Falling for Ocean Blue [BxB] ✔️

Chapter Forty four

My phone is shaking, drunk on its full charge. I shut it off immediately, leaning over Fray's naked body. A blue morning leaks through the gauze curtains. The last morning in Rome. I squash the dread in my stomach and fill it instead with the faint aroma of oranges clinging to the breeze outside.

The windows are sitting wide open, like a yawn, bringing the sweet air into our room.

It was a stranger lingering behind the glass as we kissed. He never let me return the favour. No matter how much I pleaded.

I take in his features. 

One by one. 

The rise in his cheeks, rouged from a night spent tangled in bedsheets. Squinting eyes over bruised lips that are wet in the corners. 

I reach over. 

I trace the slope of his profile with a delicate grace, one line up his forehead and down his nose. Into the gap of his mouth. Over his chin. 

It's art the way I paint over his face, bronzed in the sun.

"Good morning." He whispers.

"Morning."

Fray stretches wide, hitting my knees so I have to cross them. I pull my finger back as he rises from the messy bed. A boyish grin on his face.

"You woke up early to touch me?" I hear the arrogance in his lilting question trickle on the floor.

I put on a show of rolling my eyes and scoffing loudly.

"We needed to be up a half hour ago. Plane leaves at 12. I tried to wake you."

Fray groans into the nook of my shoulder.

"Back to real life," He mumbles, " Everyone's going crazy over dating rumours. My dad called. He never calls."

"Doctor dad?" I quirk my brows.

Fray rarely mentions his father. Any tidbit is carefully saved in my memory.

"Isn't that why your phone's been blowing up?" He looks up.

I don't let my eyes falter from his narrow gaze. Instead, I shrug nonchalantly and kiss his cheek.

Before the kiss can land, he grabs hold of the sheets and heaves it from under me, sending me tumbling onto the floor. I curse out loud.

"Running from your demons..." He says nonchalantly. He dusts the white comforter and folds it neatly over all four edges.

Fray points with his eyes to the discarded sheets at my feet. I pick it up and hand him half.

"You know what they say about that, don't you?"

We erase the night before. Tangled limbs and soft words in the moonlight. I watch his face stretch over a serious grimace.

"I'm sure you'll tell me." I sigh.

The boy is intrusive with his tired eyes. They are bright with sleep and pierced right through me.

"You can't outrun your demons."

The way he speaks is soulful and well meaning. Except, I hate to be told I'm wrong. It's a side effect of being the prodigal son.

"I don't run..."

We arrive at LAX somewhere in the evening.

When Fray and I finally get our back packs and descend the winding steps, he reaches for my hand. I pretend to fuss over my luggage. He doesn't try again. Instead, we walk side by side, almost touching. The tension is concentrated in the space between, and I try to synchronize our movement, so they never stray too far apart. I can hear his brain whirring in doubt as he steals glances in his periphery. When the others find us in the wave of tourists and screaming children, he drifts away to speak with Steven.