Page 16 of Settling the Score (The Karma Club #4)

She surreptitiously swiped a hand over her brow, wiping at the sweat that had started to pool there.

‘So, beer huh?’ He came around to his side of the cart and stepped in. This time, he was a little more relaxed, and his legs spread wider than a goddamn rink now, so his knee brushed hers. Her pulse throbbed.

‘What about it?’

‘I just don’t see it.’

‘There’s a lot about me you probably don’t see.’

‘Like what?’ he asked, the question relaxed, even when it set off a warning tone in her mind.

‘You’re asking what you don’t see about me?’

‘I’m asking what’s new with you?’

It was so infuriating she laughed, a slightly hysterical sound. ‘You… what’s new? Aiden, it’s been a lifetime…’

‘Between drinks?’

‘I was a kid back then,’ she muttered, starting the cart and continuing down the path.

‘Not quite.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘But you’re not a kid now.’

‘No.’

‘So, what’s changed?’

‘Apart from ten or so years?’

‘Is there a reason you don’t want to answer me straight up?’

‘Like what?’ she asked.

‘Like, you’re secretly on the run from Interpol. Or you’ve gone into witness protection. Or you’ve robbed a bank. I don’t know.’

A smile tugged at one side of her lips. ‘No.’

‘Then you’re still pissed at me,’ he said, after a beat.

The whole world seemed to shutter into hyper colour, like some kind of TikTok filter had been applied. Time seemed to slow down, even when Sienna knew that wasn’t possible.

‘Why would I be pissed at you, Aiden?’ She couldn’t believe how steady her voice came out, like she was genuinely surprised by his question.

His laugh was almost self-conscious. ‘Forget it. It doesn’t matter.’

A frown etched its way across her features. ‘I’m not still pissed at you,’ she lied. ‘I keep telling you, what happened between us was a lifetime ago. It’s ancient history. We’re just here to celebrate the wedding of two people we love, okay?’

‘That night,’ he said, though, his voice a little hoarse.

‘Which night?’ She pretended not to follow along.

He glanced across at her, his knuckles white as he gripped the neck of the beer bottle hard. ‘When I told you I was leaving?—’

‘When you dumped me?’

A muscle ticked in his jaw. She spotted a yellow flag and slowed the cart down.

‘I know I didn’t say it, at the time, but that was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.’

Where time seemed to have stopped a moment ago, now it almost went sickeningly fast.

‘It was what you’d always wanted,’ she pointed out slightly unsteadily. ‘Doesn’t seem like you had much choice.’

His brow furrowed. ‘But the way I did it…’

‘You were right,’ she said, curtly. ‘A clean break was for the best.’

He turned to face her, his whole body almost seeming to frame hers, even when her other side was open and exposed to the world.

‘Was it?’

Her skin paled under the force of his scrutiny.

She was lying as part of the game. To make him think she was over him.

To make it easier to catch him on her line, to reel him in and set him loose, just like he’d done to her.

But she hated lying, period. She especially hated lying about something that had been one of the most defining moments in her life.

Loss wasn’t new to Sienna. She’d lost her mother to cancer, and she’d lost her father to alcoholism and then prison. But Aiden was the first person she’d lost because he’d chosen to walk away from her. Not because of disease, but because she just wasn’t enough for him to want to stay for.

She cleared her throat. ‘I don’t know,’ she backpedalled, lifting one shoulder and focusing her attention on the flag as though it were the most riveting thing in the world.

‘It was the right decision,’ he said, firmly, in a way that might have infuriated her if it weren’t so obvious that some form of hesitation underpinned the words.

‘Sure,’ she said, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. ‘There’s another one.’ She pointed to the flag, her tongue feeling strange in her mouth.

He didn’t look away from her.

‘We had to get out of that place, you know? I always swore we would, then I met you, and everything got kind of complicated. But…’

She tightened her grasp on the steering wheel. ‘I get it. I remember.’

‘I just?—’

Frustration whipped her patience. ‘You just what, Aiden? You wish you hadn’t done it? That you hadn’t taken up a college spot that turned you into a star overnight? That led to you becoming one of the highest-paid players in the pro league? That turned your life into everything you ever wanted?’

His frown deepened. ‘It’s not everything I ever wanted.’

Her heart skipped a beat and for one world-tilting second she thought he might actually be talking about her. That he might be trying to say he’d also wanted her.

But so what if he did mean that, anyway? He hadn’t wanted her enough. Not enough to stay, not enough to stay faithful to all the promises he’d made, no matter what distance separated them.

‘But it’s what I had to do.’

‘Yeah, you said that then, too.’

‘Did I?’ It was his turn to shrug, before taking a long drink of the beer. ‘I can hardly remember a thing about that night, to be honest.’

Sienna saw red. She had no idea how she concealed the immediate whiplash reaction of pain but she did. ‘It was…’

‘A long time ago,’ he finished for her, lips compressing in a line, before he turned and stepped out of the golf cart, striding towards the flag and pulling it out of the tree.

‘Two down,’ he said, as he returned and took up a seat beside her.

‘And none are our own.’

‘Nah, not yet,’ he said. ‘But we’ve got all day, Mastrangelo. Let’s keep looking.’