𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐲

Chapter 53

— Chapter 53 —
Fountain of My Youth

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E L L I O T

I paid for my cab ride home that night, leaving James on his own with the knowledge of what he'd so forcefully uncovered.

For the life of me, I didn't understand what happened between us in that club.

My arms never once stopped hugging my torso since the minute I left him. Nobody was ever meant to see those bruises. Not my father, not James, not any set of eyes that weren't my own in a mirror. My wounds were the worst part of me, and they were mine. But last night, for a few short moments... James had stolen them. He pulled open the curtains and forced me to display the most vulnerable side of myself.

But he'd finally given me an apology.

A genuine expression of remorse over the pain he'd caused me since the day he left. I hadn't forgiven him for what he'd done, but hearing him apologize was a good starting point in trying to mend our fractured connection. We weren't on the best of terms with each other, but... we could be civil. And my soul deserved a little bit of repose from the resentment I'd been carrying for him, I supposed.

I'd managed to drink last night without going overboard. I wasn't stumbling out of the car when I finally got back to the apartment. Finding my way inside after fumbling a bit with the keys, I ended up collapsing on my bed without even taking off my shoes. Every part of me was exhausted.

My bed was so soft. And it smelled so much like vanilla.

Like Noah.

I passed out the minute my head hit the pillow and didn't wake up until long after the first few rays of sunlight had filtered through the window.

My limbs were still asleep—one of my legs tingled from an intense wave of pins and needles, making me grumble incoherently into my pillow from the nightmarish sensations. The sun blared in my face and scorched my retinas, fuelling the headache at the back of my skull.

But something was wrong.

Shuffling to get a better understanding of the blurry shapes within my vision, I squinted, unable to register anything in my groggy daze. Did someone change the bedsheets? They were crisp, white, and freshly-cleaned, but smelled overwhelmingly of vanilla. And every time I pulled the blankets up to cover my shoulders for warmth, they snagged on something and slipped right off again.

"Make a wrong turn last night?" Someone's deep voice purred beside me, making me jolt up on the bed in alarm.

Noah's bed.

With his lower half buried beneath the blankets, Noah's back was to me with his arm beneath his pillow, dark locks of hair spanning the fabric. It looked as if he were still half asleep, peering at me from the corners of his eyes beneath thick lashes.

Raking stray locks of hair away from my forehead, I did my best to splutter an intelligible sentence. "I—what—how did I get here?"

"Wasted. How else?" He chuckled lazily to himself, the raspiness evident in his low morning voice. "Drunk you seemed to have no problem invading my bed and clinging onto me like a glorified body pillow."