Chapter Thirteen – Tristan
I needed time alone, to cool down, to calm myself down, to stop myself from letting my inner demons take over. I don’t know why I showed Mabel the scars on my arm. She didn’t have time to ask, but I could tell the question was on the tip of her tongue: who’s Shay?
And then I would’ve had to fight everything in me to resist telling her the truth.
So I went outside. I went for a walk in the darkness—something I’ve done often since coming here. At first, it was to test the boundaries of the collar on my neck, but after a while it was simply something I did to pass the time on those nights when I couldn’t sleep.
By the time I find myself back at the house, it’s after eleven, and I strangely find Wolf waiting for me in the dining room, where our plates still sit and the two pizza boxes from dinner remain untouched. It doesn’t even occur to me right away that that’s odd.
The look Wolf gives me is one of troubled concern. “Where is she?” His arms are folded over his chest, making his dark shirt appear a tad too tight.
“Mabel?” I ask.
“After her father left, I believe she went after you. Don’t tell me she didn’t find you.”
“No, I—” Mabel tried to find me after her dad left? “She went outside after me? Are you sure she’s not upstairs?”
“Tristan, we both know I watch everything that happens in this house. The only time you can be truly alone is out there. I know you showed her Shay’s name on your arm.” Wolf, normally the emotionless one, sounds quite accusatory.
I glare at him. “What are you saying? You think I waited in the shadows out there in hopes that she’d try to find me, and then, what? Killed her? You think her fucking body’s out there somewhere?” The more I talk, the more irrationally furious I become.
Wolf has every right to believe the worst in me. The blood on my hands can never be washed clean.
But to think that I would hurt Mabel? No, fuck this guy.
“I’m saying that, perhaps, you regretted showing her that scar. Perhaps you decided to let her in a little too fast, too soon, and you figured you’d be better off without Mabel and the way that she—” Wolf pauses. “— cares .” The way he says that final word, with a slightly mocking tone, tells me he did indeed listen in to the conversation Mabel and I had while her dad was outside.
I bare my teeth as I chuckle darkly. “You? I’d kill you in a fucking heartbeat if I could. I’d pull out your heart while it still beats and show it to you before I run a nice, sharp blade across your throat. I’d watch and laugh as your blood pools across the floor, ebbing like a tidepool. Trust me, Wolf, I’d kill you in a thousand different ways… but Mabel?”
All of my fury toward Wolf vanishes when I think of Mabel out there, in the darkness, all alone.
“I would never hurt Mabel,” I whisper.
“Then go get her,” Wolf tells me. “Bring her back here and prove me wrong.”
I don’t wait a moment more. All this talk has already wasted too much time. I walk right back out of the house and into the cold night air. If Mabel’s in the woods… it might take forever to find her. She might’ve gotten lost, turned around in the pitch-blackness under the forest’s canopy. I might not find her right away.
I might not ever find her.
The possibility sets me off, and I take off in a run, wanting to waste no more time. A flashlight might help, but I know these woods like the back of my own hand. I’ll find Mabel and bring her back to the mansion, and then…
Then I don’t know.
What I do know is that it’s not safe for a girl like Mabel to be out in these woods alone. Not at this hour. Even during the day it’s not safe, but at night? At night the nocturnal hunters come out. At night animals get hungry.
And there’s never really a good time to come across a bear or a mountain lion.
The thought of Mabel being found by a vicious animal is not a pretty one. She’s the opposite of big and strong; she’d make easy prey for anything with sharp claws and teeth. Take it from me, from someone who knows and understands how hunters operate. She’s a sitting duck out here, wherever she is—and the thought fills me with dread.
No, it’s more than that. As I traverse through the dark woods, it’s more than simple dread. It’s a gnawing, creeping horror. It’s a sick and twisted anxiety I shouldn’t even feel. After all, who is Mabel to me? She’s no one.
She’s no one… but at the same time, she’s so much more than that. She’s a girl who treats me like a man, the girl who graced me with a smile, with her laughter, all things I never had before.
A new sense of urgency fills me. I have to find her. I have to. I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t, if I can’t. I’ll probably backslide, lose what little grip I have of my sanity. I’ll lose everything.
“Mabel!” I call her name out into the wilds, stopping to listen, to see if I hear her yell back. I don’t hear a single sound. The forest is eerily quiet, no snapping of twigs in the distance. Nothing at all.
It goes on like that for a while: me frantically searching through the darkness, stopping only to call out her name every so often. I don’t know how much time passes, but with each minute that ticks by the hope inside me flickers and threatens to fail.
I can’t stop. I have to keep going. I have to find her.
I need to find her.
Fate, for once in my wretched life, is kind to me. The next time I call out her name, in the distance I hear Mabel say “Hello?” It’s a weak response, but it’s all I need. It gives me a direction to run to.
I zip through the darkness like it’s my home and I’ve finally returned to it. I move deftly through the forest, my eyes having long since adjusted to the near-pitch-black level of light. The moment I come across Mabel I skid to a stop and drop to my knees beside her.
She’s huddled against the trunk of a wide tree, and when I reach her she breathes a sigh of relief. “Tristan,” she whispers, sounding tired, “I was looking for you.”
“Really? I guess you found me.”
Mabel laughs, but it’s a sad, pathetic sound, and her laughter dies off shortly after. “I got lost, and then… I tripped on a log and twisted my ankle. It hurts to put weight on it. I might’ve sprained it or something, I don’t know.”
She’s fortunate all she has is a sprained ankle. Things could have been so much worse. I could have stumbled upon her corpse and a mountain lion with her blood coating its fangs.
“Why?” I ask.
“Well, I didn’t see it. It’s kind of dark out here. I’m not used to hiking in general, so—”
“No,” I whisper, inching closer to her. “Why come looking for me? Why not just let me go?”
Her voice comes out far softer than it has any right to sound, “Because I wanted to. Because I… you have a habit of running away when we talk about things you don’t want to. I know how that feels. I don’t have anyone who would run after me, so I just thought—I thought I’d find you. Obviously, I didn’t think it would end up like this.”
On my knees beside her, the breath that escapes me right then is one filled with relief. Relief and something else I can’t quite name. Before I know what I’m doing, I reach for her and pull her into me, tucking her face against the crook of my neck as my arms wrap around her.
I don’t think she anticipated the move; that makes two of us. She’s tense at first, but after a few seconds pass, she relaxes into me and clings to me like I’m her lifeline.
“It’s cold out here,” she whispers. “You’re so warm.”
“You shouldn’t come into these woods alone,” I tell her. “I can handle myself, but you? You’re—” Every way I can end that sentence, it’s not enough. She’s so much more than I could ever say.
Maybe I never really regained my mind. Maybe I lost it a long time ago and there’s no hope of it returning. It’s the only way I can explain the way I feel right now, the only way any of it makes sense.
The moment she smiled at me that day we first spoke, I was a goner. There was no coming back for me. Surfacing in these waters was impossible; I’ve been drowning in Mabel’s waters since the first time I saw her.
The obsession. The desperate drive to be near her, to do whatever I can to keep her safe. The infernal craving that constantly threatens to take over.
I’ve felt it before. I’ve known all of this before. It’s what drove me to become the Cobra, to be someone else, the monster behind the mask. It led me to pain and loss and denial. Nothing good ever came out of it.
What hope is there for me now? Who’s to say this won’t end exactly the same? With three new bullets in my body and all-new waves of regret. They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the results to miraculously change even though nothing else has.
I am Tristan Arrowwood. I’m still the Cobra. I’m a man who deserves no happy ending. My crimes, my sins, go against all logic and all religion, blurs the line between right and wrong. I still think of killing Wolf and anyone who dares keep me from what I want. I haven’t changed.
Mabel shivers against me, cuddling into me as she asks, “I’m what?”
The equation isn’t the same, I realize. I might not have changed, but the latter half of the equation has, and therefore the answer will be different. It must be different. I need it to be different.
I need someone who needs me as much as I need them.
Mabel pulls her face away from the crook of my neck, and through the darkness she stares up at me, still waiting for me to answer.
What can I say? How can I describe any of it without sounding like I’ve lost my mind? So I don’t answer. I don’t tell her a single thing. Instead, I move a hand to her lower jaw, and as I do so, Mabel swallows hard, but she doesn’t pull away or stop me.
It’s mechanical on my part. Instinctual. Like I’ve been waiting to do this ever since she graced me with her smile.
I stop overthinking. I let the old me take charge, the me who knows exactly what he wants. I lower my mouth to hers and kiss her like I’m a man on death row and she’s my last meal. It’s tentative at first, hesitant on her side, but I’m too lost and there’s no possible way I can pull away from her.
Her lips are just as soft as I thought they’d be. Sweet and delicious, addicting in every way; I immediately turn into an addict, unable to have my fill. The kiss turns harder as the fire burns hotter inside me. I memorize the way her lips move against mine, how perfectly her jaw fits into my cupped hand.
Not so long ago I would’ve said a girl like this was too sweet for me, but now? Now she’s just what the doctor ordered.
My hand on her jaw falls to her neck and slowly curls around, the tips of my fingers digging into her hair. I kiss her hard, devouring her whole. It doesn’t even occur to me that we’re in the woods, where any hungry animal could stumble across us. The only thing I can think about is that mouth of hers and how amazing it feels on mine. I never want to stop.
But stop we have to in order to catch our breath. We both breathe hard, but all I can focus on is the way she pants and how her hot breath blooms across my face.
“I’m sorry if that was bad,” Mabel whispers. “I’ve never—I don’t much experience when it comes to… that stuff, so—”
I lean my forehead against hers and hush her by saying, “No. Don’t. It was—” Amazing? Everything I needed? Enough to bring me back to life? I could describe it like that and in so many more ways, but I settle for pressing my lips upon hers again.
She wraps her arms around my neck and clings to me like no one has ever clung to me before. Now that she knows what to expect, she’s a more willing participant, as eager and as desperate as I am. My other arm is steel around her, holding her to me. I am right where I should be.
Everything that led me to this point, everything that brought me here; it all fades away until there’s nothing but the present. Nothing but the urgent desire and the carnal need to make Mabel mine. Every single mistake I made in the past, all the cutting and self-destructive habits… none of it matters anymore.
I will always be Tristan Arrowwood. I’ll always be the Cobra. But maybe I can be more than that, more than my past—maybe I can be more for Mabel.
Fuck. I’ll be anything she wants me to be.
Though I want nothing more than to remain here and kiss her all night, we should get back to the mansion—not only so I can give Wolf the middle finger, but also so Mabel can get warm and rest her ankle. It’s the only reason I pull my mouth off hers and whisper, “We should head back.”
Mabel swallows; it’s an audible sound that makes certain parts of me warm. “You’re right.”
I stand, and as I do so I help Mabel to her feet. I can tell it’s her right ankle she twisted; she doesn’t put much weight on it at all.
“We just have to go slow—” It’s all Mabel can say before I hoist her up in my arms.
I might not be as strong as I once was, but she’s small. I can pick her up and carry her just fine.
“You don’t have to,” she starts. “I can walk, just slow.”
The only thing I do is keep walking. Like hell will I put her down and make her walk back to the mansion on an ankle she twisted. After a minute, she must realize I won’t put her down, so she hangs an arm around the back of my neck, along my shoulders, and leans her head to the side.
“Just don’t trip. That’s how I hurt myself in the first place,” she jokes.
I want to tell her I’m not someone who fumbles around in the darkness; in reality, the blackness is another home to me. I grew up in a darkness like this. Tripping? Dropping her? Won’t fucking happen.
My inner compass guides me as I carry Mabel to the mansion. I don’t move as fast as I did when I was alone, but that’s partly because of how I carry her and also because I know the moment we return Wolf will take over her care and put me on the sidelines.
She fits so well in my arms. Perfectly, even. Carrying her is the opposite of a burden, and knowing that she needs me fills me with a sense of purpose I haven’t felt in a long, long time. And her lips… fuck. How am I ever supposed to think of anything else?
We emerge from the forest, walking onto the grassy clearing around the house. The moment the mansion comes into view, Mabel sighs and says, “Thank you.”
I want to tell her she doesn’t need to thank me, that I didn’t do it for her thanks, but I don’t say a word. My mind still races with the night’s events, with the memory of her lips on mine. Though the darkness is home to me, light would have made it better; I would have been able to see the flush on her cheeks and the hazy look in her eyes.
Keeping myself from her is going to be impossible. It was already semi-impossible, but now? The only way I’d be able to stay away from her would be if I’m dead.
And though I’ve been a dead man walking ever since the events in Cypress, I’m not shambling around anymore. No, Mabel instilled in me a breath of life, made my heart beat anew.
Mabel is my life now.