Read Online Never Alone by Elizabeth Haynes - Free Book Online Page A

think he was just trying to keep us apart. I think he thought I might try and steal you away.’
    Sarah snorts at this.
    ‘You think? Like I’m not able to make decisions like that for myself?’
    She’s cross at the assumption, and it takes her back to the moment when Thursday’s hangover was wearing off and she realised that the Aiden she’d been fantasising about all these years was still the lad who’d played her for a fool.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to imply that.’
    ‘No, it’s fine,’ she says.
    ‘You’re angry,’ he says. ‘It’s not fine.’
    Then she just can’t help herself any more. ‘I am angry. I’m cross that Jim didn’t trust me, and I’m cross that, even though you and I were friends years ago, good friends, and more, you didn’t think that it might be something I should know about. And that you wouldn’t have told me, even now, if Sophie hadn’t recognised you.’
    He looks as if he’s going to interrupt and disagree with this, but she doesn’t give him a chance.
    ‘And as if all that’s not bad enough, we slept together on Wednesday night and you left while I was asleep and didn’t so much as text me to say hello after that. That’s just rude, I think. So you regret it, I don’t even care, but if nothing else we are supposed to be friends and it wouldn’t have killed you just to say as much to my face instead of leaving me to feel like some slapper you’d picked up for the night in a club.’
    Sarah finally runs out of breath, and energy, and anger. She can’t bear to look at him. After a moment he places his hand over hers, warm and firm.
    ‘You’re right,’ he says, quite calmly, ‘that it was very rude of me to walk out and leave you like that. But you’re wrong if you think I regret what happened.’
    ‘Oh,’ she says.
    ‘It feels like something I’ve waited half my life for.’
    Now, finally, she can look at him. Normally so measured, so laid-back as he is, there is something in his eyes she’s not seen before. He looks – sad. And then, just as quickly, it’s gone.
     
    Sarah watches as he crosses the yard to the cottage and goes inside. At her side, Tess gives out a tiny whine.
    ‘All right, girl, I know.’
    She feeds the dogs, and in the thirty seconds it takes them to eat what’s in their bowls she has pulled on her boots and her waterproof coat. Having been left on their own for most of the day, they are more than ready to go out, scampering around her feet and nearly knocking her over.
    Above her, the hill rises in the gloom, dark clouds scudding across the summit and making her feel giddy. She doesn’t fancy being up there today. It’s too high, too windy; she feels too fragile. She whistles for the dogs and lets them through the gate to the path that runs around the side of the hill. Overjoyed at this unexpected change to the routine, they race ahead of her, barking.
    She doesn’t usually come this way. The path crosses a stream about half a mile further on; in summer it’s fine, but often in winter the stream becomes a rushing torrent that floods the path. Beyond that, the track opens up into a series of fields in which a variety of livestock are grazed. It means putting the dogs on their leads, something she does rarely these days. But maybe she won’t take them that far.
    Not for the first time, she wonders whether she has done the right thing by inviting Aiden to stay. It was a foolish thing, a spur-of-the-moment thing. It’s the sort of decision she would have made as a twentysomething, ruled by her heart, expecting nothing but the best from people and riding the wave of being young. Aiden’s return has made her feel like that again, bursting with possibility and the glorious what if , because nothing bad can happen, and, even if it does, well, she’ll cope, won’t she?
    But now the bitter wind is stinging her cheeks, the mud heavy under her boots, making her slip and catch herself: she’s not twenty any more.