I didn’t deserve to want.
I didn’t know I’d been so starved for oxygen until I could finally breathe again, because of her.
Chapter Sixteen
When we’d made it back to the hotel, our bellies full and both of us much more relaxed, I didn’t even hesitate laying down beside Sam on the bed. I helped him remove his shoes because he seemed sleepy and content to lie down for a while.
“Come here,” he said with a yawn, and stretched his arm out across the pillow. I toed off my one shoe and gingerly climbed across the bed until I was at his side, head on his arm. “Closer,” he said, lifting his arm until I rolled toward him. My hand went to his chest, beside where I lay my head, and his arm secured me tightly to his side.
I couldn’t even be nervous about being so close to him. It was so bloody comfortable to just lay with him, to not feel lonely for the first time in so long.
I nuzzled against him as we silently lay there, the telly playing some movie I’d seen a hundred times. It seemed as if he was out just moments later, his breathing even and deep, and the rise and fall of his chest lulled me to sleep too.
When I awoke, the room was dark.
The telly had turned off at some point and all I could see was its little red standby light across the room. My head was still on Sam’s chest, his arm still around my back.
He was still here.
Softly, I pressed my fingers against his shirt, feeling his realness. He was so warm that the rest of my body that wasn’t touching him felt too exposed.
I wanted to bear it as long as I could, but in the dress I still wore, I simply had too much skin not covered up and I needed more warmth.
I gently eased myself up, bracing my hand on the bed as I pulled away the duvet and shoved my legs under it.
My movements must have stirred Sam because moments later, he adjusted until he too was under the duvet with me. I tilted my head up to see if I could see his eyes in the dark, but my eyes hadn’t adjusted yet, so all I saw was black.
His hand came to my chin, bringing me to a standstill, and he tipped it just slightly until his mouth was on mine.
I could’ve sighed into his mouth. It felt like I’d quite literally melted in his touch, becoming just a vapor. I wrapped my hand around his arm, holding him, not allowing him to leave me again.
He moved me until my back was flat on the bed, head cushioned on the pillow, and he was braced above me. His lips never left mine once. He didn’t kiss me like it was a prelude to anything. Instead, the kiss felt like a welcome, a warm and deep hello.
The entire time he kissed me, he kept touching me. Knuckles grazing over my cheekbones, fingers tangling in my hair. It was innocent, but at the same time it wasn’t. He kissed me leisurely, unhurried. He pressed a hand to the center of my chest and pulled away from my lips until we were just resting, lips against lips, sharing breaths.
“I couldn’t forget this sound,” he whispered on my lips and pressed another kiss to them. “The sound of your heartbeat.”
He said it so gruffly that it reverberated through me. I didn’t know what to say to him. It was as if my throat was full of hollow words, words that wouldn’t satisfy my heart. So, I laid my hand over his on my chest and held his face with my other hand.
It was too dark to see him and he wasn’t kissing me anymore, but I could feel him staring down at me. He didn’t need to see me, to know I was there.
Suddenly, that brutal memory of the first time he’d kissed me assaulted my brain. He hadn’t seen me in the dark of that room either, and had called me Della.
Could it be that he thought he was kissing Della again?
Was he, in his mind, telling Della he couldn’t forget the sound of her heartbeat?
I couldn’t help it, the sharp, hot strike of pain from that memory ripped through me. I dropped my hands from him and wanted him to let me go so I could roll over. But I couldn’t speak, not even a whisper, because I was afraid of him calling me Della again and being the mistake. And because the hollow words in my throat had turned heavy, pressing on my windpipe, choking me.
As painful as that reminder was, it was only exacerbated by the way he let me roll away from him before he dropped to the pillow beside me.
Seconds later he was asleep again as I twirled my fingers tighter and tighter in my hair until I pulled the first few pieces out.
I could breathe again.
When I awoke again, I was alone in the bed and light poured through the windows.
I brushed my hand over the sheet and when I realized it was cold, my fist gripped the fabric tightly. We hadn’t discussed where he’d sleep after we left the restaurant. Maybe he’d gotten his own room and had retreated to it sometime in the night.
I wanted to bury myself into the covers whenever I thought about our kiss. The last time he’d touched me had been a mistake. The time before that, he’d called me by another woman’s name. I couldn’t help but feel tainted by both of those instances. And having kissed him last night without properly clearing the air, I hung, suspended, by the things we didn’t say.
I pushed myself up to sitting, realizing I’d fallen asleep with the boot still on instead of replacing it with the bandage that the hospital had given me for during the night. My left leg was so uncomfortably stiff from accommodating the boot that I had to get it off immediately.
The Velcro ripping off was a satisfying sound, but when I pulled my leg from the plastic and air finally touched my skin, it was nirvana.
I sighed with pleasure and ran my hands over the clammy skin, rubbing as gingerly as I could, given the fact that I was still so swollen. The aching wasn’t so sharp now, more like a tender bruise. I glared at the boot, not wanting to put it back on ever again. It rendered my leg little more than dead weight, but it was at least keeping the fracture stable.
I was about to slide it back on when the door opened and Sam came in. In one hand, he held a box of donuts and in the other hand a bottle of juice.
“Oh, you’re awake,” he said. He looked at my leg. “Lots, that doesn’t loo
k good.”
My leg was bruised, but I didn’t think it looked as terrible as it probably could have, if I’d broken a more significant bone. “It’s just swollen.”
“Does it itch?” He set the box of donuts down on the bed and sat softly on the corner, near my leg.
“Actually, it does. A little. It’s the swelling.”
“Here.” He grabbed the bottle of lotion I kept by the telly and returned to the bed. After squirting a generous handful into his palm, he carefully picked up my leg and started to gently apply the lotion to my skin.
It shocked me. I worried he’d been on the verge of dismissing what had happened the night before—even though it’d only been a kiss—but here he was, applying lotion to my skin with such tenderness that I couldn’t help but be frozen.
“You act like you know what you’re doing.”
He looked up at me from the hair that fell over his face. “I do. Car accident, remember? I swelled so badly.” He cupped the back of my calf and rubbed the lotion over the front of my shin. It was strange, to have him treating me so carefully.
When it was all rubbed in, he took the excess and applied it to my other leg. This was another thing altogether; that leg wasn’t injured. His touch wasn’t as gentle—it was as if he was giving me a mini massage, rubbing his knuckles into my calf and up my shin.
“Ah,” I said, unable to escape the moan that came from my mouth. “Why does that feel so good?”
“Your right leg has to compensate for all the extra work your left leg is doing,” he told me. “Your muscles are going to be more sore than usual.” He finished off the lotion on my heel and set my leg back on the bed. “Feel better?”
“Yes.” I said it quietly, facing my fears by meeting him in the eyes. Finally.
“Did you sleep okay?”
“Like a rock. I meant to take the boot off last night, but forgot.”
“We’ll do better remembering tonight.” He nudged the donut box toward me. “Hungry? I got chocolate and caramel.” When I peered into the box, he jumped up and grabbed the roll of paper towels he’d brought in. He handed me one and then a glass of orange juice before climbing onto the bed, beside me.
In the daylight, being next to him felt much more nerve-wracking. My arm against his, our sides touching. It was a different kind of intimacy, something that I couldn’t really explain, but it made me feel like I had a little schoolgirl crush all over again.
“So, I’m thinking we go out on the road in an hour or so.”
“Okay.” I bit into a chocolate glazed donut and instantly relaxed. Chocolate was a good buffer for nerves. “I just have to pack.”
“I’ll pack for you.” He turned the telly on and flipped through a few channels. “Best if you rest up as much as possible before we get onto our adventuring.”
“I don’t know how much adventuring I can realistically do.”
He turned to me. “As much as you can bear. That’s all I’m asking you to do.” He held up my camera and turned it on, beginning to go through the photos I’d taken.
“I haven’t gotten a lot,” I admitted quietly and drained my orange juice.
“None with you in them.” He showed me one of the pond we’d been camping at. “Is that where you hurt yourself?”
“Yeah.” I chewed on my lip. “I guess I could delete that photo, since it’ll be bad memories for me.”
“Or, in a couple years, when you can laugh at yourself, you’ll want photographic proof of the place you were at.”
“Maybe.” I wasn’t convinced, but his optimism was reassuring, somewhat. “That’s all,” I told him when he’d reached the last one.
“You didn’t take a single selfie?”
I took a bite of the donut and shrugged. “Hard to take a selfie with that kind of camera and not get an up-close view of my nose.” I swiped my finger over the chocolate I was sure I had on my lip.
He turned his body toward me and a second later, that moment was immortalized on camera.
“Did you just take a photo of me?”
“I sure did.” He grinned proudly as he scrolled back and showed me the photo. All I could see were my lips, the small smear of chocolate over one side, and the blur of my hair on the left of the frame. That was it. It could’ve been anyone, really, but it was me.
“I have food on my face,” I said, and tried not to look at the photo any longer. It was such an innocent thing, but something about the framing of the photo made it appear sultry, sexy. Even though it’d been completely un-posed.
“You had chocolate on your lip.” His eyes went to them before returning to my face. “It was a good look.” He held the camera up. “We’re going to be taking a lot more over the next few days. Fill this memory card up.”
“Okay.” He was leading this trip now, and I actually didn’t mind. Even though so much was still up in the air between us, I had a small hope that this trip would be good for us; define who we were to one another. It was foolish to hope that this would end in any way other than heartbreak, but still, I hoped.
“While you finish that up, I’m going to start packing up your stuff.”
“Most of it’s already packed. I just have some things in the bathroom.”
He rolled off the bed and began moving about the room easily, tossing stuff into my black suitcase like this was second nature for him.
“Thanks for this.” I swallowed the last bite of the donut and began putting my leg back into the air cast. “Breakfast.” I nodded to the box. “And for being here.” That part I said softer, because just saying it made me feel shy for some inexplicable reason.
“You don’t need to thank me.” Something about his face, the way his eyes turned a little sad, made me want to ask him what was going on inside of his head.
“Yes, I do.” I pulled the sheet up to my waist. It was pathetic as armor, but it was all I had. “I’ve been whining the last few days. Throwing myself a pity party.” I spread my hand out over the sheet. “It’s just … really nice not to be alone.” I didn’t want to tell him that it was the first time I hadn’t felt alone since I left London. I didn’t want him to be the reason I was happy, but so what if he was?
I’d tried new things on this trip, I’d tried to put myself out there, but the truth of it was that I hadn’t enjoyed any of it. I’d been unhappy, and for the first time in four weeks, I was starting to feel that hope that had sent me here in the first place.
I wished I was independent enough to have found that happiness on my own, in a foreign country, but I hadn’t. I wasn’t my sister, or my mum, or Mila. I was myself, someone perfectly content being at home with her family. I just made a lot of mistakes for me to realize that.
Sam stood by the television, his hair all askew in the sexiest way, as he studied some papers in his hand. My eyes drifted to the pad of paper he’d left on the bedside table, which was open to the drawing he’d done of my hand. It was so strange to see my hand laid out like that for him. The way he’d interpreted the light and shadows in his drawing made me feel equal parts flattered and embarrassed.
I picked it up, looking it over. I’d never had the chance to take in Sam’s art before, and was ashamed I’d never asked him about it either. He obviously had an incredible talent. He’d even smudged a few of the lines, deepening the shadows that lay across my hand. “You’re really good,” I told him, still staring at the drawing. It’d only taken him a few minutes to draw something close to life-like. “I’m just impressed.”
“Thank you,” he said, zipping the papers into his bag. “It doesn’t earn much, but it pays some of the bills.”
I knew he wasn’t a starving artist, but he wasn’t also independently wealthy by any means. He still had to labor for a wage, which often included working at the pub, but he still never gave up on his passion. I thought of my studio that I’d sold to fund this trip and fund the restaurant that Ames and my sister had begun. Sam didn’t have a space like that all to himself, didn’t have people like I did,
who believed in me. It made me realize just how privileged I was.
“Since you’re providing the car,” I told him, “I’m going to pay for the hotels on this trip.”
Sam opened his mouth to protest, but I was already up and out of the bed. “I’m insisting. Rental cars aren’t inexpensive. Let me foot the lodging bills. It’s the least I can do. Especially since I’ve got a bum leg at the moment.”
He didn’t like it. That was plainly obvious on his face. But he gave me a curt nod. “Fine.”
“I have the money. It’s not a big deal. I was going to be spending it on hotels the next four days anyway.”
“Okay, I get it, Lots.” He turned away and tucked a few more things I had scattered into the front of my bag.
I still felt restless. It wasn’t as if we were together—at least not in that way. There was no reason for this to be an issue. But it was.
I thought once again of our kiss the night before and wished I had the courage to ask him about it. But even if I did, what would I have asked him?
“I just need to get changed,” I told him, grabbing a new outfit from my suitcase. “Then I’ll be ready.”
He nodded as I walked by him, but I could tell he was still agitated. I hadn’t meant to rub my money situation in his face, but I felt it necessary to get it out of the way before we embarked on this trip.
In the bathroom, I flipped on the switch and stared at my reflection.
I’d completely forgotten about the false lashes I’d applied the day before. One of them looked fine, but the other was barely hanging on by a thread. Without the false lashes, I’d essentially have none. Nerves raced up my back when I realized Sam may have seen the lashes that were peeling off my eyelid. Had he wondered about them?
I dug through my toiletries until I found the little bottle of eyelash adhesive. I peeled off the line of lashes and dotted it with glue and set it back in place. The other eyelash was loosening too, so I reapplied the glue to that one as well.
My hair was a frizzy mess of curls from sleeping on it, but after putting some product in it, it tamed back to normal. I brushed my teeth and put on legging trousers and a comfortable tee before leaving the bathroom and facing Sam again.
The Sounds of Secrets Page 15
