Chapter Nine
The question hung there between us, caught somewhere in the cool night air.
Would it be wrong if I asked you out now?
The words felt too big for the space we were in and too fragile to touch.
What happens if he meets the kids and they love him? What happens if he leaves right after? What happens if everything feels right and perfect but it’s just the moment, the circumstance? What if it really isn’t real?
I heard the echo of his question, low and warm, somewhere behind my ribs. My life was my kids. Was there room for another? I wasn’t sure. Before I could find an answer that didn’t sound like running, the outside world interrupted.
Headlights swelled, flooding the gravel in a spotlight. A tow truck lumbered into view, the engine’s rumble breaking through the thin cocoon we’d built.
I blinked against the blinding light, blinking away everything else too; the wine, the almost, the ache.
Tristan jumped out first, his movements careful, deliberate. He called out to the driver, a burly man in coveralls who looked like he’d been born inside a diesel engine but wore a snow-white beard that would make him a holiday favourite if the season was right.
I tidied up, capping what remained of the good wine and tucking it into my suitcase.
When I hopped down from the van, the ground shifted under me or maybe that was the wine catching up. My foot slipped on the gravel, and just as I was about to lose my footing, his hand was on my elbow, steadying me.
“Careful,” he murmured, voice soft enough to curl under my skin.
“Gravity’s fault, not mine,” I said, forcing a wobbly smile.
He didn’t let go right away. And I didn’t want him to either.
The driver hooked to the van in silence, chains clinking in the dark. The night air was cold, but my face still burned; from wine, from the moment that still hadn’t quite ended.
We climbed into the faint oil and cigarette smoke scented cabin of the tow truck, him by the window, me in the middle, the driver on the far side.
The engine roared, and we started to move.
No one spoke much. Mumbled moments surrounding the drop off at the dealership, and recommendations on car rental companies. The radio hummed low with some country song about roads and second chances, as the headlights carved tunnels through the darkness.
Outside, the mountains rose and fell like a slow heartbeat.
Tristan’s arm brushed mine every time the truck hit a bump. He didn’t pull away, and neither did I.
I kept sneaking glances at him, at the faint crease between his brows, the way his jaw tightened whenever the driver hit the brakes. He looked steady, calm, but the pulse of his question still sat between us, alive and unresolved.
My mind kept replaying his voice, the question, the way it sounded not like a line but a confession. Would it be wrong if I asked you out now?
I wanted him too, but he had a home and a business on the island. My home, my life with my kids and job, were at least sixteen-hours away from his place. We led different lives, and this was a complication I didn’t need. Or didn’t necessarily want.
I didn’t know what scared me more, the possibility that it was wrong... or that it wasn’t.
* * *
By the time the tow truck pulled into Merritt, the highway had emptied into a soft hush of headlights and diesel.
The driver dropped us off in the parking lot of the Copper Lantern Inn.
It was a squat two-story building, leaning toward the highway as if it had been standing there for decades and only recently decided to get its act together.
Fresh cedar siding met old stone steps. A few windows were cracked open, letting out the faint smell of lemon cleaner and new paint.
A mismatched pair of rocking chairs waited on the porch.
The right one was missing a slat, but someone had tucked a cushion there anyway.
Tristan and I unloaded the van of his next two deliveries, his dolly, and a duffel bag with what I could only imagine were emergency night supplies. He thanked the driver, signed the papers for the van’s drop-off, and stood beside me on the gravel.
The air was cool enough to see our breath. Above us, the stars were dimmed by town lights but still visible if you looked long enough.
“CAA said they’ll check it first thing in the morning,” he said, raking a hand through his hair. “I’ll get us a rental if they can’t fix it quick.”
His voice carried fatigue now. Not just from the road, but from holding everything together.
“Hey.” I nudged his arm. “We made it to Merritt, your planned overnight stop. That’s something.”
He huffed a laugh, quiet. “Low bar, but I’ll take it.”
Inside the motel, the night clerk handed him two key cards with a bored expression. “Rooms are side by side. Breakfast from seven to nine. The coffee’s... skippable.”
We exchanged a look, biting back smiles.
After hauling in the remaining wine cases and stashing them in Tristan’s room, we stood among the stacks, the faint welcoming scent of oak and fruit cutting through the motel’s lemony cleaner.
I brushed my palms on my jeans, suddenly hyper-aware of how small the space was.
His shoulders filled the doorway, his ball cap in his hands, fingers fidgeting with the brim.
“You should get some rest,” he said softly, the glow from the bedside table lighting the side of his whiskery cheeks. “It’s been a long day.”
“Yeah. You too.”
But neither of us moved. My gaze dropped to his boots and slowly rolled up over his dark jeans, climbing higher across the steel blue shirt that matched the colouring of his eyes.
The silence stretched, held taut by everything we hadn’t said since the roadside.
The question I still couldn’t answer hovered between us.
I looked up. “You’re really hard to read sometimes.”
He blinked. “You think so?”
I nodded. “You’ve got this calm, collected thing going, but I can’t tell if it’s real or just armour.”
A slow smile curved his mouth. “Maybe both.” He stepped closer, enough that the warmth from his body brushed mine. “And you?” he murmured. “You still running from complicated?”
The question landed deep, just like he intended it to.
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “Complicated keeps catching up.”
He exhaled, and the sound felt heavier than air. “Anna—”
This should’ve been simple; a goodnight, a thank-you, and a polite step back.
But my heartbeat didn’t get that memo. It was climbing, wild and teenage and stupid, as if the past hadn’t already proven how tangled life could get when feelings fangirled where they didn’t belong.
I had kids. A life. A routine. Stability I fought like crazy to build.
Tristan wasn’t part of that structure. Not one brick of it.
Wanting him felt like leaning over the edge of a cliff; thrilling, terrifying, and yet, impossible to look away from.
And God help me... a part of me wanted to jump.
Tenderly, he cupped the side of my face, his thumb stroking my cheek as the blood in my veins roared to feverish heights.
“We shouldn’t.”
“Then why aren’t you moving?”
Tipping my head down for a breath, I memorized the heat from his thumb, the way his voice sounded when he said my name, and the way his eyes glowed when I barely pulled back.
“Anna?” His voice wasn’t cocky now. It was quiet. Careful.
I could’ve said no.
I almost did.
But his eyes held that patient, gentle waiting I remembered from a lifetime ago, the boy who never rushed me, and the man who still wouldn’t.
My breath trembled.
“I don’t know if this is smart,” I whispered.
“Me neither,” he murmured. “But I’ve wanted to kiss you since I was seventeen.”
And that was it. The last resistance snapped like a thread pulled too tight.
I didn’t think.
Didn’t plan.
I reached up and kissed him with everything I’d been holding back.
It wasn’t fireworks. It was much quieter and deeper than that.
A slow, searching press of lips that said I see you and finally.
He hesitated for a heartbeat, one hand lifting to my cheek, thumb trembling slightly. The lemony cleaner and a hint of Syrah folded around me.
When we finally broke apart, neither of us spoke.
The only sound was the hum of the motel fridge and our uneven breathing.
He rested his forehead against mine. “You still haven’t answered.”
“I think I just did,” I whispered, closing my eyes.
A soft laugh came under his breath.
I pulled away first, the cool air rushing to take the place of Tristan’s warm hand. “Goodnight.”
Outside, the cooled air smelled faintly of fresh paint and dust as I shivered and stepped lightly to my room next door. I leaned against the inside of my door for a long second after it clicked shut. My pulse was still tachy, my lips tingled, but my brain flatlined.
In the quiet, I heard him moving in the next room and wondered what he was doing. It wasn’t long before the silence appeared.
And in that silence, a single thought occurred:
Oh goodness me. I shouldn’t have done that. I should’ve walked away.
But my body remembered something my life doesn’t have room for anymore.
Softness.
Heat.
Possibility.