That was his name, his reputation. Hell, it was his whole freaking philosophy in life.
Feelings – bad. Control – good. Emotions – bad. The ability to walk away and not look back – excellent proof that you were in control.
Nowallhe could do was look back, and the overwhelming sense that he might have made the biggest screw up a person could make in their life – the kind that was impossible to fix – was now sitting in his gut like a lead balloon.
One more glance at Sienna as she laughed, and he felt the world tilt wildly off its axis.
Fuuuuck.In the end, it was the only word that could do justice to how he felt. And even that wasn’t quite strong enough.
* * *
Given the lack of ice on this tropical island paradise, they settled for playing football instead. Titans, ex-hockey players, friends who just liked sport, gathered on one of the grassed areas near the house and set up for a casual evening game.
‘Just don’t get a black eye before the wedding,’ Astrid warned, but she was grinning as Blake waved over his head and ran onto the field.
Aiden watched them, and felt it again. Just like he had on the boat. Jealousy.
Jealous, because Blake and he had been given the same cross to bear. And Aiden had always thought he’d been the one to sort his shit out, better than his brother, anyways. Blake who’d taken the opposite approach to Aiden – to ice his emotions – and instead felteverything.But it was Blake who’d finally put their shitshow of a childhood in the past, and was moving on with the love of his life. Blake was the one who looked carefree and blissed out.
Blake had been unafraid to reach for what he wanted with both hands and hold on, and never let go.
Blake hadn’t run.
Not for good.
He’d faced his feelings and his fears, and he’d conquered the latter.
Whereas Aiden… his eyes shifted to Sienna, who was now huddled in conversation with the other three musketeers. For once, they weren’t laughing and being silly, but rather, their expressions were serious. Thoughtful.
Astrid put her arm around Paige and drew her close. Paige smiled at her, but it was a strange smile. Haunted. Disbelieving.
He frowned, looking back to Sienna, who was holding her hands in front of her chest in a sort of prayer motion, looking hopeful. Worried. All the things. Then, Paige nodded, and they hugged, and laughed, like something miraculous had happened. He kicked his toe into the grass and looked away, bitterness flooding his gut as he felt completely on the outside of Sienna’s life. She was a mystery to him in so many ways, and a part of him in others.
But the mysteries were something he was now finding impossible to accept.
He wanted to know her. To know everything about her. He wanted to see her and hear her, to justwatchher go through life, achieving things because she worked so hard and gave everything her all.
The fact he’d already missed more than ten years, hadn’t been there for her when she’d needed him most, was the kind of ache he wasn’t sure he’d ever not feel. Yet the future stretched before him, like a fork in the road. Go back to New York, his real life, his job, and the fact he was choosing every damned day to keep on running from his feelings and his fears. Or be brave, like Blake, and finally accept that against any and all probabilities and sense, he’d met his goddamned soulmate at sixteen, and the most important thing to him now, as a man approaching thirty, was to win her back at all costs. Because facing the rest of his life without her in it just didn’t work for him.
To hell with his personal philosophy and his aversion to feelings.
Sienna was his. And unequivocally, he was, and always had been, hers.
* * *
‘You look… not at all stressed,’ he said to Blake, a couple of hours later when they were finally alone.
‘Why would I be?’
‘I mean, you’re getting married tomorrow.’
‘Yeah. To Astrid,’ he said. Theduhwas implied.
Aiden shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat, reaching for the ice-cold beer and taking a drink, before cradling the bottle neck between his fingertips and thumb.
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Blake asked, leaning back in his own chair, one ankle crossed casually over the other knee.
‘Get what?’ Aiden tried to flatten the defensive note from his voice.
