Wanderlust Read Online Free PDF Page A

asked her. It wasn’t like he needed her help and they’d hardly been getting along well.
    ‘Maybe you deserve a break.’ He gestured towards her hand. It was unlikely it would need stitches, but he felt bad.
    She hesitated and he could see what she was thinking. After her reaction to him sneaking up on her, she might have been thinking that going to Canderas with him would be the worst idea in the world.
    ‘It’s a nice ride, too,’ he added, suddenly painfully aware of the eagerness that had crept into his voice. What was that about? And why was he holding his breath as he waited for her answer?
    Eventually she looked away from him and nodded. ‘Okay. Why not?’
     
    As they crossed the bridge half an hour later, Alex took a deep breath of air. He loved Colinas Verde, but he always looked forward to trips back to the mainland. Being in their little community was like being in a bubble away from the rest of the world and it was nice to have a change of scenery.
    He drove the moped slowly. After scaring Selina the way he had, she probably thought he was irresponsible enough without him having to add speeding to it. A car would have been much more comfortable, but without a windscreen in front of him, he could see everything that little bit clearer.
    He looked at the trees on the side of the road, the glimpses of an endless deep blue sea, and the birds flying overhead as if he were looking at them with fresh eyes. He’d guessed Selina would have been disappointed by the lack of entertainment up here but as he looked at her in the side mirror, she had a smile on her face for what seemed like the first time since she’d arrived.
    He still couldn’t figure out why he’d felt so relieved that she’d agreed to come with him. Maybe it was because she’d clearly already made up her mind about him and he wanted to prove her wrong. It had unexpectedly stung when he’d realised she’d thought something like The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying was above him. He’d masked it with a grin but he’d looked at himself in the bathroom mirror afterwards with critical eyes. What if he’d simply been kidding himself into thinking he’d changed? It was easy to live clean in Colinas Verde, away from the hedonism south of the island, but if Selina could walk in and guess that the Alex she’d met wasn’t the real Alex, then what did that mean? Maybe it meant that, despite his best efforts, he’d brought the old him to Ibiza, instead of leaving him behind in Berlin, never to be seen again.
    As they neared the outskirts of Canderas, he saw two small children walking by the side of the road ahead. They turned and waved, their wide smiles outshining their grubby clothes and dirty hair, and he smiled back as he slowed down.
    ‘Alex!’ The oldest one, who couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, gave him a high five.
    When he’d first seen them and stopped, they’d been wary of him but now they knew him by name and there was no way he could ever drive past them.
    ‘Hey, little man. Canderas?’ he asked, and they nodded back. ‘Climb on.’
    He turned to Selina who was looking back with confusion on her face as the eldest child sat behind her and the youngest stood in front of him, where his feet would normally be.
    ‘Is this safe?’ Selina asked.
    He shrugged. ‘Its better than them walking and it’s only for a few minutes.’
    So much for seeming responsible. True, it was technically illegal to carry four people on a moped, but he’d yet to see any police around the outskirts of town and he drove even slower than before, just to be careful.
    As they neared Canderas, a row of shops came into view and he stopped the bike by the pavement. The children clambered off and he high-fived them before they skipped off down the road, holding hands. Alex got off the moped and ruffled his hair with his hands.
    ‘Who were they?’ Selina asked as she swung a long leg over the bike to get off.
    ‘Syrian refugees. They live on