AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She could still remember the moment she’d fallen in love with Brad. She and Ruby had been revising for their English exams together in the garden, and Brad had come out to join them, wanting a break from his physics revision. Somehow he’d ended up reading Benedick’s speeches while she’d read Beatrice’s.
‘“I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is that not strange?”’
She’d glanced up from her text and met his gaze, and a surge of heat had spun through her. He had been looking at her as if it were the first time he’d ever seen her. As if she were the only living thing in the world apart from himself. As if the rest of the world had just melted away...
It had felt crazy.
Abigail had known she shouldn’t let herself fall for her best friend’s brother. Apart from anything else, they had been way too young. Sixteen. There had been no chance their relationship would last, and she certainly hadn’t wanted to put any strain on her friendship with Ruby. Brad had been the last boy she should have dated.
So she’d damped down the feelings.
But then Ruby had set him up as Abigail’s date for their school’s end of year prom, the week after their exams, on the grounds that neither of them had had a date and she had, and Ruby hadn’t wanted either of them to feel left out.
It had been strange. The boy she’d known since she was a toddler, run around on the sand with and thrown snowballs at, had suddenly been a man, in a formal suit. And the look in his eyes when he’d seen her dressed up in a proper long, off-the-shoulder dress—it had been the same for him, too. Instant recognition. Shock at the changes in each other. A realisation that they weren’t kids any more: they were grown up.
They’d danced together, and it had felt as if she were floating. They’d danced to music she hadn’t even liked—and she really hadn’t cared, because she had been in Brad’s arms. She had barely been aware of anyone else being in the room.
At the end of the night, he’d taken her out into the grounds of the ancient hotel where the prom was being held and he’d kissed her among the roses. Moonlight, the scent of roses, the sound of a song thrush warbling into the night air—she would always associate those with the night Brad had first kissed her.
And from then on they’d been inseparable.
Ruby had gone to art college in September, while Brad and Abby had stayed on at their school’s sixth form. And Abby had been happier than she could ever remember, spending as much time as possible with Brad. Of course she’d said yes when he’d asked her to marry him on the night of her eighteenth birthday. They’d kept their engagement secret, even from Ruby.
The original plan had been to wait until after Brad had graduated, but late one night he’d climbed up the drainpipe outside her bedroom window and said he didn’t want to wait another three years to marry her. He’d suggested eloping to Gretna Green.
They’d got married in secret the week before their exam results had come out; and she’d moved to Cambridge with him when he’d started university in October.
Life had been perfect. Brad had studied while she’d worked in one of the local cafés, and they’d spent every evening and every night together. First love, true love, for ever and ever and ever. She’d been blissfully happy, and she’d thought it had been the same for Brad.
Until the weekend when she’d won a competition for a spa break.
And then everything had fallen apart.
Brad had never got over his father’s death. He wouldn’t talk about it, but she was pretty sure that he’d never stopped blaming himself for not being there to save his dad. And he’d built a wall of ice round himself that Abby just hadn’t been able to breach. Even leaving him hadn’t been enough to shock him into breaking that wall; the idea, born from sheer desperation, had blown up in her face. Brad had been supposed to realise how much he missed her and come after her and talk; instead, he’d ended their marriage completely.
Five years.
For five years she’d tried to move on.
And right now it felt as if she was back where she’d been at the start. Raw, aching, wanting a man who clearly didn’t want her any more. Wanting a man who’d shattered her belief in love.
