20. Winter
WINTER
I don’t know what startles me awake, but I’m more shocked when I realize that I’m awake first. Every time Tristan and I have fallen asleep together, on the couch, in his bed, after one of his terrors, he’s always awake before me.
Watching over me. In my gut, it always felt like he was guarding me from himself.
But now? He’s out cold.
His cheek is resting heavy against my bare breast, his lashes fanned against his skin.
His mouth is parted just slightly, lips pushed into the faintest pout from where his face is mashed into me.
His entire upper body is sprawled over mine, pressing me into the mattress, his weight caging me so completely I couldn’t move if I wanted to.
His abdomen still pressed against my pussy, the remnants of last night lingering between my thighs.
I’m sore. Thoroughly, achingly sore from how he fucked me, how he claimed me, and yet there’s a strange emptiness too.
I miss the feeling of him inside me. When I drifted off, he was still there, buried so deep in my body I thought we might fuse together.
But at some point during the night, as we settled, he must have slipped free.
One of his hands is tangled in my hair, like even in sleep he needed the assurance of touching me. The other grips tight at the spot where my hip meets my thigh, as if holding me in place, making sure I couldn’t leave him even if I tried.
He’s massive. I’ve always known that, but lying here now with all of him spread over me, his chest pinning mine, his arm heavy across my waist, his legs entwined with mine, I realize just how big he really is.
And God, I love it. I love the way his size presses me down, the way his weight settles into me, making me feel safe in a way I’ve never felt before.
“My handsome, sad boy,” I whisper, brushing the dark hair back from his face. “You’re finally resting. I hope someday you’re not so sad anymore.”
My chest tightens when I say it, because he never rests like this. He never lets go. But right now, with his lashes kissing his cheeks and his lips soft and pink against my skin, he’s beautiful in a way that makes my throat ache.
I study him, memorizing. The pout of his mouth.
The cut of his cheekbones. The small crease between his brows even now, like some part of his pain refuses to release him.
I smooth my fingers over his big shoulder, across the red half-moon marks my nails left when I couldn’t stop clinging to him last night.
I try to soothe the evidence of my need, though the truth is I don’t regret it.
I love him. More than I can hold inside me.
And it feels like something has shifted.
It isn’t just the sex, though that was the most devastatingly beautiful thing I’ve ever known in my life.
This is deeper. It one hundred percent feels like the walls he built up even before he knew me, the pain that’s lived in his bones, lessened last night.
And because of that, something inside him unlocked. Something inside me has, too.
I feel at ease, and I can’t say that’s been the case for a long time.
Tristan jerks awake like he’s been dropped into cold water. His chest rises hard against me, muscles tensing, eyes wild and darting around the room until they find me. And then his whole face softens, and the panic dissolves into something else entirely.
“I slept…” he murmurs, almost disbelieving.
“Like a giant baby,” I tease, brushing his hair back from his forehead. “You were out cold, not a single night terror in sight.”
The smile that stretches across his face steals my breath. Teeth and all. It’s boyish and radiant, so unlike the Tristan everyone else sees, and it makes my stomach flutter in that way only he can. He smirks, just a little cocky, but there’s something shy underneath it too.
He’s absolutely breathtaking.
I know better than to think one night with me erased all his ghosts. But God, he looks rested, like really rested, and if this is the start of something new for him, for us, then I’ll take it.
His hand cups my jaw, thumb brushing across my cheek, but he makes no move to shift his weight off of me. “Are you okay? Do you…” He falters, but I already know what he’s trying to ask.
I shake my head and lean up, pressing my lips to his. “I’m so grateful I have you. And I could never regret anything that happens between us.”
He groans, kissing me harder, pushing me back into the mattress like he can’t stand the thought of losing even an inch of me. I brace for him to take me again, but instead he surprises me. He rolls us, so that suddenly I’m straddling him, sitting on the hard planes of his stomach.
Tristan’s hands slide to my hips, fingers tracing the bruises he left there last night, and he looks oh, so reverent. His voice is thick when he says, “I look good on you.” His eyes linger hungrily on the faint purple shadows, like he’s pleased.
I shift, lifting just enough to take his cock in my hand. He’s already throbbing, impossibly big, and I tuck him beneath me, letting his length rest against my slick slit as I sink back down. The pressure makes us both groan, and he’s not even inside of me.
“Oh, fuck,” he growls, throwing his head back into the pillows, hips arching up to grind against me.
I giggle, breathless and giddy, because I’ve never felt so alive. “We should have done this a while ago, I think.”
His eyes snap open, dark and intense, glowering up at me like I’ve said something he’s already been mulling over. “Oh, we’re going to make up for lost time, baby. You’ll be the one getting no rest.”
The wicked curve of his mouth makes my insides twist, and then he’s sitting up, cupping my face and kissing me fiercely.
His groan spills into my mouth, needy and raw, and when he pulls back just enough to whisper against my lips, it’s the kind of confession that will be burned into my memory forever.
“Dushen’ka. You are my heart, and certainly my entire soul.” He says it so easily, like it’s just a fact, and not something that should shatter me from the inside out and piece me back together.
I wrap my arms tight around Tristan’s neck, ready to drown in him all over again, but then my dreaded phone starts beeping. It’s an unfamiliar beep indicating it’s not a regular call.
“Sebastian?” I murmur, already knowing. He’s the only one who has to use a texting app to call me from Ireland.
Tristan presses a quick kiss to my lips anyway, muttering, “I’ll kill him for this.
” I give him a knowing look, allowing him to overreact but knowing he’s not serious.
He juts his chin out, realizing I don’t believe him.
“At the very least, I’m going to beat his fucking ass the next time I see him.
I’m like an elephant, I won’t forget this. ”
I giggle as I slide off his lap to grab the phone, tossing it at him when the screen lights up. “Answer your twin. It’s probably important if he called me. You know he probably tried you twenty times before he resorted to me.”
Tristan’s eyes don’t follow the phone. They follow me, watching every movement as I tug on a t-shirt and shorts. It’s a video call, and if it’s one thing I am certain about, it’s that Tristan would kill his twin brother if he saw me in any state of undress.
Only once I’m covered does he scowl at the screen and swipe to answer. “This better be fucking good.”
“Will you fucking keep it down?” Sebastian whispers.
“I’ve tried calling you a million times since last night.
I had to dig around in my desk to find Winter’s number this morning.
” Sebastian sounds annoyed and stressed, but it’s funny to me that the Vale twins are alike in that way.
I wonder if he has Tristan’s number saved in his phone or just has it in his call log.
Something catches my eye on the wall behind him. I see Sebastian’s room every time he and Tristan play chess together on their video calls. Did he move recently? Sebastian doesn’t strike me as the type that would paint his walls a soft pink color.
Maybe Madi took a trip to Ireland and redecorated for him, I snicker at the thought.
“Where are you, Sebastian?” I ask, cocking my head when I notice the fancy gold frames on the wall behind him, photos of smiling strangers I know for certain are not related to the Vales.
He frowns, scowling like Tristan does when Hayen and Callum speak about…well, anything.
“Are you…in a girl’s room? Is that why you’re being so quiet?” I keep the question vague, but what I really want to ask is if it’s her . The girl. The one he dropped everything for. The reason he moved across the globe to Ireland.
Sebastian doesn’t answer. Instead, he tips the phone to the side, like he’s daring me to put the pieces together myself. And there she is.
A girl, curled on her side in what I assume is her bed, bundled up tight in a fluffy pink comforter. Her thick, long blonde hair is fanned out over the pillow, glowing even in the grainy light of the camera. She looks…peaceful.
Protected.
My mouth falls open, but I keep my voice quiet. “Oh my god. You finally told her who you are?”
“Of course not,” he mutters, lowering his voice like the words themselves might wake her. “I’m just checking in on her. Making sure she’s okay.”
I blink at him, incredulous, because how does he not hear himself? “Other than having a strange man in her room while she’s asleep?”
The glare he shoots me could cut glass, which only makes me giggle. He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose before slipping out of her room, careful, quiet, because even broody Sebastian Vale looks terrified of disturbing his sleeping beauty.
“I don’t care if you’re breaking into every girl’s dorm in the country and rifling through their underwear drawers.
Why are you calling us?” Tristan barks, but it doesn’t escape me that he waited for Sebastian to be out of her room before he yelled.
His hand slides down my side, fingers flexing into the fabric of my top. He’s annoyed, and I’m what calms him.
I fucking love that.
Sebastian clears his throat. The lighting in the dark hallway makes it hard to really see him clearly, but I can tell whatever he called for is serious. “You’re going to be pissed about everything that I have to tell you. You need to get back to Castlebrook. And away from Dad.”
Tristan’s entire body stiffens. He sits up straighter, his arm automatically tightening around me.
“Look at the text I just sent,” Sebastian says, his voice flat. “That’s the guy, right?”
He doesn’t have to explain. Tristan clicks into the messages on my phone, and when the image fills the screen, I gasp.
It’s him. One of the filthy men who carjacked us. The one who got away that night, the one who has been tormenting Tristan’s thoughts ever since.
He’s bloody, tied to a chair, his head tilted back like he’s been beaten within an inch of his life. He looks to be in a warehouse of some kind. All I can see is stained cement flooring…blood or oil? I’m not sure.
I know Tristan’s mind is racing a mile a minute, but he manages to clip out the words, “Who has him? Where did you get this? Answer me!” His voice has a raw edge, and I shove my hand to his chest, palm flat, trying to tamp the rage brewing under his ribs.
“Jesus,” Sebastian says, breath tight. “The Moretti triplets have him. He was running some money for their father, and Benjamin recognized him from the photo of him and Dad. You’d have known this two hours ago if you hadn’t turned your phone off like an absolute baby. Be an adult and answer your phone.”
My stomach drops out from under me. I’ve heard Tristan and Sebastian bicker countless times, so that's nothing new. But something is worrying me. “Why did you say we need to get away from your father?” I ask, voice small.
Sebastian bites his lower lip, and for a second I can see the weight of it in his face. “Apparently, this asshole is saying Dad hired him to carjack us that night. The objective was simply to get rid of Mom. Winter was just going to be part of the payment.”
It’s like someone kicked me in the gut. Mr. Vale was never warm and fuzzy to me, but was this his plan all along for bringing me into his home?
He just had to bide his time, make it look like it was truly an unfortunate event.
No one would have looked for me. I had no one who would have cared that I was missing other than Tristan.
Tristan’s body feels absolutely still beside me. It’s like his whole body is rigid, tremouring with a cold, coiling fury that I can feel through my palm still resting on his chest.
“He could be lying, but—” Sebastian starts, and the word hangs there because none of us think the guy is making it up.
“But he’s not,” Tristan cuts in, voice flat and final. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
I let him pull me closer until my head is tucked into the hollow of his shoulder. He holds me like he’s trying to calm himself. We need to stay calm for this if we’re going to make the right moves.
“You know I’m going to kill him,” Tristan says to Sebastian, as if offering a courtesy rather than asking. It’s their father after all. There’s no question in it, only a promise that it will be done.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Sebastian replies without hesitation. “I’d kill him myself if I were there.”
Tristan doesn’t answer that. He only says, ice-hard, “Tell the Morettis not to kill that fucker. I want to look him in the eye while he’s gasping for fucking air.”
“You got it. And turn your fucking phone on,” Sebastian says, and then both of them hang up the same instant, the screen going dark.
I turn to him, and my voice trembles more than I like. “What are we going to do?”
His hand finds the nape of my neck, and the comfort in it makes me feel like everything is going to be okay. “I’m going to make everyone regret ever putting you in danger.” He leans down and kisses the top of my head. It’s soft, fierce, a benediction and a threat rolled into one.