Page 95 of Settling the Score

‘And what? I didn’t get any say in that?’

He clamped his lips together.

‘You choseforme. You chose for us. And this, Aiden, this is what you chose.’ She threw her hands up in the air in exasperation, tears now threatening and damn it all to hell if she’d let him see her cry. That wasdefinitelynot part of the plan. She dug her fingernails into the palm of one hand, staring at him with a mutinous expression.

‘You’re right.’ His voice was soft, flooded with emotions. ‘I did choose this, for both of us. And I’m standing here, right now, telling you it’s a decision I regret with every single part of me. It’s a choice I would undo a thousand times over, if there was any way to go back in time. I’m telling you, I made a mistake.’

She tried to channel her inner warrior woman. To think of Bella, Paige and Astrid and what they’d say to that. She tried to think of what she’d tell Melanie, if she ever wound up in the same situation. But her mind was spongy and her lips flubbed.

‘And it took you this long to realise it?’

His Adam’s apple shifted. ‘It took me seeing you again to realise I couldn’t keep pretending I don’t feel this way. Out of sight, easy to put my head in the sand.’

She bristled. ‘That’s my point.’ Now she jabbed his chest, and God, it felt good. ‘You wereableto put me out your mind and go on with your life. That’s not love. That’snot love.’Tears fell freely now, and she didn’t bother to check them. ‘Whereas I have spent the last ten yearshatingyou for what you did to me, and simultaneously’ – she stumbled a bit, drawing in a breath, a part of her desperately willing herself to stop talking, but she didn’t – ‘missing you so much I couldn’t think straight.’

He stared at her, but there was a look of hope on his face, almost a smile on his lips, so she shook her head angrily.

‘No, you don’t get it,’ she growled. ‘That’s not a good thing.’

‘But doesn’t that tell you that you’re not over me?’

‘I know I’m not over you,’ she muttered. ‘I’m not an idiot. Do you know how I met those girls?’ She thumbed towards the reception, still in full swing.

‘At an airport.’

‘Yeah. At an airport, where we drank way too much prosecco and talked about our worst ever exes, and made plans to get revenge on them.’

‘What?’ She could practically see the gears of his brain turning. With the slight guilt of someone throwing their best friend under a bus, she didn’t see any way through this conversation without revealing the truth of the Karma Club. He needed to understand.

‘The guys we really, really couldn’t ever forgive.’

He was frowning, still connecting the dots. ‘You mean, me?’

She closed her eyes, screwing up her courage, and hoping Astrid would forgive her for this. ‘That’s what Astrid was doing in New York. She was meant to be screwing up your life, not falling in love with Blake.’

His eyes widened. ‘You sentAstridto get revenge on me?’

‘Not mean revenge. Not, like, stabby murder or whatever. More like giving you a taste of your own medicine. To reel you in and cast you adrift… which was damn stupid now I come to think of it.’

‘How so?’

‘Because you’d have to have a heart capable of breaking for the plan to have worked.’

‘I see.’

She refused to pander to the pain in his gaze. So what if her words stung? He’d hurt her far more.

‘She turned me orange,’ he muttered.

‘Yes.’ Sienna nodded once, remembering the fake tan incident with a hint of amusement, despite her splintering heart.

‘The chilli!’ His eyes widened, and she halfway felt sorry for him.

‘Yep.’

‘She gave me diarrhoea because of you?’

She bit into her lower lip, fighting an urge to defend both herself and Astrid. But Aiden wasn’t waiting for an answer. He dragged a hand through his hair and said, ‘That’s why Astrid came to New York? The real reason for her article was to get back at me?’