25. Penelope
Chapter 25
Penelope
I wake up in stages, feeling warm and comfortable. I stretch leisurely, noting that I’m in my cozy nest, which is even more perfect than I could have imagined. It’s hard to want to get up, when I’m so relaxed, but the day is waiting, so I drag myself up and make myself move to shower and get dressed.
When I open my door, there’s something outside of it, and I pick it up, realizing it’s a folded up blanket.
As soon as I touch it, I know it’s perfect. The lining is exactly what I was describing to Xavier and Dominic last night, soft and fuzzy and warm. Feeling so happy, I put it in the nest, arranging it just so.
It’s the perfect thing. The last piece to the puzzle.
Dominic and Xavier are already bickering downstairs, and I follow the sound of it, heading into the kitchen. They have coffee on, and there’s a spread of breakfast sandwiches laid out.
“There you are,” Xavier teases. “I thought you were going to sleep all morning.”
“It was so hard to get up. But I’m here, reporting for duty.”
“Very good,” Dominic says, smirking. “We need to get this show on the road.”
Tristan comes down a minute later, and there’s a mad dash to pour coffee and eat breakfast and get out the door in time. But it doesn’t feel stressful. If anything, it’s familiar in its chaos. The banter is bright and fun, and everyone seems to be in a good mood. I mean, it’s anyone’s guess if Tristan is, but at least he’s not glaring or acting upset.
It feels like we’ve found a rhythm, the four of us, and that feels good.
At work, I go to drop off something in Xavier’s office, and find him leaning back in his chair with his feet up on the desk.
“Working hard?” I tease him, passing over a file.
“You know it. I’m hard at work thinking up new strategies and plans and stuff. It’s all very technical.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I promise!”
“Sure, I definitely believe you,” I say, shaking my head. “Thank you for the blanket, by the way. I don’t know how you found the perfect one that fast, but it really is what I was looking for.”
Xavier tips his head to one side, looking puzzled. “As much as I’d love to take the credit, it wasn’t me. I’d planned to look online later, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Must have been one of the others.”
“Hm.” Of the three of them, I would have expected Xavier to be the one who did it, but apparently not. Now I want to know which of the other two it was.
Later, I ask Dominic about it when I have to go to his office.
“Wasn’t me,” he says. “I assumed Xavier was going to look for something and tell the rest of us when he found it.”
“He said it wasn’t him either.”
Dominic’s eyebrows go up as we reach the same conclusion together.
I wait a bit because I don’t really have a reason to go to Tristan’s office, but eventually curiosity gets the better of me, and I find myself outside the door, knocking and opening it just enough to peek in.
“Hi,” I say, when I’m sure he’s not on a call or anything. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
He looks at me and then gestures for me to come in. I do, closing the door behind me. Somehow, it’s a little more intimidating to talk to him like this. At home, it feels more like we’re on even footing, but here, he’s behind his desk, wearing a fancy suit, looking like the hot, powerful CEO he is.
“Did you need something?” he asks, jarring me out of my thoughts.
“Sorry, I just… I found a blanket outside my door this morning. The perfect blanket that I’ve been looking for for my nest. Xavier and Dominic said they didn’t have anything to do with it, so I was wondering… was it you?”
He looks uncomfortable for a second, glancing away from me and fiddling with the pen in his hand, but then finally he nods.
“Yes. I… overheard you telling the other about how you couldn’t find the perfect blanket for your nest. So I thought you might like that one, even if it’s not perfect.”
I stare at him for a second, caught off guard by the show of thoughtfulness. I didn’t even know Tristan had been listening to that conversation, and I definitely wasn’t expecting him to do anything about it.
“It is perfect,” I tell him, smiling. “Thank you so much.”
“It’s nothing,” he says, waving my thanks away.
“No, it definitely is something. I love soft things, and I had been thinking about that blanket for a while. You picked something really nice that will really add to my nest. I appreciate it.”
His eyes flick up to meet mine, and he nods. There’s something that might even be a tiny smile playing around his lips, and I find that I can’t look away. He looks… pleased that I like his gift. It makes me feel warm inside to have put that look there.
“Mariana loved soft things too,” he murmurs, almost to himself.
I can’t help my curiosity, so I have to ask, “Who’s Mariana?”
Tristan’s eyes go a little hard, his jaw tightening. For a moment, I worry I asked the wrong thing or said something I shouldn’t. But he’s the one who brought her up, and I keep watching him, hoping he’s not going to shut me down.
Finally, he sighs out a breath. “She was a Beta I cared for once,” he says softly.
“Oh. Is she… you just used the past tense, so…” I don’t know a polite way to ask if he lost her.
But he nods, answering the question I can’t bring myself to finish. “She died,” he says shortly. “In a car accident. The one that left me with this scar.” His fingers come up to trace it.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Blackwell,” I tell him. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I shouldn’t have asked.”
He looks at me, and for the first time, I can see pain in his eyes. I don’t know if it’s because he’s letting me see it for the first time or if there’s just so much that he can’t hold it back now.
Either way, it’s hard to look away from the sight of it. Tristan has been holding back for so long, keeping his emotions under wraps to the point where it seemed like he didn’t have any, and now that I’m face to face with them, all I want to do is help him feel better.
“No, it’s—” He breaks off, like he’s not sure what he wants to say. “Maybe it’s better if I tell you. I don’t know.”
“I’ll listen, if you want to,” I promise.
He’s quiet for a bit, but there’s an expectant quality to the silence, like he’s ordering his thoughts. “I talked about how I started my business,” he says. “Do you remember?”
I nod. “You said you built it from the ground up, right? You revolutionized a lot of things.”
“Something like that. I needed an escape. I needed something to focus on that wasn’t feeling lost. That wasn’t just losing people. After Mariana died, I was… .a mess. I was broken. I cared for her so much. I was supposed to protect her. But in the end, there wasn’t anything I could do. She was gone. Dead. And it was my fault.”
“What?”
“I lost control of the car because of a storm. We crashed into a tree.”
“That’s not?—”
Tristan cuts me off, shaking his head, his jaw tight. “I didn’t have a lot, growing up. Not like Dominic. Not even like Xavier. My father worked in a factory, and he scraped by enough that my mother could stay home and take care of me and the house. We didn’t have money, but we had… each other. And I had Mariana. And then I had nothing. After Mariana died, I pushed my family away. I left the town I grew up in. Everything there reminded me of her. My family wanted to help me, wanted to be there for me. They suggested therapy, told me I could talk to them. But I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to talk about it or think about her or be in a place where so many memories happened. So I left, and I started my business. I poured everything I had left into it.”
It’s such a raw, intense revelation from Tristan. A stark glimpse into why he is the way he is. Loss can carve a person up, I know that much, and the fact that he made something of himself and came out of it with a strong company is very impressive. But I know he won’t want to hear that. Not when it was made because he was fleeing something so painful.
It hits me then that it explains so much about him and his attitude about the marriage. He didn’t want to marry me because he’s clearly still in love with Mariana, the woman he lost.
That hurts for some reason. It shouldn’t, and I know it seems selfish to be jealous of her, when she’s dead and I’m not. But I know I can never fill her shoes. I can never take her place, and Tristan seems to be constantly making it clear that he’s not interested in opening up a new place for anyone else.
More than anything, it breaks my heart for him to have been through so much. Especially since it sounds like dealt with it all alone.
“How old were you?” I ask him.
“Twenty.”
So young. So new to life and everything, to end up so alone.
His vulnerability is touching in a way I didn’t expect. He’s being open with me for the first time since we met, and it makes me want to offer something up to. Something to share about my own past.
But I can’t really figure out how I’d do that. I don’t talk about it, not with anyone, and I don’t really want to bring it all up now. So I just keep my mouth shut about it and focus on him.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “That you lost her. That you had to give up your family to get peace.”
He nods. “Thank you.”
“I think…” I bite my lip, not sure if this is going to be overstepping or not. In the end, I decide to just do it. “I think you should reach out to your family. I bet they miss you, and I bet they’d be so proud to see how far you’ve come.”
He nods again, a faraway look in his eyes. I know it’s not a ‘yes, I will do that’, but at least he’s hearing me.
“It’s been a long time,” he says after a beat. “Maybe too long.”
“I don’t think so. They’re your family, you know? They wanted to help you when things were at their worst for you. And you said yourself that you were always close, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then maybe they’re just waiting to hear from you. Maybe they feel like you’re missing from their lives as much as you miss them in yours.”
He didn’t say all that, but I feel safe in assuming I’m right. And he doesn’t argue with me. He just looks thoughtful.
“I know I’d miss you if I was them,” I say.
His eyes meet mine again, and there’s a loaded moment between us. I don’t know what he sees when he looks at me, but I know what I see in him.
So much pain, so much strength. The kind of man who has been hurt by loss but not broken by it. He’s still pushing on, still living, and that’s important.
I have no idea how to tell him any of that, but maybe he understands. Right now, I feel more connected to him than I ever have before. Like he’s not so closed off, and I’m allowed to see what goes on behind his walls.
Unable to help myself, I reach out toward his face, wanting to touch his scar.
Tristan jerks back, and whatever openness was in his eyes is gone in an instant. It’s like I can see the very second his walls go back up, shutting me out all over again.
My heart drops. That must have been the step too far. I overstepped, tried to get too close too fast, and just proved to myself that Tristan is never going to truly want to let me in. Not in any real way.
The realization is an ache in my heart. For myself, and for him too.
“Thanks again for the blanket,” I murmur, and turn to leave before he can say anything. Or not say anything.
I don’t look back until I’m in my own office, alone with the feelings that I have to wrestle with. Because I like him. The more I see of him, the more he lets me see, the more I want to get closer. My feelings for Tristan are just growing and growing, but with that is now the painful understanding that no matter what I feel for him, he will never be mine.