AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It’s what she probably thinks I did back then.
Because you did.
Her voice haunts me.
Promise me you’ll never forget me.
And I did.
I didn’t recognize her the day she walked into my hotel room. Didn’t realize the significance of the moment.
Her wide-eyed gaze had nothing to do with the famous hockey player in front of her. No, when I think back on what she looked like that night, the truth hits me square in the chest. She was a deer in headlights. Her past had come back to haunt her even though she chased it.
She had to have been absolutely gutted. Heartbroken.
She gave me the last of what she had, possibly the money that would allow her to eat that week, and I couldn’t even be bothered to remember those eyes. The same ones I looked into time after time.
And despite the heartbreak I likely caused, she gave up her life to help me. She kept her secret in order to be by my side. She never asked for a thing. Not even money. That was something I supposed.
That has to mean something.
She’s nothing like my mother. A user. Someone who set out to take from me.
“Ugh,” I grit through my teeth, pulling at my hair by the roots.
I slept with Pippa. My Pip.
The girl you spent years looking for.
The girl you missed with all your heart.
Yeah, she lied. But she also gave me hope. Always put me first. Loved me unconditionally.
For her to lie, she must have felt she had no choice.
Shit.
A part of me wants to forget everything. To go back to being naïve to her identity. It occurs to me that it’s not even an option not to speak to her again. I can’t do that. Having Pip back in my life is all I’ve wanted since we parted. I can’t give up on her.
I need to see her. To let her explain.
Leaping to my feet, I turn to leave and stop short.
As if conjured by my mind, she’s there. Cassidy found me.
She stands tall, trying to appear together, but I know she’s nervous. Her upper teeth are worrying her bottom lip, and her fingers tap the side of her leg.
“Penny for your thoughts?” she says, repeating words she’s spoken before. In another life. “Or in this case…60,000.”
She knows.
That’s why she’s here.
Cassidy knows that despite how it might have appeared, not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of her and what she did for me.
“I shouldn’t have lied to you. I’m so sorry, Aiden.”
I shake my head. There’s too much to say, to talk about, to ask. “Not here.”
