Page 43 of Settling the Score (The Karma Club #4)

As they approached the old dam and evening began to wrap around them, they stopped running, and Sienna was glad. She needed a reprieve from the whirlwind of her mind. ‘I used to come fishing here, as a kid,’ she said conversationally; she just needed to say something.

‘Yeah? Catch anything big?’ He held his hands wide, and she laughed.

‘More like this.’ She held her forefinger and thumb up.

‘Mmm, tasty,’ he laughed.

‘Right?’

‘I can see you as a fisher.’

‘A fisher?’ She forced a grin. ‘I’m not so sure about that.’ She sat down on the long grass and rubbed the space beside her. Chuck collapsed onto it, reminding her, briefly, of Aiden. He was big and burly like Aiden, but with a lot more of the Silicon Valley suaveness about him.

Aiden was raw.

An unpolished diamond.

She knew which she preferred. Her heart popped. She ignored it.

‘I used to come here with him,’ she said, softly, almost to herself.

‘Aiden?’

She nodded, glancing across at Chuck. ‘A million years ago. At least, that’s what it feels like.’

Chuck rested his elbow on one knee, and gave her the full force of his megawatt attention.

‘What was he like back then?’

Her heart hurt.

‘He was…’ She sought the words that could do him justice. Words that encapsulated what she’d thought he was, and what he’d become. Words that captured the knight in shining armour she’d thought he was, and the heartbreaker he’d morphed into.

But none of it would form properly in her mind.

Because Aiden had been a knight in shining armour, just not for her.

He’d put it all on the line to save his mom and Blake.

And from his stupid, messed-up perspective, he’d even left her for her own sake.

To save her from him. Having seen Blake beat their dad to within an inch of his life must have been terrifying for Aiden.

Aiden who needed to believe they weren’t like their father, who needed to believe they could be different.

And then he’d had proof that maybe they weren’t.

So he’d left to protect her, so that he’d never hurt her. Just like he’d said.

Because he’d seen enough hurt in his life.

A tear slid down her cheek.

‘Oh, babe.’ Chuck reached out and put an arm around her shoulders, drawing her to him. ‘That’s no good.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’ She dashed away her tears.

‘Don’t apologise.’ He stroked her shoulder. ‘But why are you sitting here, crying over a guy who is so obviously in love with you?’

She considered that carefully. ‘Because I don’t want to be with him.’

‘But you love him.’

It wasn’t even a question. How transparent was she?

She shook her head anyway. ‘It’s not that easy.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘Well, I don’t know how to answer. It’s just, complicated.’

‘So?’

‘You’re annoying me now,’ she said on a half laugh, half sob.

‘I’m just saying, if it’s complicated, what are you going to do about it?’

She stared at him.

‘Lots of things are complicated in life. In my opinion, they don’t get any easier by pretending they don’t exist.’

She turned away from him and stared at the dam, with the little pinpricks of light reflecting off it, thanks to the stars and inky-black sky.

‘Didn’t you guys break up way back when?’

She nodded stiffly.

‘And yet you’re still in love with him, and he’s in love with you.’

‘So what?’

‘So what makes you think you’re not still going to feel like this in another ten years’ time? Twenty?’

She turned back to Chuck, her heart racing now.

‘You get one life. One.’ He lifted his finger for emphasis. ‘If I was you, I’d ask myself if this is really how I want to spend it.’

She swallowed, the question suddenly superseding everything else that had been swirling around in her mind for over a week, over a decade, every hesitation and doubt, every long-held feeling of hurt and blame.

And suddenly she was standing, her lungs filling with air as though she was preparing for a marathon.

‘I need to ask you another favour, Chuck. I know I already owe you a whole big bunch?—’

‘Name it,’ he invited.

And so, she did.

* * *

When Blake had moved out of their penthouse, Aiden had thought he’d miss him. After all, they’d lived together all their lives. They were twins. He might be a grown-ass man but he’d got used to having his bro around.

But coming back from the wedding to the blessed peace and solitude of their apartment – alone – had been the biggest fucking relief of his life.

Unlike the journey off the island and into Athens, Aiden no longer had to pretend to be fine. He no longer had to pretend to be Ice. He no longer had to act like he had his shit together, which he absofuckinglutely did not.

Here, surrounded by the comforting darkness of their place, he could sit and… brood.

Brood like the devil. Brood in a way that made Heathcliff seem like Pollyanna.

He stared out at the twinkling cityscape, feet planted wide on the floor, arms crossed, and gave into the weight of desperate disappointment that was making it hurt to breathe.

He leaned into it. He let it wash over him fully.

No more pretending he didn’t feel.

Even if he wanted to, he wasn’t sure this particular disappointment was something he could just pick himself up and move on from.

He’d fought this for so long.

But now that his eyes had been opened to what his heart had properly known since leaving Ashbury Falls, he felt completely powerless against the long, snaking tendrils of the past. They were reaching out for him, all the time. When he least expected it, bam! It was like being sledged in the face.

Sienna, as if in slow motion, turning to smile at him, that first time they’d walked home together.

Offering to help with his English homework.

Making him laugh with a stupid impersonation of one of the teachers at school.

Looking like she was about to cry when she was locked out of her house – her dad had been on a bender and Sienna didn’t have a key.

He’d sat on the step with her for hours and eventually taken her to the local diner for a burger, when it had become obvious Nico Mastrangelo wasn’t coming home any time soon.

He’d almost invited her back to his place – which was a gamble, because he never knew what mood his own dad was going to be in, but Nico had swerved into the drive around the same time they had.

That was probably the first night he started to feel like she’d climbed right in under his skin.

It wasn’t a long walk from the school to her place.

A single mile shouldn’t have taken much more than half an hour.

But they’d stretched it out to an hour, walking slowly, stopping often.

And hour by hour, day by day, she’d breathed something into him he hadn’t known he’d been missing. She’d become a part of him.

But it was more than ten years ago.

Ten years.

He was a different man now. Hell, he was a man, whereas back then, he’d been a boy. Little more than a kid, trying to find his way in a world that was frequently terrifying thanks to their dad. He’d built a career for himself, a name, made a fortune, mentored kids from all walks of life.

He’d dated other women.

He’d slept with other women.

He’d laughed with them. Talked with them. Walked with them.

But it had never been like it was with Sienna.

And even knowing that, he’d still been able to fool himself into believing that it was just because his mind was idealising that time in his life.

Minds had a habit of playing tricks, didn’t they?

And there was something about looking back to those days that was filled with the golden light of adolescence.

Something that must have made everything with Sienna seem sweeter and more idealised than the reality had been.

He’d clung to that – taken reassurance from it – all these long, lonely, Ice-control years, until he’d seen her again on the island.

Until she’d opened her mouth and that voice that had been flooding his dreams so often was right there, and it was just exactly like he remembered.

Whatever she’d breathed into his soul way back when was still between them, and he was just as addicted to it.

To her.

Because he loved her.

The kind of love that didn’t just go away.

The kind of love you couldn’t fight.

The kind of love that was real, and lasting. And worth fighting for.

He groaned, dropping his forehead against the cool glass of his penthouse’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Fighting for?

Hadn’t he done that?

He’d told her how he’d felt and she’d made it so abundantly clear that there was no way in hell she’d give him a second chance, even if she felt the same way. It was a question of self-preservation. Didn’t he have to respect that? Didn’t he have to let this go, even when it hurt like hell?

Let her go?

Those three words swirled through him.

Tormenting him.

Half a question, half a statement. Sometimes he knew it was what he had to do, other times, he wondered, and hoped. Maybe there was a way around this?

But then he remembered the look on her face, the way she’d stepped back from him as if she was terrified of what loving him back might mean for her, and it had been an absolute death knell to his own hopes.

All this time, he’d been scared of hurting her.

He’d run from her for precisely that reason, yet he’d hurt her anyway.

And in a way that had shaped her into adulthood.

You’re the ex I couldn’t get over.

* * *

For days, he followed the same pattern, telling himself eventually, if he got back into his groove, it would all start to hurt less.

He ran ten miles in the mornings, went to the club gym and did sixty-minute weight sessions followed by another block of cardio.

He watched that cooking show on Netflix everyone was raving about, with the guy who swore all the time.

He went to bed early, hoping it would mean he’d get a good night’s sleep.