Page 70 of Catching My Dreams

“I saw you drawing,” she told him.

“What was I drawing?”

“I’m not sure if it was a dream or if it was real,” Ella said, suddenly nervous that her subconscious had made it all up. “But you were drawing a sketch of me.”

He stilled, his blue eyes awake and holding her gaze. “It was real,” he admitted, his words falling against her skin like a soft caress.

“But you didn’t like me back then.”

Noah shook his head and pulled away from her. “Wait here.”

“Where are you going?” she asked when he got out of bed.

“I need to get something from my bag downstairs,” he explained, and before she could argue or tell him to wait until morning, he was out the door, Archie jumping off the bed to follow him.

“Such a traitor,” Ella grumbled, but she was secretly glad that the Yorkie and Noah had grown so attached to each other.

Archie had always been her closest companion—her family—and Noah fit into that family even better than she could have dreamed.

She sat up while two of the three most important men in her life searched for whatever Noah wanted to show her. The flowers Noah had given her at the start of their date earlier that night caught her eye. She smiled. The peach roses were in a vase on her dressing table, and they filled her room with their delicate fragrance.

Ella wasted time by applying more pain relief cream to her shoulders and neck and checking the time on her phone, but Noah was back almost as quickly as he’d left.

“Archie wanted to go outside, so I’ll go back downstairs to lock up once he’s done,” he told her.

“Thanks.”

He was holding a sketchbook, and after closing the door behind him and returning to bed, he handed it to Ella.

“What’s this for?” she asked.

“Just look.”

Ella opened the book, her lips parting as she took in the sketch on the first page. It was her. A much younger version of her, and when she looked at the date Noah had written in the bottom right corner of the sketch, she knew he’d drawn the picture before their falling out.

She turned the page to find a similar sketch, but as she kept flipping through the book, the girl in the pictures grew older, and the dates became later until she was staring at a sketch Noah had drawn only a few days earlier.

“They’re beautiful,” she breathed out.

Some held such great detail that it was like looking at a photograph, especially those he’d added color to, while others were rough and clearly drawn quickly. But every one of them was exquisite. Every one of them displayed Noah’s impressive talent.

“I don’t understand,” Ella said once she’d reached the last one.

She was looking at herself sketched out in pencil, her eyes fixed on an open book in her lap, and her hair tied up in a messy bun that left the curve of her neck exposed. She looked up at Noah, finding his expression guarded and uncertain.

“Why would you draw these when you couldn’t stand me?”

“I drew them because I was in love with you, Ella.” He spoke the words quietly, but there was no trace of embarrassment or hesitancy in his tone or his expression. “I drew them because even if I didn’t want to admit it to Asher and Chris, I had the biggest fucking crush on you, and that didn’t change when I’d thought you dropped me.”

“Noah,” Ella breathed out, her voice pained. She knew what that must have felt like for him because she’d experienced it, too. The sting of rejection. The bone-deep hurt of betrayal. The frustration of not being able to control your heart and who it wanted.

“I drew them because every time you looked at me like you hated me, a little piece of me died, but I still would have given anything to be able to call you mine.”

“God, Noah,” Ella whispered, and then she was closing the sketchbook and moving to straddle his waist.

She looped her arms around his neck and crashed her lips against his. Their mouths were clumsy, and their teeth clashed, but Ella didn’t care at all. The kiss was hungry and desperate, and it was precisely what they needed.

Noah hadn’t touched her like she’d wanted him to because of her neck pain—not even after their dinner date that night—but the line he’d drawn between them was obliterated as soon as Ella pressed her lips to his.

---