I blinked. “Not on the plane.”
“Yes,” he said. “On the plane.”
My breath caught. Because I remembered the plane. I remembered sitting there in a wrinkled skirt, with my hair tied up in a lopsided knot, not a stitch of makeup on, and a crater the size of the Grand Canyon in my chest.
I’d been scared. Angry. Hollow. I hadn’t cared if I looked unapproachable. I wanted to look unapproachable. That was the point.
I’d felt—let’s be honest—unlovable.
Un-fixable.
“That’s impossible.”
But Noah was shaking his head, smiling down at his own cup of wine. Like this was a fond memory for him. “You looked like you’d just crawled out of bed to get there, and I kept thinking…God, she’s beautiful.”
“Beautiful,” I repeated the word. Shocked.
“You looked…real,” he added. “Like someone who wasn’t pretending. Someone who didn’t need the show.”
Which was ironic. Because I actually had—needed the show—literally.
I swallowed. “I was horrible.”
“Yeah,” he said, full-on grinning now. “Did you know the color of your eyes changes depending on the light? Right now, they’re more green than brown.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“I kept wondering if my fingers would get tangled in your hair,” he added.
I made a strangled sound. “They definitely would have. It was a mess. Like me.”
“Maybe.”
I stared at him, stunned. This wasn’t something I’d expected to hear. Not ever. Not from anyone—least of all him.
But we’d gotten sidetracked. Before he’d sent my heart pounding—not sure what was happening here—I’d asked him a question.
“But…” I picked absently at a loose thread on my skirt, unable to look at him all of a sudden. “Up at the waterfall. You said it was not ideal. And then you said it was something we should only do once.”
“Nope, you said once was enough. I just agreed, and I was being sarcastic.”
“Were you?” At this point, although I could remember every feeling, every sensation I’d felt when he kissed me, I couldn’t remember which of us had said what.
“Have you dated much since…?”
Noah’s gaze shifted to the movie that neither of us was watching. “My friends wanted me to get out. And I did, a little. At first. But it felt… I don’t know. Like I was just going through the motions.”
“What do you mean?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t…feel anything. You know how I told you I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back to the ER?”
I nodded.
“There were a few really bad cases. Like—“ His eyes shuttered. “More than usual. Worse than usual. And…”
I got the feeling he hadn’t talked about this much. But maybe he needed to.
“It was like,” he added quietly, “something inside…broke. And ever since, I’ve just been going through the motions. With everything.”
