Chapter 32
Tristan
“Triiiiiiis! It’s Christmas Eve!”
Ivy’s excited squeals pulled me from sleep, seconds before she launched herself onto my bed, landing on my feet.
“Ivy, Mom said to let him sleep,” Holly grumbled, following her sister into my room.
“Yeah, but it’s Christmas Eve! We always play games on Christmas Eve,” Ivy replied, sticking her bottom lip out at me.
I blinked the sleep away and stretched, relieved that the ache in my body had settled. My muscles still hurt, but nowhere near as bad as the last two days. In fact, I almost felt human again.
“What time is it?” I asked through a yawn.
“Midday,” the girls replied together.
“We’re playing Monopoly first,” Ivy said.
“No, we’re not. Dad said we could play Scrabble first,” Holly retorted.
“Scrabble's boring.”
“No, it’s not. You’re just not very good at it.”
“That’s because-”
“Right, you two,” I groaned, scrubbing a hand down my face. “I’ve just woken up, it’s too early to listen to your bickering.”
I grabbed my phone off the side as Ivy and Holly pulled faces at each other, but my sisters disappeared into the background when I realized I must have fallen asleep waiting for Ben to text back from the message I’d sent last night.
Me:
Thank you for stopping by. I’m glad we talked.
He’d read it, but he hadn’t replied.
I stared at the message, trying to recall what had happened.
I remembered him turning up at the house and us kissing in the hallway, and I remembered cuddling on his chest, where I fell asleep.
I had a vague recollection of us talking at one point, but I couldn’t remember the specifics thanks to the brain fog that came with a fibromyalgia flare-up.
A mixture of dread and anxiety swirled in my stomach.
After what had happened on Sunday, I’d made a decision to talk to him.
I didn’t want to give him an ultimatum; the last thing I wanted was to put him under pressure.
If I forced him into coming out about us, he’d only end up resenting me, but I wasn’t sure if I could carry on being his secret. It was eating me alive.
Fuck. Had I said that to him when he was here?
“Listen, girls,” I said, getting out of bed and ignoring the way my body protested against the sudden movement. I probably needed another day resting, but I had to see Ben. “I’ve got to do something first. It’s really important. Can I postpone game time until later?”
I tuned out their grumbles as I staggered to the bathroom to shower.
There was no way I could drive; my concentration was all over the place. I’d intended to get a taxi to Ben’s place, but when Dad said he was heading into town to do some very last-minute Christmas shopping and could give me a lift, I jumped at the offer.
“You want me to wait?” he said, pulling into Ben’s driveway.
I hadn’t spoken much on the way over, lost in my head as I tried to recall any part of the conversation I had with Ben yesterday. “No, thanks. I don’t know how long I’ll be. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Dad’s mouth pursed into a thin line, and when he met my gaze, my gut told me he had something on his mind. Whatever it was, though, he didn’t volunteer. “Okay, Tris. Call me if you want a lift later. Don’t get a taxi.”
I clapped his shoulder. “Thanks, Dad. I owe you.”
Getting out of the car, I debated whether to use my key to let myself in.
As Dad pulled out of the driveway, I hesitated at the door.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t let myself in before, but something felt…
different. An uneasy feeling had settled over me since reading the message I’d sent last night, and I hated it.
What if I’d put too much pressure on him and fucked things up?
I knocked on the door, anxiety churning in my stomach as I waited. When a minute passed and there was no answer, I knocked again. This time, the door was tugged open, and I came face to face with the man I’d fallen head over heels for.
Only, he was wearing the face of the stoic man I’d met nearly a month ago.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his tone cold.
Taken aback by his abruptness, I opened and closed my mouth several times before the words finally came out. “I wanted to see you. Can we talk?”
His jaw clenched, but he made no move to step aside and let me in. “I think we said all we needed to say yesterday.”
My mind began to race. Why the fuck couldn’t I remember the conversation? “Yeah, but I don’t really remember. One of the side effects of the fibro,” I shrugged, trying my hardest not to let on that my heart was cracking down the middle.
His features briefly softened only to harden again. “There’s no point in rehashing the conversation, Tristan,” he said. Tristan. Not Bug. “You want something I can’t give you, so this—” he pointed between us “—needs to end.”
“What is it you think I want from you?” I replied, proud that my voice didn’t break.
“Us, Tristan. You want there to be an us.”
“And you don’t?”
“No. Not in the way you want. You want a relationship, I don’t. If I had my way, I’d carry on fucking you until you finished the work on my house, and then we’d be done. That’s all this is, Tristan. A bit of fun while you were here.”
Tears stung my eyes as my lip wobbled. “You don’t mean that.”
He took a step forward, and even though he’d closed the distance between us, it felt like there was an entire continent between us.
“Yes, I do mean that. I don’t know why you got it in your head that there would be anything more between us.
We agreed this would be casual, and nothing more.
It’s not my fault you developed feelings for me. ”
An invisible rope tied around my throat, squeezing it until I couldn’t breathe. By some miracle, I managed to hold my tears in, but the need to get the hell away from this house, from him, collided into me like a freight train.
I took a step back, and then another, not breaking my gaze away from him. “You’re going to end up a very sad and lonely man one day, Ben,” I whispered, the invisible rope making it almost impossible to speak.
His brows lifted fractionally before he schooled his features. “And that’s the way I like it. Now get off my property.”
A surge of anger doused some of the pain building within me, enough for me to rummage in my pocket and grab his key. Throwing it at him, it hit his chest and bounced to the floor. I didn’t see if he’d stooped to pick up, I refused to look back as I stormed away.
Dad hadn’t made it very far when I called him for a lift home. I managed to hold myself together as I waited several blocks away from Ben’s house, a little part of me hoping he would come out and apologize, another part wanting to never see him again.
Every part of me ached, but not because of my illness, but from the hurt his callous words had caused. My heart hurt the most. If I thought my heart had been broken when Jase and I split, it was nothing compared to the way my heart was shattering now.
When Dad’s car pulled up, I slid inside, making the mistake of looking at him and seeing the worry in his eyes. “Are you okay, Tris?”
Of course he had to ask the one question that was guaranteed to put a crack in the dam holding my tears at bay.
My eyes filled, and I jammed the palms of my hands into my eyeballs to stop the waterfall that was about to flow. But I couldn’t stop the sob from bursting free. “I’m such a fucking idiot.”
Leaning across the center console, my dad wrapped his arms around me and pulled me against his chest. “No, you’re not. Don’t ever say that.”
His comforting voice and warm embrace was enough for the dam to crack wide open.
I grabbed onto him as I allowed myself to finally say words I’d been keeping to myself.
“I am. I told myself not to fall for him, that it would only end in me getting hurt. But I did it anyway. I fell in love with him.” Wracking sobs gripped my body as I soaked my dad’s shirt with my tears.
Saying the words aloud was like shoving a sharp blade right through the middle of my chest. “I love him, Dad.”
“Oh, Tris,” Dad whispered, kissing the top of my head as he rubbed gentle circles over my back.
Minutes passed as we sat in his car, him holding me, not saying a word as I cried over a man who didn’t love me back. His harsh words circled in my head, and each time, the wound in my chest grew bigger.
I really thought he felt the same way about me.
Every day we spent together, every experience we shared, every time he opened up about his past, brought us closer.
I didn’t want to be his dirty little secret any longer, but I’d gotten it into my head that he would get to a point where he wanted more.
But I was nothing more than a good time as he kindly pointed out.
When my sobs grew silent, I pulled out of Dad’s arms, wiping my eyes as embarrassment joined the pity party I was hosting. “Sorry.”
“Hey, you have nothing to be sorry for, Son. I wish there was something I could do to help.”
I shook my head. “There’s nothing anyone can do. I should have known better.”
“Tris, you know you can’t help who you fall for, that’s the beauty and the curse of love,” Dad said gently.
I let out a humorless chuckle. “Trust me to fall for the one guy who is emotionally dead.”
Dad shifted back into his seat. “Actually, I don’t think that’s true.
I think Ben is so used to pushing people away that he doesn’t know how to handle feelings.
You know what I think?” I shook my head.
“I think he’s scared. I think he feels the same way about you, but he’s so scared of getting hurt that he doesn’t know how to handle it.
I don’t know anything about his past, but when Jake was alive, he often made jokes at Ben’s expense about his childhood and where he grew up, so I’m guessing whatever he dealt with as a child has left a lot of scars. ”
He wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t going to confirm that. Ben might have been using me, and in the days or weeks to come, I might have found myself hating him, but I would never share his secrets.
“He changed, you know. These last few weeks,” Dad continued.
“And I think that was your doing. I mean, look. It’s Christmas Eve, and he gave me the day off.
That has never happened before. And he let one of his tenants miss paying this month's rent so she could pay her daughter’s hospital bill.
He wouldn’t have done any of that before he met you. ”
My brows shot up. “He did what?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“No.”
The tips of Dad’s ears turned red; his telltale sign that he had let slip something he wasn’t meant to.
“Yeah, his tenant came to the office last week and begged me to help her find a way to delay paying the rent. Apparently, Bella had told the woman that I’d helped her in the past.” He gave me a pointed look, and I grimaced.
“Anyway, Ben heard the commotion, and when the woman told him she couldn’t pay for her groceries, let alone pay the rent, he told her not to worry about it.
He even got Alice to order a whole load of groceries to be delivered so that when the kid came out of hospital, she wouldn’t go hungry. ”
I gaped at my dad, and despite the heartache caused by Ben, I couldn’t help but bathe in the pride that warmed me from within.
Hadn’t I once told myself that any heartache that was waiting for me would be worth it if people got to see the Ben hidden under his brick walls? I just had to hope that he didn’t revert to his old ways.
Only time would tell.