Together Apart by Natalie K Martin Page B

but what else was he supposed to do? He was fairly certain there wasn’t a line of birthday cards to give to your live-in ex- girlfriend . Living together was getting more awkward every day, and he didn’t know how to act. He was constantly swinging between hating her for the way she’d ended things and missing her. He scowled again. What was he even doing here? He should be back at Carl’s, bleeding his mates dry over poker. There was no reason for him to be here, doing this. They weren’t a couple anymore – Sarah had made that perfectly clear. She wasn’t his responsibility, yet here he was, faithful Adam, dependable as ever, sponging her down instead of being with his mates.
    Her head lolled from side to side, and the scowl fell from his face. What was so bad that she needed to get herself into this state? He picked her up, took her to the bedroom and laid her down on the bed. She was going to have the hangover from hell in the morning.
    She looked at him with glassy eyes. ‘I do love you, you know.’
    Adam blinked. For a split second, it was like the clouds that had been following him since Santorini had opened up to let the sun on his face. The rush he felt was better than any high any dr ug ha d ever given him, but as she rolled over and promptly fell asleep, a frown etched onto his face. She was drunk. His mind adjusted, and his elation gave way as the clouds came back, thick and grey like dirty cotton wool balls. In his experience, the truth was almost always spoken after a few drinks, but if there was one thing the last few weeks had taught him, it was that nothing good ever came from an assumption. He’d assumed that Sarah loved him enough to want to marry him, that she’d say yes without question, and look what h ad happened.
    He shook his head, put the small bedroom bin next to the bed and her handbag on the chair in the corner. A sliver of pink leather peeked out at him. It was her diary. He’d watched her in Santorini, sitting on the terrace in the morning, writing whatever it was she wrote in there, and he’d thought that she looked beyond beautiful in the midst of concentration. Maybe if he read it, he’d find out whether she really did still love him. Then it wouldn’t be an assumption ; it would be fact.
    He glared at the diary. There was no point reading into what she’d said, no matter how good it felt to hear her say those words. He went to turn off the light, but his finger hovered over the switch. The diary was pulling at him like a magnet. He walked over t o the bag and looked at it. It looked so placid and harmless, but he continued to glare at it as if it were his fiercest enemy, like they were opponents, ready to step into the ring and fight it out.
    How many chances like this would he get?

    An hour later, he let out a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding. His heart pounded so hard it made him feel sick as he looked down at the words written on the pages of her diary. The pounding intensified, and he hurled it at the wall. He watched it land on the floor with a small thud. His face burned as he got up and poured himself a three-finger measure of whisky. Since they’d split up, he’d felt like his world had collapsed. He’d made a complete arse of himself, moping around and wallowing in self-pity. And for what? She was deliberately hurting him, telling him she didn’t want him, when it was written down in black and white that she did.
    It had started well enough. He’d been right all along: she did love him. He hadn’t imagined it. In the lead-up to Santorini, he was all she wrote about – how excited she was, how loved up she was, how happy she was. And then it had changed, with no warning and still no explanation.
    He gulped down the whisky and winced as it burned the back of his throat. Why would she do this? It was obvious something had happened in her past, but even still, she didn’t have to end things the way she had.
    He never should have read the stupid