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She glances back over her shoulder with a blush, and I know it’s because I haven’t done it in a while.

“Go shower,” I say.

Her smile widens as she agrees, walking off toward the bathroom. Hope and a bit of excitement at what’s to come blooms in my chest, spreading throughout my body. It’s a feeling that, like so many things I’m realizing, I haven’t felt in a long time.

Another knock resounds, and I grab my wallet from the nightstand near the bed before making my way to the door. I wait until I hear the shower start before I open it, sifting through my wallet for the right bill.

“Sorry for the wait.” I pull out a twenty. “For your trouble—”

My words cut off, eyes locking with a pair of brown ones I only glimpse in my secret dreams. Eyes that I haven’t seen in person since I was eighteen years old. Eyes that I always said reminded me of my favorite European milk chocolate I hardly ever let myself indulge in.

“Noah.” His gruff voice saying my name after so long has the hairs on my arms rising. I open and close my lips, unable to process this, while at the same time feeling the hope I was just clinging to drain from my body like a leak in an air mattress.

He holds out the fucking tray of breakfast food and coffee like I’m just supposed to take it and pretend the only man I’ve ever loved isn’t standing in front of me after a decade of no contact.

I crumple the twenty-dollar bill in my palm, the other gripping the door handle with enough force I’m surprised it doesn’t snap off.

We stare at each other for far too long, and it isn’t until my lungs burn that I realize I’m not breathing.

I suck in the warm desert air, my voice low and quiet when I ask, “What the fuck are you doing here, Beck?”

Chapter eleven

Beck

Noah looks exactly how I remember yet not the same at all. I fully recognize that people change as they age, especially from eighteen to twenty-eight—I know I sure as hell have.

I’ve grown into my body; my features have become squarer and my beard and hair longer. And while I like working out, I eat fries and enjoy food. My physique is no longer like the hockey player I once was or that of a young man. I’ve matured, and so has Noah.

He appears taller now, his muscles straining against his perfectly fitted jeans and white T-shirt. His hair and beard is trimmed as if it was just done by a barber, the color a deeper red.

I grip the breakfast tray in my hands, wishing I’d thought this through. I told one of the staff I’d bring it to the couples bungalow so they could continue helping with breakfast service for everyone else. He’d been grateful, and it wasn’t until I knocked on the door that I realized how stupid this was. I knew that after the night Quinn had and how many drinks she’d consumed, Noah would, in all likelihood, be the one to answer the door, and I was right.

“Are you going to say anything or just stand there holding our breakfast hostage?” Noah snaps, the timbre of his voice lower than I remember.

I swallow and look down at the tray, unable to process him standing in front of me. After I made sure Quinn made it safely to her bungalow, I practically ran back to my own space and opened my email. I think I already knew in my gut what I would find, and when I opened my couple’s intake forms and saw Noah’s full name alongside Quinn’s, I went into shock.

I spent the night staring at the ceiling or looking at old pictures of Noah and I from high school on my phone. There weren’t many, but the few I had, I’d placed in a secret folder labeled “Not Important.”

My stomach flips as I stare into the hazel eyes of the same boy on my phone, the ones that now belong to a very angry man. His hardened gaze reminds me so much of the last time I saw him, and my stomach roils, the eggs and bacon I had for breakfast threatening to come up.

“This was a bad idea,” I say, thrusting the tray toward him. The wood knocks against his chest, and he automatically takes it. The pads of his fingers brush over mine, and a violent tremor works its way up my spine despite the already warm morning.

I let go of the tray, and Noah manages to hold on to it before it falls to the ground. His forearms flex, and veins bulge from beneath his pale, freckled skin.

An old memory flashes through my mind, an inappropriate one I shouldn’t be thinking of. It’s a reminder that I should not have come here, that I let Past Beck’s need to see Noah lead me here this morning when I should have gone straight to Hazel to let her know I had a conflict of interest with this couple, that I could not mentor them.

“Beck—”

“Enjoy your breakfast.”

I move to turn away, but the sound of Quinn’s voice sends a newer and more pleasant shiver through me. “Beck? Is that you?”

I stop when Quinn comes into view. She’s wearing a long blue maxi dress, pink hair wet and unbrushed, her skin flushed from a shower. She looks better than I expected after the number of drinks she consumed, and her eyes sparkle with both confusion and what appears to be happiness at seeing me.

A bit of my nausea eases, and I should question what that means, but Noah interrupts my thoughts.

“You know Beck?” He grips the breakfast tray as tightly as I was before, his knuckles white.