The mere mention of my name passing her lips was like a slap to the face.
Fuck, I hated it. I hated it because it sounded too good. Most people in my life called me Cohen now, and that I could handle. It kept me detached. It kept me inconsequential. The only people to call me Henry in that tone within the last decade had been my parents, but Henry falling from Phoebe’s mouth felt like something else. Something I couldn’t explain, making it too tempting to ask her to say it again and let me watch more intently as she wrapped her lips around my name.
I balled my hands into fists by my side and tried to ignore the racing of my pulse as I stared into her eyes, somehow full of both innocence and fire. To the rest of the world, she could pass for being a gentle soul, but if you got close enough to her like this, you could see that little flame flickering in the background, waiting to erupt and cause chaos.
“Look.” She sighed, breaking the silence. “I don’t know what your deal is or why you seem to want to be so combative with me all the time but, yes, thank you for getting my purse back. I appreciate it. Really. But if you’re just going to continue to treat me like crap every time you’re around me, I’d rather us try and avoid each other as much as possible for the rest of the holiday. I didn’t fly thousands of miles away from all my shit back home to come face to face with new shit here, and I?—”
“What shit?” I cut in.
She blinked several times. “Excuse me?”
“What shit did you leave back home?”
She stared at me like she couldn’t believe what I was asking, and honestly, neither could I, but curiosity got the better of me, and there we had it.
“Are you serious? You’re really asking me that?” She huffed out a humourless laugh. “What business is that of yours?”
“Probably none, but if you didn’t want me to know, you shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“God, you’re a real…Grr.” She shook her head, and I hated the way she looked at me, but I couldn’t blame her for being frustrated. I frustrated the shit out of myself, too.
While shoving my hands into the pockets of my black swim shorts to stop myself from doing anything stupid, I let out a sigh of my own and watched as she struggled to get her thoughts in order.
“Phoebe?” I said as calmly as I could.
“What?”
“You’re welcome.” And God help me, I couldn’t stop the small smirk that tugged at the corner of my mouth.
Her expression grew angrier before she eventually huffed out her annoyance and turned on her flip flops to march away, tugging the strap of her full bag farther onto her shoulder. I watched her go until she turned right and disappeared around a line of pink and green bushes and thick trees, leaving me standing alone all over again.
“What the fuck was that about, Cohen?” I muttered to myself.
Not even I referred to myself as Henry anymore. That guy had died right alongside his parents.
I threw my head back, looked up at the clear sky, and ran my hands through the thickness of my hair. All I had to do was stay away from her. All I had to do was keep my distance, and I’d fucked all that up already thanks to some thieving little shitbag.
It had taken me a split second to act on instinct from across the road the moment I’d seen her running out of the mini market, screaming out to the boy in a desperate attempt to save her belongings. She’d looked too lost and unsure, and I hated to see women like her lose anything. My need to chase after the kid had taken over before I’d even had a chance to think about how that would look to Phoebe or any of the others, and onceshe’d caught up to me, panting and breathing in a way that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention, I’d had to replace attraction with anger to try and get my emotions back under control.
Control, Cohen? That’s one thing you’ve never had.
I dropped my hands and let my chin fall to my chest, contemplating disappearing back to my apartment and hiding away from the guys for the rest of the day, when I heard a familiar chorus of laughter from around the pool.
I imagined Phoebe sitting there alone, shaken up by what had just happened, her anger at me making her body vibrate. I imagined the version of events she would relay to the others, given how much I seemed to irritate her, and I knew I couldn’t let that happen.
At least that’s what I told myself.
Telling myself anything different, like how maybe I wanted to make sure she was okay and how I wanted to stand in front of her and just study her face again wasn’t an option. Better to pretend and keep everyone safe than to tell myself a truth and watch everything I’d built up inside fall apart around me again.
A splash from the pool followed by another chorus of laughter had my feet moving, and I rounded the corner to see Jace, Andy, and those other two girls come into view, each of them sitting on the edges of their sun loungers, leaning in to talk to one another. The perfect little foursome already coupled up.
It took me a few seconds longer to spot Phoebe.
She sat alone on the edge of the pool, her hands pressed against the white tiles while she stared at her feet in the cerulean-blue water, drifting back and forth as she slowly kicked her legs out. The sun made her smooth skin glow, and that damn halo of hair up in a ponytail had my fingers twitching to reach out and tug on it until her head fell back and her wide eyes stared up at me, waiting.
The last time I’d found a woman even a tenth as endearing, my whole world had imploded.
But still…
