Chapter 17
TAYLOR
I almost hadn’t gone down to the pool. When I held on to Jack on the back of the bike, I had felt a mix of confused feelings that I put down to residual adrenaline from the rescue.
A high-pressure, life-or-death kind of situation like that had to have some effect on you, so it was understandable that I had felt drawn to him when he showed up and saved the day.
At least, that’s how I justified it to myself.
But hanging on to him, watching over his shoulder as he’d effortlessly ridden my motorbike back into town had been as sexy as hell.
He was as sexy as hell, and I had felt far, far too comfortable touching a man I’d known for only a few days.
I’d been eighteen, literally, the day Adam and I first got together.
He kissed me the night of my eighteenth birthday, and from that moment on, despite the avalanche it triggered, we were a couple.
Before that, before him, there had been nothing but teenage crushes, stolen kisses and tentative hands fumbled underneath clothing at parties.
He hadn’t even been on my radar before that night, then suddenly he was my boyfriend.
My fiancé. My husband. All within the space of a year.
I thought I loved him, the way a teenager thinks first love will last forever, that no one has ever felt that way ever before, could ever feel that way again.
But it was a weird version of love that we had.
One born out of guilt and regret. Because if we weren’t together, then it had all been for nothing.
He was the only person in the world who understood that.
It was a silent understanding between us.
We never spoke about it. Maybe we should have, I’d thought so many times since he’d left.
Maybe we wouldn’t have spent a decade hating ourselves, and resenting each other.