Love notes Read Online Free PDF Page A

could
have been the last people on Earth. The summit sat so high above
the road that the cars passing below looked like toys, and there
wasn’t another human being in sight for miles. No one else was
apparently brave enough – or foolish enough – to go walking in such
cold weather and they had the world to themselves.
    “Five years ago, you ran away
from me,” Aiden began, unusually uncomfortable and staring out
toward a distant peak on the other side of the dale. “I wanted the
chance to explain what happened that night.”
    “What is there to explain?”
Erika frowned. “I arrived unexpectedly at your flat to find you
naked on the bed, on top of an equally naked woman. I’d had sex
with you often enough to know what it looked like.”
    Aiden saw her point but hadn’t
driven over two hundred miles to leave it there. “I need you to
know she meant nothing to me. We’d met that night at a friend’s
party. We had too much to drink and ended up in bed together.”
    “Oh, please!” Erika dragged out
the words to show she had no patience with lame excuses. “Don’t
insult me like this. Next you’ll be saying you didn’t realise how
much you loved me until I left.”
    From the look on Aiden’s face,
this was exactly what he’d been about to say but now thought better
of it. “I want you to know, I bitterly regret what happened.”
    “What? Sleeping with her, or
getting caught?”
    “Both.” At least he was honest.
“But most of all, I regret hurting you.”
    For the first time, Aiden
stopped staring at the horizon and turned to look at Erika, forcing
her to return his gaze. His intense, hazel eyes narrowed slightly
as he searched her face for some emotion to react to, or even a
hint that she believed him, but she gave him nothing. Erika had had
too much practice shutting down her emotions, and maintaining her
inner privacy in an over-exposed life, to let anything slip now.
She looked back at him, her face unreadable, even though her mind
swung violently between pretending it no longer mattered and
admitting that he’d broken her heart beyond repair.
    “Hurting doesn’t even begin to
cover it,” she told him after the longest pause, struggling not to
think of how close she’d come to emotional collapse. “You reached
in and tore out my heart. It was months before I could think of you
without breaking down.”
    “I know.”
    “How could you possibly
know?”
    Unable to hold back her emotions
any longer, she rounded on him; all the anger and hurt she’d kept
buried for five years, rushing to the surface and boiling over in
white-hot rage. Tears spilled down her cheeks and she swept them
away furiously.
    “You weren’t there,” she raged.
“You didn’t see me struggling to make it through a day without you.
You weren’t around to hold me at night when I couldn’t catch my
breath for crying. How could you possibly know?”
    “Because it’s in your music.” He
quoted her lyrics. “Crying a river so I can build a bridge and get
over you. A love so pure, I was so sure, shame you never felt it
too. Living in the shadow of love. I’m in every line of those early
songs.”
    “So what? I had to get my
revenge somehow.”
    “Is that what you wanted?
Revenge?”
    “There’s a fine line between
love and hate. Finding you in bed with another woman made me cross
it. I wanted to hurt you as much as you’d hurt me. And when I sing
those songs, the whole world knows what a bastard you are.”
    She dried her eyes on her
sleeve, wishing for all the world that she could get up, walk into
another room and lock the door on Aiden Thirstan for good this
time.
    “Do you still hate me?” Aiden
held his breath, as if dreading the answer.
    “Don’t flatter yourself.” Erika
almost laughed in his face as she fought to bring her emotions back
under control. “To hate you I’d need to think about you. And the
truth is, you never cross my mind these days.”
    “Except when you sing,” Aiden
contradicted