Page 43 of Love You Like That (Excess All Areas 4)

“Yeah. Love you, too,” Alex said.

When he stood outside Zoe’s room, he felt…nervous. He didn’t even have a plan. It was midnight. He raised his hand to knock and then stopped.

Shouldn’t he have it straight in his head why he was there? What he wanted? A suggestion?

Fuck it. He rapped his knuckles on the wood before he could overthink it.

The door opened and Zoe was dressed in those ridiculous men’s pyjamas she wore on the tour bus. The one with the oversized shirt that slipped off her shoulder and revealed the creamy length of skin to her neck.

“Are you okay?” she signed.

“I came to ask you the same question.”

She held the door open to let him slip inside and he noticed she wasn’t wearing her hearing aids. The television was on without volume with the subtitles playing. An action scene, cars whizzing around an American city by the looks of the skyscrapers.

“I’m exhausted, my eyes hurt from crying earlier, but I can’t sleep.”

Alex took off his coat and threw it down on the sofa. Then he slipped off his boots. “Get in bed, lie on your front.”

Zoe eyed him suspiciously. “Why?”

“Just get in bed, Rocky.” She did as he asked, climbing under the covers before pounding her fist into the pillow a few times to fluff it up. Her eyes fluttered closed but opened quickly as he climbed on the bed next to her. “Don’t worry, everyone’s keeping their clothes on.”

She closed her eyes again and he began to rub gentle circles on her back. Something his mum used to do for him when he was young and couldn’t sleep. It always felt soothing. Reassuring.

And somewhere before the end of the movie, they both fell asleep.

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