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 didnot.
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 aman,whereas back then, he’d been aboy.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 knowingthat,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?
