“T?”
“Good.”
When his finger finally completed the third letter, I scowled beneath my arm before peeling it away and staring up into Henry’s eyes. “M?”
He nodded, tracing the three letters over and over again on my skin.
“R… T… M? What do they mean?”
Henry lowered his face to mine. “Remember this moment. My version of telling you I’m highlighting my time with you and storing it away to come back to when the days back home are rainy, and you’re no longer there.”
No longer there…
The thought shouldn’t have pinched at my heart the way it did.
“RTM,” I whispered.
He drew each of the three letters on my skin again, only this time when he finished, he drew a heart around them all before he leaned down and pulled me into another kiss that stole my breath and made any worries about the future disappear.
“Reed Easton’s got nothing on me, babe,” he muttered against my lips, forcing me to break out into a fit of laughter I couldn’t contain.
He had no idea how much I agreed.
Or how I wanted to add another letter to his sweet declaration: F.
Because I had no doubt in my mind I would remember this moment forever.
No matter what laid ahead, or how hard the goodbye turned out to be.
Henry Cohen had made an impression on my heart. One I knew would stay there either as a trophy or a scar for the rest of my days.
Chapter Thirty
Henry
We somehow got away with that night. The next few that followed, too.
Without realising it, our days became about nothing else but finding ways to sneak off here and there together while Bailey and Andy made out around the pool, at the beach, or they skipped out on us altogether by disappearing for romantic lunches and dinners. Their union turned into a blessing we hadn’t known we’d needed. With them so occupied with one another, and Jace trying to convince Rhea he was worth taking a chance on, it left little time for either party to overanalyse or stare too long in our direction.
We were very much a group of six on this island together now, with one firmly established couple, two people somehow still skirting around each other, avoiding the inevitable… and then Phoebe and me.
Two lovers hiding in plain sight.
Two strangers finding solace in each other while everyone around them remained clueless.
Well, almost everyone.
I didn’t miss the subtle glances Rhea sent our way whenever Phoebe and I were talking around the pool or standing together inside one of Mykonos’s bustling bars. Every time I caught myself grinning that private grin in Phoebe’s direction, I’d look up to see Rhea smiling at us before she blinked and looked away, pretending she hadn’t noticed a thing.
Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe it was all in my head.
Or maybe I was failing to hide the way I was beginning to feel about the little blonde-haired beauty who’d waltzed into my life at the most inconvenient of times and fucking robbed me of any control I’d once thought I had. Any chance I got to touch her, I took. We’d had sex in every place we could get away with it, and the more familiar Phoebe’s moans of satisfaction became, the more I knew letting her go would probably be one of the hardest things I’d ever have to do. And there’d been a lot.
My paranoia at being caught out had started to grow with every passing hour, which was why I’d done everything I could to sneak Phoebe away whenever and wherever possible. If I wasn’t touching her, kissing her, or inside her, I made sure to spend my time making that smile of hers come to life. So much so, she’d started to rate my efforts on something she called ‘The Swoon Score’.
So far, I’d managed to arrange a small beach picnic for her that only lasted a couple of hours before we had to make our way back to the others. But not before I’d enjoyed spending those one hundred-and-twenty minutes staring into her eyes, trailing my hands all over her silky-smooth skin, eating pizza out of a box, and feeding her strawberries and champagne while she giggled as though I really had distracted her from all her troubles, just as I’d promised. That earned me a swoon score of eight out of ten, apparently.
The morning after that, I rented a moped and drove up to the apartments, texting her from outside with a promise of a goodride, only for her to jog down the pathway and come to a stop, wearing a smile the size of the ocean as she took me in, sitting there, holding my hand out for her to take. I fucking loved it whenever she slipped her fingers through mine and looked up at me as though she trusted me.
