Page 78 of Play On

Noah smiles at me. “You have no idea how you light up a room when you enter it, do you?”

I shake my head.

“You do.”

I bask in his compliment.

“I always study people first before I interact. I’ve always been like that,” Noah explains. “So I watched you that night. I saw you throw your head back and shout with laughter. I noticed how you talked with your hands when you were excited aboutsomething. Your beautiful blue eyes lit up when you spoke. You didn’t care that I was a footballer. In fact, you didn’t care about me at all.”

I blush at this, and Noah laughs.

“But that made me more intrigued,” he says, pausing to tuck a lock of my hair behind my ear. “And then when I got to know you at your house? When we spent that day together at the beach? I went to bed that night and thanked Dad for sending you to me. Because I think he did.”

I draw his mouth to mine and kiss him. A gentle, sweet kiss that tells him exactly how I feel.

Noah has completely opened up to me. As vulnerable as I was with him, he was with me. He’s right. He’s not perfect. Noah has spent his life obsessed with football, and then carrying out his father’s dream by putting everything else aside to achieve it.

We both have our own issues to sort out.

But if things go well this week in Dorset, we can sort them out together.

There’s also one thing I have decided that is going to happen if that is the case.

Someone will be in the stands to watch Noah play this season.

And that person will be me.

Chapter Nineteen

It All Felt Right

I know if I were to get up and draw back the blackout curtains in my room, I’d find bright morning sunshine. Well, to be fair, I’d get bright morning sunshine at five o’clock in the morning at this time of year, but I know it’s early. My internal clock is really good about knowing what time it is.

I’m guessing it’s about six-thirty.

Which is incredibly early, considering I didn’t get home until nearly one-thirty in the morning.

I brush my fingertips over my lips, remembering how it felt to have Noah kiss me. And kiss me he did.

I can’t contain the smile I feel forming underneath my fingertips. I’ve never had a date like the one I had last night. From the thought and effort Noah put into making it special, to the fun we had picking our sweets, to whispering to each other during the previews about what films we wanted to see.

But then there was another side to the date, when Noah revealed things to me that he had never spoken out loud to anyone. I feel the smile fade underneath my fingertips when I think about the tragedy that struck and how it forever changed what his family looked like. How for years, Noah silently bore the weight of his dad’s death and his mum’s and brother’s reactions to it.

Football became two things to him. It became Noah’s way of fulfilling a promise to his father. It was also his salvation from all the trauma he suffered at such a young age.

And something made him open up to me. The butterfly my own family didn’t take seriously, yet Noah trusted me with the ghosts of his past. I don’t know how he does it, but he sees me through a completely different lens than most people do.

The smile returns to my lips.

That means everything to me.

I reach for my phone on my bedside table, and ta-da! It’s six twenty-eight.

I’m about to start my scroll when I see I have a new message from Noah, one he sent about twenty minutes ago. We texted a bit last night after he returned to his cottage, and I see he’s up like I am at a stupid hour of the morning when both of us are on holiday.

I eagerly tap it open to read:

Butterfly—if you are up early let me know. I’d be happy to come get you and take you out for breakfast. Then we can do whatever you want for the rest of the day.

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