Forget Me Not (Remember Me Series) (13 page)

“He’s a good guy but he won’t hang around forever.”

“I know that but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. How can I show him I do love him?”

Sarah shrugged and picked the bag up from the floor. “Tell him. He loves you, that much is obvious.”

I didn’t answer her, after all I’d already told Aidan how I felt. He knew I loved him, or at least I hoped he did. But I couldn’t give him the one thing he needed, I couldn’t simply go back to the way things were.

On Freedom Island everything had seemed much clearer. I’d known that I wanted to get back to Aidan, I’d have done anything to get back to him. But now that I was back, I had no idea what I should do and for some reason I couldn’t just push the nagging thoughts I had away.

Sarah didn’t push me for anything else on the way back to her apartment. She allowed me to lose myself in my own thoughts for the entire journey. The sight of a hairdressers awakened something inside me.

“Stop!”

I cried out, startling her so badly the car skidded to a halt.

“What? What is it?”

She gasped as I grabbed my handbag and started to climb from the car. 

“Look there is something I need to do, I’ll see you back at the apartment later?”

“Bella, what the hell are you doing?”

She called after me but I was already on the sidewalk, my legs carrying me towards the small shop I had seen on the corner. The sound of honking car horns forced her to move on. I didn’t even hesitate as I burst in through the front doors, ramming the door open, my breathing heavy.

The woman behind the counter stared up at me in surprise before a broad smile lit up her face.

“Can I help you?”

“I want to get my hair coloured.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

I shook my head and she smiled at me before glancing down at the appointment book. I’m afraid we’ll have to give you a skin test before we can colour your hair.

“No, I’ve been here before. My name is Bella Brooks, you should have me on file.”

I watched as she typed furiously on the computer, her perfectly manicured nails clicking away on the keyboard before finally she glanced back up at me.

“You’re right, we have a Bella Brooks on file here. If you’d like to take a seat I’ll have the next available stylist come and get you.”

I didn’t answer as I took a seat inside the door. My heart hammered in my chest as I waited. I’d hated my hair every single day since Christopher had coloured it. I didn’t feel like me anymore. And now that I was back it wasn’t helping me cope, every time I stared in the mirror it was like he was still with me, still controlling me. Maybe if I could be myself again, maybe if they could put my hair back to the way it used to be I would understand what I was feeling.

A small petite red head with a wide smile moved down the floor towards me.

“Bella?” 

She called me, her voice high and girly.

Standing, my legs trembled and I contemplated simply turning and running out through the door. Was I ready for this? Was I ready to go back to being who I was? What if it didn’t work? I had so many questions swirling around in my mind it was making the simple act of walking to the seat she had pulled out for me difficult.

“So what are we doing for you today?”

The words bubbled out of her as she hopped from one foot to the other.

“I want my hair changed, I don’t want this colour anymore…”

“Hmmm.”

She began pulling and tugging at my hair, lifting the strands to the sunlight that streamed in through the door.

“It’s very black, you’ve put a lot of colour on it and it’s going to be really hard to strip this out of it.”

“But can you do it?”

“What colour did you have in mind?”

“My hair is naturally blonde.”

She shook her head. “We’ll never make it blonde, not at the moment anyway. Best I’ll be able to do is strip it back to a light brown.”

I nodded “Fine, then do that.”

“Great lets get started.”

She gestured for me to follow her down to the basins at the end of the room, she wrapped a dark coloured cover around me and followed it with a towel. I sat in the chair and let her get to work.

She babbled away as she worked, asking about where I worked, my family and anything else that seemed to pop into her head. I did my best to answer her but I couldn’t keep my concentration in check. Instead I found myself thinking of what might happen if I allowed myself to open up to Aidan. Would it really be so terrible if I told him the truth? I wouldn’t be able to handle it if he looked at me differently… But this inability to really talk about anything important was crippling us. If I didn’t do something, if I didn’t tell him the truth then we were going to find ourselves ripped apart by the silence between us.

I made a promise to myself then. If I could change my hair, if I could shake some of what Christopher had done to me, the obvious physical change then I would talk to Aidan. I would tell him what had happened. And I would face the consequences. If he never wanted to talk to me, never wanted to be with me then it was just something I would have to live with.

I didn’t want my heart broken but if we didn’t work on it then my heart was going to be broken anyway. I wanted to at least try and reclaim my life, try and face up to the demons in my past. I wouldn’t let Christopher ruin what I had with Aidan, not if I could help it anyway.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Aidan

It was easier to head to the bar then to go home. I didn’t want to look at the empty apartment, hiding from the truth seemed like a much better plan. Sitting at the counter I swirled the amber liquid around the bottom of the crystal tumbler. In the past drinking had helped to numb the pain but tonight all it seemed to do was amplify it.

“I thought I’d find you here. I called by the apartment but there was no sign of you.”

Will slid onto the stool next to me and I did my best to ignore him. He had what he wanted and he had everything he was ever going to get out of me.

“I thought you’d be at home indulging your gold digger. I heard you two have hardly left the house since the showdown with Christopher.”

Will laughed. There was a time when he would have knocked me from the stool for calling Paige a gold digger, or at the very least he would have tried. I missed that side of him. Tonight I was spoiling for a fight and I didn’t care who gave it to me.

“If I didn’t know any better, Aidan, I’d have said you were trying to push me over the edge.”

“Now why would I do that?” My voice took on a mocking tone as I sarcastically answered him before knocking back the drink in one gulp. It burned down the back of my throat and I slammed the glass on the bar before gesturing to the bartender that I needed a refill.

“Jesus, Aidan, what the hell is your problem? I thought you’d be happy now that you have Bella back? You say you love her and yet you’re sitting here behaving drinking yourself into a stupor and behaving like an ass.”

“I’ll be an ass if I want.”

It was petty and stupid, even I knew that but still I didn’t care. I just wanted the ache in my chest to get better. But how the hell was I supposed to do that when Bella didn’t know if she wanted me or not? I felt guilty for putting her in Christopher’s clutches and now I felt guilty for wanting to be with her before she was ready. If I carried on much longer with all the guilt I was dragging around then I was going to self-combust.

Will lifted his hand and the bartender set out a glass in front of him and filled it with the same whiskey I had. I watched from the corner of my eye as he lifted the glass and swallowed down the amber fire. He winced and I couldn’t hide the small laugh that escaped me.

“What the hell is this stuff? It tastes more like lighter fuel than whiskey.”

“It does what I need it to do so I don’t really care what it tastes like.”

Will slapped his arm across my shoulder and dragged me up from the stool.

“Right, I want you to come back with me, we can have a proper drink and I need you to sign some paperwork. You can tell me what’s eating you and why you’re not currently worshiping at the feet of the woman you saved.”

I contemplated turning him down and then thought better of it. I was trying to change, to be the type of man that Bella might want. How could I do that if I spent my evenings in bars drinking myself stupid and then starting fights?

“Fine.”

I stood, dropped my cash on the counter and followed Will out to his car.

It wasn’t until we pulled up outside his apartment building that I thought I should ask about Paige. A twinge of guilt twisted my gut as I remembered leaving her in Christopher’s dungeon. At the time it had seemed like the right thing to do. I could have done it differently of course, I could have avoided risking her altogether but I hadn’t. 

“How is Paige?”

Will’s face relaxed into a smile as he climbed from the car.

“She’s doing much better. I think finally being free of all the stress of the company sinking and Christopher has allowed her to open up a little more.”

I nodded. He was lucky to have someone that could make him smile like that. I’d always thought I had it with Bella… Perhaps I had been wrong.

I followed him as he made his way to the front door and entered his code for the building. The door opened automatically, admitting us to a pristine lobby. The floor was white marble and the walls were covered in some sort of dark expensive wood. It obviously cost a fortune to live here and it didn’t surprise me in the least that it was Will’s home.

We stepped into the elevator and travelled in silence up to his floor. The doors opened silently and we stepped into a small hallway. There was only one door on this floor and Will headed straight for it.

The moment he opened the front door the smell of food hit me making my stomach growl in appreciation. Food wasn’t a high priority for me, most of the time I forgot and simply rolled into bed late at night. Spending all my time at the hospital with Bella had been more important.

“You know you could stay for dinner?”

Will offered as he ushered me into the main area of the apartment. Paige stood in the kitchen with her back to us. Music blared from a stereo in the living room and she sang along to the song on the top of her lungs. It wasn’t until Will switched the stereo off that she realised she wasn’t alone anymore.

She spun around, her stockinged feet sliding across the dark tiles as she launched herself at Will. Awkwardly I stood half in the apartment half in the hall as Will drew her into his arms and crushed his mouth down on hers. Her arms travelled up the length of his back as he bent her body back, his mouth feeding on hers hungrily.

Unsure of what to do I coughed nervously and frowned.

Paige broke the kiss first and turned surprised eyes to me. The moment she spotted me the surprise drained away to be replaced with a sort of nervous anger. I couldn’t blame her, I had been horrible to her but it was the only way I knew how to be. Watching her with Will had been like having my heart carved out of my chest. Of course she hadn’t known it at the time, she just thought I was an asshole.

“Aidan… What are you doing here?”

She turned in Will’s arms until her back was pressed tight to his chest. He continued to hold her, his body folding around hers easily. And I could feel a spike of jealousy lance through me. I should have had that with Bella, I couldn’t keep the thought from my head.

“This was a mistake.” 

I turned and headed for the door, tension sang down my spine as Will caught up to me and wrapped his hand around my arm.

“You’re here now, you should sign the forms…”

This time I did shrug out of his grip, I turned on him and jabbed my finger in towards his chest.

“I don’t need to be here… You could have brought the forms with you, you don’t need me here watching your little display.”

“This is about Bella isn’t it?”

He asked, his voice filled with sympathy and in that moment I hated him. I didn’t want his or anyone’s sympathy. What I needed was the woman I loved. I needed to know that she loved me… That she could still love me, forgive me. Will was lucky, he hadn’t betrayed Paige. I had betrayed Bella and it was tearing me apart inside.

This has got nothing to do with Bella. This is to do with you dragging me here so you could show me how happy you were. This is about you rubbing salt in the wound. Revenge for what I did to Paige.”

Will’s face changed then, he rammed me back against the wall, his hands pinning me.

“That is not what I was doing, but if you want to make this about revenge for what you did to Paige? For what you put her through then I will happily accommodate you.”

He gritted the words out and I smiled. Paige appeared at Will’s elbow, her small hand pressed against his cheek as she turned his face to look at her.

“None of it matters now. He wants to draw you into a fight, you can see it in him, the guilt he carries… He loves her and yet he’s afraid to tell her, afraid to let her see what he became in order to get her back.”

Will turned back to look at me, the anger in his gaze melting away. He released me suddenly and I slumped to the floor. What was I becoming, there would have been a time when I’d have punched him, knocked him on his ass for pinning me to the wall. But nothing seemed to matter anymore, none of it mattered. All I wanted was Bella.

“Look, you need to go and tell her how you feel. She needs to know, Aidan. If I were her I’d want to know.”

Paige crouched on the floor next to me, tentatively she reached her hand out to me and let it rest on my arm. She was behaving like I was something dangerous, something to be wary of, and maybe I was. I had certainly been that before… Now I felt pathetic, pathetic and broken. How could Bella ever want a fool like me? I wasn’t good for her, and I’d proven that I couldn’t protect her. She deserved something better, someone better than me.