Dear Reader...

Chapter Sixteen

~Juliette~

I'm not a morning person. I'm the furthest thing from it. I would much rather sleep until noon and stay up later when it's quieter and people aren't around. Getting up before 11am is a fight and Noah knows that.

Most days when he stays over and he has to go to work, he creeps around to get ready, brings me a coffee with a cute little animal in the froth because of course he makes me fancy coffees at home too. He kisses my forehead as I'm waking up, puts the coffee down and tells me if he's coming around that night. Most nights he does. But sometimes he sees Chris or just wants to be at his own place for the night. Some space is good. We don't need to be around each other constantly and it gives me a chance to write for hours uninterrupted or call Riles and Anya or to work on the house some more because it's so close to being finished now.

Today I'm awake though. Noah's still asleep beside me and I'm watching his eyes shift behind his closed lids. It's like a movie sometimes. I catch us in moments that don't quite feel real. When we're play fighting and he's tickling me and I'm laughing so hard it turns to squealing that turns to him laughing and we have that moment where we're staring at each other. Or when we're curled up on the sofa with the fire on and he's absent mindedly playing with my hair and massaging my scalp whilst watching TV. When I sit at the kitchen island and watch him in awe as he cooks. I have thousands of memories from the past 3 and a half months that just feel rose tinted somehow. Like I made them up.

I know I haven't. Because he's right here and he's real. I can feel his heat pressed against my skin, I can hear him breathing, I can still smell his aftershave, can see the scratched across his skin from 3am when we both woke up with the need to have each other right there and then.

This one doesn't feel wrong.

Our whole relationship. I don't feel like I'm doing it because I don't want to be alone or because I have to or because I want company. Noah is in my bed because I want Noah in my bed. Because I want his hugs and his lips on my skin and I want him driving us to the middle of nowhere just to get away for a few hours and be together. I want moments like this where I feel my soul finally happy without it being tied to something toxic.

He makes me feel like I'm free of it all. Of everything from back home. None of it exists. It's just me and him out here, in this cottage and it's our own universe that we're creating for ourselves and it's magic. Pure, authentic magic and the more I write the couple in my newest book like us, the more I realize just how special Noah makes me feel. I haven't written 2 books at once before but the one I'd been working on when I got here kind of fell out me in the space of 5 weeks over Christmas. I really hyper focused on it and got it all out there. I don't know if Noah knows I'm onto a whole other book now or not. I guess I can tell him that at some other point.

"You're watching me." I gasp when Noah catches me off guard, slap his arm when he chuckles and pulls me back into him. "It's super early for you babe. Go back to sleep."

"I can't. I have my meeting. I need to get up." I try to pull out of him but Noah doesn't allow me to move. "Babe, I need to get up."

"You're not going to be on camera. Just take it here."

"I am not taking a work meeting naked in bed with you." He pouted. Stuck his bottom lip out without moving the rest of his body and I giggled, flicking my finger over it quickly. "I'll bite it."

"Bite it and I'm not responsible for what happens next." He half opened an eye, daring me to do it.

"Shame I've got a meeting then isn't it?"

"Grab your laptop, take the meeting here and I'll make you come whilst they tell you all about where your books gonna be published."

"As entertaining as that-" Noah pushed me onto my back, instantly separating my legs and running his middle finger up my folds.