Page 32 of Settling the Score (The Karma Club #4)

‘Oh my God.’ Sienna’s eyes flew open at the same moment she became aware of Aiden’s arm thrown casually across her chest, and one of his legs entangled with hers.

Of the fact they were both naked in her bed.

As memories seemed to explode inside her brain like fireworks at a fair.

‘Aiden!’ She rolled over quickly, catching the moment he woke up in response to her plaintive cry. ‘We fell asleep.’

He didn’t look remotely concerned. ‘Are you surprised?’ His dark brows shot up and her stomach squished in on itself.

No, come to think of it. She wasn’t. They’d spent several hours reacquainting themselves with one another’s bodies.

So much for an itch that needed to be scratched, she thought.

This was more like the chicken pox, a whole-body rash that they couldn’t get enough of rubbing down.

Proof in point, just looking across at him now and she felt anticipation building inside of her in tingly, toe-curling waves.

Down, girl.

‘You need to go.’

He glanced at her, then reached behind her for her phone. ‘It’s not even seven.’

‘Yeah, but people will be up already.’

‘So?’

‘So,’ she said, emphatically, ‘they’ll see you leaving my room.’

‘I stayed in your room the night before last, and you didn’t seem to care who saw me leave.’

‘Yes, but we hadn’t had sex then,’ she pointed out, aware of the illogic of that.

‘I don’t have it tattooed on my forehead.’

‘Yeah, but, we know. And if anyone sees you, and asks me, I’m going to have to make up an excuse, and I’m a terrible liar.’

‘So, worst case, they’ll know how we spent the night. Oh, think of the scandal! That two grown adults should have had consensual sex…’ He clasped his hands to his chest in a gesture of mock outrage.

‘I’m serious,’ she said, but her lips were twitching with a need to smile.

‘Who cares?’

She stared at him, bemused by his approach. Did he have a point? Was this even a big deal? People hooked up. So what? They were two consenting adults with history up the wazoo. So what if they’d done the horizontal mambo and everyone guessed it?

But, the girls. Sienna worried at her lower lip, trying to imagine how she could explain this to them.

Them, who would be so worried about her.

Worried she’d get hurt all over again. Worried she wasn’t taking care of herself.

Worried she was biting off more than she could chew.

Or worse, excited that maybe this was the beginning of something big and exciting.

That maybe she and Aiden had buried the hatchet and were about to become ‘a thing’.

She shook her head. ‘Bad idea.’ She locked her eyes to his.

‘This is Blake and Astrid’s wedding. I don’t want to overshadow that by getting people to speculate about what’s going on with us.

And people will speculate. Whether that’s your mom, or Chuck, or the girls, and I really don’t want to have to think about how to explain this to them. ’

‘What would you say, out of interest?’

‘I just said, I don’t want to have to think about it.’

‘How about, “we had sex”?’

‘For old times’ sake,’ she added, but with a roll of her eyes. ‘Yeah, that’ll placate precisely nobody.’

‘And it’s nobody’s business,’ he said, in a careless, relaxed kind of way.

She snorted. ‘Since when has that stopped people from being concerned? Come on, Aiden. You’re in the public eye.

You’ve had a decade of being tabloid fodder.

You know it’s human nature to be curious, and even more so when it’s someone you care about.

’ Her cheeks flushed pink. ‘I mean they care about us, not that I care about you.’

‘Naturally,’ he said, but with a hint of something flattening the word.

‘Okay.’ She expelled a shaky breath. ‘So, you’ll sneak out of here without getting seen?’

‘I mean, I’m not going to climb out the window, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’

‘Heaven forbid. You might fall and break one of those very valuable legs of yours. I could do without incurring the wrath of your fans, believe me.’

‘More like my team,’ he said, with a grin.

She plucked at the sheet between them, eyes focused there, instead of on Aiden. ‘You love it?’

He was quiet, like he hadn’t understood the question.

She glanced at his face to find him staring at her with a hollowing-out sort of intensity. ‘Hockey.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Do you still love it like you used to?’

‘I guess.’

‘You guess ? Is a bajillion dollars and the adoration of puck bunnies and the bro crowd everywhere a little boring these days? Just gimme a second while I analyse the underwhelm of that.’

‘Nothing to analyse,’ he said with a crackly laugh. ‘It’s a job.’

‘But… you always loved it.’

He frowned, his gaze focused now on a point beyond her shoulder, like he was stepping back in time. ‘Did I?’

‘You’re serious?’

He didn’t answer.

Sienna’s lips parted. ‘Aiden, you never could wait to get to the rink. When you couldn’t skate, you and Blake used to just run at each other in the backyard. You were obsessed with all the teams, all the stats. You lived and breathed hockey.’

He nodded slowly, rubbing a hand over his stubbly chin. ‘I guess I did.’

‘And you don’t now?’

His lips quirked downwards. ‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You kind of did. I mean, not in so many words, but…’

His eyes lifted to hers, lancing her a little, but his own were laced with questions.

Uncertainty. Doubt. Not emotions she readily associated with Aiden.

‘I think it was probably more about escape than anything else. Maybe even about feeling in control. On the ice, I was in charge. I was good at it. I was strong.’ He swallowed, throat shifting visibly.

‘The worse things got at home, the more I craved that.’

‘Control was important to you,’ she murmured, nodding gently, because she could understand why.

‘Hell, yeah.’ He grimaced a little. ‘Actually, if I’m being honest, that’s something I didn’t really understand about myself until…’

She waited, a sixth sense making her feel like he was about to say something important.

‘Well, until you, actually.’

Her heart stammered. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You weren’t the first girl I dated, but you were the first girl to make me feel like my feet had lost contact with the earth.

The first girl to make me feel like I was floating away.

The first girl to make me genuinely afraid that I would lose not just my control but also myself.

’ He moved closer, stroking her side, his features bearing a mask of genuine sorrow.

‘I loved how being with you felt, but I hated it, too. It scared the hell out of me, if I’m honest.’

‘Scared you?’ she repeated, agog. ‘You were scared of me?’

‘Not of you, of how much you meant to me.’

‘That’s crazy. We were young and in love. I was supposed to mean something to you.’

‘You meant too much.’

Her heart stopped stammering. It basically stopped beating. She felt an actual pain in the centre of her chest. ‘What does that even mean?’

‘It meant I was scared of what loving you could do to me.’

‘You’re talking in riddles. I don’t get it.’

‘I don’t know if I ever told you what my dad was like, when things were okay.

How much he loved my mom. How he doted on her.

She was his queen. Until she wasn’t. Until you’ve lived with that kind of…

dark side of the moon phenomenon, you couldn’t understand the fear of the flip side of love. But I’ve lived it. I’ve felt it.’

She swallowed, something jagging in her brain. And her heart. Some piece of a puzzle she hadn’t even known she’d been holding all these years.

‘You thought you were going to hurt me.’

‘You. Any guy who noticed you.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a slippery slope.’

‘But you’re not your dad,’ she said, simply, because it was true.

‘Aren’t I?’

Her heart was racing now. Her body ached. Her chest hurt. Her head was spinning. All the pieces were slotting into place. He’d left for his career, he’s left to get his mom and Blake away from Ashbury Falls, but he’d also left because he’d been running from her. From his fear of hurting her.

He’d left, in part, because he loved her too much to take that risk.

She felt a tell-tale tingle at the back of the throat, threatening the onset of tears.

‘You’re not him,’ she said. And when he didn’t respond, she wriggled closer and cupped his face with her hands. She didn’t know a damned thing beyond this: she had to get through to him. She had to make him understand.

‘No. I’ve made sure of that.’

The words were vice-like. Iron. Control. Self-possession evident in each clearly enunciated syllable.

She stroked his cheek.

‘How have you made sure of that?’

‘I have my ways,’ he joked, employing a thick, sort of Eastern European accent.

She shook her head. ‘Don’t push me away.’

His face sobered. ‘Come on, Si. It doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t even be talking about this.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s going to stir up a hornet’s nest neither of us wants to deal with.’

Her heart felt like it was dropping out of her body.

‘I’m going back to New York. You’re going home to Ashbury. We both have rich, full, complicated lives. So let’s not drag the past into this. You’re the one who said it was just sex – and you’re right. It is. It has to be.’

It has to be.

This wasn’t a choice for him. Their chemistry was the same as it had been all those years ago, and now Sienna wondered if other things were, too. Like her ability to get under his skin. To drive him crazy. To scare him, because of how much he might one day feel for her again.

It has to be.

He wasn’t willing to risk it.

And nor was she.

Because they really were the same people they’d been then, in all the ways that mattered, and Aiden was the one guy who could break her down and destroy her. She’d be ridiculously na?ve to run that risk again. Particularly when he was saying, from the outset, that it wasn’t what he wanted.