CHLOE

When I wake the following morning, for a second I don't remember. I hear the sound of the shower running and I can see a crack of daylight breaking around the edge of the heavy curtains. I can't hear any sounds from outside - the double glazing is too thick - but I imagine I can hear seagulls shouting for their breakfast as they circle the promenade and the beach in front of the hotel. The bed is soft and comfortable and I lie still for a few moments allowing myself to wake up slowly, the events of the previous night a strange haze, yet something needles my subconscious as though a momentous event has happened that I am forgetting.

And then I remember.

I remember his lips on mine, his hands on my breasts, the feel of him inside me. I remember the anticipation, the tension building, the incredible release. 

I sit up in bed, holding the covers against my bare chest, my heart pounding. Where the hell did that come from last night? One minute we were yelling at each other, the next he was kissing me. One minute I had been goading him, consumed with jealousy thanks to his flirting with the girl on reception, and the next he had been pushing me back onto the bed, pressing his erection slowly into me while I squirmed and moaned beneath him.

I feel my cheeks reddening as I recall the noises I made, unable to contain my enjoyment while he thrust into me, coming not once but twice. How did we get from spitting venom and hatred at each other to sharing the most intimate moment that any two people can?

In the adjoining bathroom the sound of the running water stops and my stomach performs a sickening backflip. I am nervous about seeing him - I have never slept with anyone under these circumstances before, and woken up the next morning in their bed. My only previous experiences have involved other people being in the next room drinking lukewarm beer and playing video games, and getting dressed immediately afterwards to go and join them. I don't know what to say to Harry. I feel incomprehensibly awkward, like I would rather run out of the room naked then face him right now.

Before I can come up with a plan, the door to the bathroom opens and steam billows out, followed by a tall figure with tattoos on his chest, hair wet against his forehead and a towel wrapped around his waist. He avoids looking in my direction, heads straight to his holdall on the floor and begins rifling through it for some clothes, his back to me.

Perhaps he hasn't seen that I am awake. My voice shakes slightly as I greet him. "Morning. You're up early."

He gives a grunt, and replies in a monotone. "Dream woke me up. Couldn't get back to sleep."

"I know the feeling," I mutter, recalling my own sickening nightmare. "Did you sleep OK, apart from that?"

"Yep."

He stands up again, a couple of items of clothing in his hand, and walks back into the bathroom, shutting the door pointedly behind him. I can feel my cheeks burning with humiliation at the way he has all but ignored me, and I take the opportunity while he is getting dressed to jump up from the bed and grab my dress from last night from the floor and throw it over my head. With trembling hands I pull a pair of shorts and a tshirt out of my bag, along with some clean underwear, and by the time the door to the bathroom opens again I am ready to dive straight in there without looking at him, turning the lock the second the door closes behind me. 

I feel utterly sick to my stomach. I don't know what I expected, but even just a brief acknowledgement from him would have been nice. A smile, a nod, even just eye contact to let me know things aren't going to be awkward. But instead I get complete avoidance. I would rather disappear into oblivion and never see him again than experience total indifference. Last night might not matter to him, but after everything that happened yesterday surely he must know it meant something to me, even if it was just a source of comfort after my emotional breakdown.

 My thoughts are whirring at such pace I am showered and dressed before I know it. I sit on the lid of the toilet for a couple of minutes, fighting back tears and trying to pluck up the courage to face him again. I wonder if I just stay in here forever whether he would get bored and leave without me, rather than speak to me. Maybe it would be better that way.

We haven't even discussed a plan for today. Although I have brought us here to Broadstairs I hadn't got as far as planning where to go or what to do next once I had seen my old home and visited my parents' grave. Everything seemed to hinge on those two destinations; after that nothing else mattered. I don't even know if Harry wants to have breakfast in the main restaurant, or whether he will consider it too risky to be seen in plain sight. He might want to get out of here and lay low for a while. 

"You ready or what?" he snaps from right outside the bathroom door, making me jump.

"Um, yeah, just coming."

I take a deep breath, my insides trembling, stand up and unlock the bathroom door. He is standing with his hands in his pockets, his brow pulled into a frown, looking towards me but not directly at me. "I'm going to get breakfast."

"Um, OK, where?"

He looks at me as though I am stupid.

"Downstairs?" he says slowly and deliberately, and my face burns pink again.

"OK, I wasn't sure if you wanted to be out in the open," I mutter, casting my eyes to the floor. "It's fine, I'll just put my shoes on."

He huffs a sigh of impatience as I slip my feet into my flip flops from last night, and then follow him out of the door, along the corridor and down the stairwell three flights to the ground floor. I am thankful to note that Blondie isn't behind the reception desk this morning, although I notice Harry's gaze lingers a little longer than necessary when he looks over to where she was sitting last night. He leads the way towards the restaurant, gives our room number, and then walks straight to the breakfast buffet without first taking a seat at any of the empty tables. 

My stomach is churning sickly with nerves, and the last thing I feel like doing is eating, but common sense prevails and I fill my plate as full as it will go with a cooked breakfast, not knowing when my next hot meal will be. I follow Harry to an empty table in silence and set down my plate while a breakfast waitress fusses around me, filling my cup with coffee and checking I have all the cutlery I need. Once she has disappeared I begin wolfing down my breakfast, ignoring the cardboard taste that everything has adopted since Harry's bad mood began, and only once I have cleared my plate and set my knife and fork down together do I risk a glance around the restaurant.

It is bright, airy and spacious - the complete opposite to the bed and breakfast in Frome. The view out of the window is the sea front, and this morning (like every other morning since we left London) is bright, clear and obviously already hot. The sky is brilliant blue and cloudless, and already I can see tourists sauntering along the front carrying beach bags, inflatables and parasols. Watching their leisurely gait is making me envious, and I feel a sudden burst of longing to follow them down onto the beach and spend the day making sandcastles and digging holes and splashing in the sea. 

And then I am brought down to earth with a bump as my gaze falls upon Harry, whose eyebrows are knitted together in his usual glower, looking nothing like the man who was thrusting on top of me last night, rendering me helpless with his touch and reducing me to a hot mess with his kiss. 

Perhaps I dreamed it all? A nasty pain shoots through my stomach as I consider this as a possibility, but the vague discomfort between my legs this morning from our enthusiasm last night serves as proof I didn't imagine the whole thing. And now I can think of nothing else, and the memories bring with them a heat to my cheeks and a prickle of sweat down my back. I need to push these thoughts out of my head - if Harry could see inside my mind right now he would run a mile. I need to resume some semblance of normal, whatever the hell that may now be.

"Do you have a plan for today?" I venture, breaking the silence that has engulfed us since we left the room.

He glares at me. "Isn't that your department?" 

I swallow hard. "I hadn't really thought past getting us here, to be honest," I admit, feeling myself shrinking beneath his gaze. I look away, sure my face is now on fire. "Do you want to lie low for a bit here, or did you want to move on elsewhere..?"

"Well, the hotel has CCTV," he answers eventually, and finally he sounds a little less impatient and a little more conversational. "So we can't stay another night. I think we need to move on."

"Out of Broadstairs?" I ask, a little fearfully. I don't think I am ready to leave this place just yet, after having only just reacquainted myself with my past. I feel I still have unfinished business, although what that may involve I am not yet sure.

He shrugs. "Just away from this hotel. Go off radar again. They only had one room for last night anyway."

I nod slowly, my mind racing at a hundred miles an hour. "OK. Well, whenever you're ready we can pack up our stuff and head off. We could camp out tonight if you want. On the beach, maybe? If we head a couple of miles further along the coast there is a lovely little bay called Kingsgate, which we might be able to access for the night..."

I force myself to stop under his glare, fully aware I am rambling and getting carried away, but the truth is I am so desperate for him just to treat me normally (I don't really know what I mean by this, given that my relationship with Harry has been anything BUT normal) that I am starting to lose my cool again. So much changed between us yesterday: at my parents' grave, when we went out for dinner, when we fell into bed together... 

I wish I could switch my thoughts off and stop overanalysing everything. I wish I could be laid back and cool, and take everything as it comes and not be affected by it all. I wish I could be a little bit more like Harry, only without the arsehole setting. And I wish he would just acknowledge last night, even if it's just with a smile, to let me know he isn't angry with me or wishing it never happened. 

Without warning, Harry stands up and pushes his chair back, chucking his paper napkin on his now empty plate and turning away from me to walk back across the restaurant towards the lobby. He doesn't even look back as he disappears through the door and out of sight, and I am unsure if I am supposed to follow him or let him go. I cast my gaze around the room to see if anyone has noticed his abrupt exit, but no one is paying any attention to me as usual, and there are no staff to be seen. My eye falls on the buffet and after the briefest hesitation I stand up, grab a couple of clean napkins and carefully spoon a handful of cooked sausages into the open serviette. Wrapping them as carefully and quickly as I can without looking too obvious, I then skirt back around the restaurant, out into the lobby and to the staircase back to our room. If Harry wants to go off the beaten track I need to start thinking about food for the next couple of days so little treats like these will come in very handy. 

When I slip back inside the room, Harry is bent double trying to cram his clothes haphazardly into his bag. I resist the urge to point out that if he folded them neatly he would have much better luck, and instead busy myself with packing up my own things. The sausages fit neatly into the outer casing of a box of cotton buds (once the contents have been tipped onto the bathroom counter) and I pack them neatly with the other bits of food we are still carrying: a bottle of water and half a multipack of crisps. I am done long before Harry, and sit on the bed to watch him struggle with a battered pair of workboots with the beginnings of a rip in the sole, and the tatty blue blanket that I last saw in the tent somewhere in the New Forest. 

"Why don't you leave those bits behind?" I ask in an unexpectedly croaky squeak, thanks to my silence for the last hour or so.

"Why don't you shut the fuck up," he snarls without even turning around.

A hot prickle of embarrassment flushes over my skin, and immediately my heart begins to pound at the fear of confrontation. "I was only trying to help," I mutter, hating the tremor that is audible in my voice. "Your boots have seen better days, and that dirty old rag isn't going to serve much purpose -"

I am cut off by Harry's face thrust into mine with only a centimetre between us, his eyebrows knitted together menacingly and his lower lip trembling with fury. 

"When I want your fucking useless opinion," he states slowly through gritted teeth, "I will ask for it. Until then, shut your fucking mouth and do not speak to me."

Without waiting for me to answer he draws back and continues shoving the blue blanket into a side pocket of his bag, forcing the zip closed so it is bulging at the seams and likely to split at any moment. I press my lips together hard, willing myself to be strong and not to cry or show any kind of emotion at his cruel words. I can not and will not ever understand this man and his moods. I have never experienced anyone like him in my whole life. 

With a grunt of frustration he kicks the boots under the bed and stands up, hauling his rucksack onto his back and picking up his holdall. "I'm leaving now."

For a split second I fear he means he is leaving alone, and deserting me. I look up at him in horror, and then quickly rearrange my face when I realise he is looking at me expectantly, clearly waiting for me to spring into action and lead the way to the next destination. If only I had the inner strength and confidence to kick him in the balls and walk out on him, instead of fearing he will be the one to walk out on me. But of course I don't, and dutifully pick up my own baggage and follow him meekly out of the room.