Chapter Fourteen – Mabel
I stand on the beach, the warm, salty water lapping at my feet with the slow retreat of the tide. The sky has not a single cloud, and the sun shines so brightly I have to squint out at the deep blue water. I breathe in deeply, tasting the familiarity of the sea’s breeze.
I’m comfortable here. I like being here. It’s one of the rare places I don’t mind being alone.
It’s as I think that thought, however, that I know I’m not alone. A crawling dread slinks up my spine, and I hear an achingly familiar voice speak behind me, “Forgot me already?”
Before I turn around, I already know who it is I’m going to see, but I turn all the same. The moment I do, the sky turns to twilight, casting unnatural shadows on the beach. Still, the boy standing opposite me remains eerily lit up.
My heart constricts. Jordan.
He stands less than five feet away, wearing his favorite polo shirt and dark blue jeans. His yellow hair is a little messy, but his blue eyes are crisp and clear as ever. The expression he wears when I face him is one of utter disappointment, like I failed him in some way.
I open my mouth to speak, to tell him I haven’t forgotten him, but no words come out. It’s as if my voice refuses to work, like I lost it somewhere along the way.
“Everything I did, I did for you,” Jordan tells me. “I did it all for you and you forgot me.”
Finally, I’m able to speak, and the lone word that comes out of me is, “No.” I try reaching for him as I take a single step forward, but when I blink, Jordan wears different clothes with blood splattered all over them. A big gun is slung across his chest, and more blood dots his face.
“It was for you,” Jordan says again. “I killed them for you, and what do I get? Forgotten. Replaced. I thought we shared a soul, Mabel. It was always supposed to be us at the end.” Something changes in his eyes, and I take a step back the same second he raises that huge weapon and points it at me. “We’re one, whether you like it or not. If I die, you die.”
I close my eyes and turn my face away, my stomach dropping to the sandy ground. There’s no point in denying the inevitable.
When my brother puts his finger on the trigger, I can feel it. The air around us changes, turns sour, and my heart threatens to burst out of my chest. This is the end. This has always been the end. Jordan and I came into this world together, and we would leave it together, too. Codependency at its finest.
Jordan pulls the trigger, and I—
Wake up?
I jerk as I awaken, hearing a few knocks on my door. Though that dream is still alive and swimming around in my brain, I do my best to push it aside as I yawn and say, “Come in.” There’s only two other people in this house, and given how early it feels, it must be Dr. Wolf.
He told me we would talk in the morning, after he made sure I was alright. He wanted to call my dad, but I didn’t let him. I’m fine. Ankle hurts a bit, but taking it easy for a week or two should do the trick. No need to worry my dad needlessly.
With the sun shining through the windows on the far side of the room, I can safely assume it’s morning and it’s time to talk.
My bedroom door opens as I work on sitting up. I still wear the same clothes I wore last night; I was too tired to take them off and get into actual pajamas. I’m sure I look terrible; my hair is probably a greasy, knotty mess, but oh well.
Dr. Wolf walks in, balancing a wooden tray with a plate of scrambled eggs, a small bowl of fruit, and a glass of orange juice. The man wears a snug suit, alerting me to the fact that, while it is breakfast in bed, it is also business.
“Good morning,” Dr. Wolf says with a slight smile as he brings that tray to me. “I trust you slept well?” He places the tray on the bed beside me with a careful hand, watching me all the while.
The dream of Jordan is alive and bright in my mind, but I don’t really want to talk about it, so I settle with saying, “Yeah.” I reach for the plate of eggs while Dr. Wolf goes to close the door to give us privacy. I pick up the fork and have the first bite in my mouth before he sits at the foot of my bed, studying my every movement.
“While you eat, I would like to discuss the events of last night. Why did you go outside, Mabel? You know the wilderness is no place for a girl to be stumbling about alone, especially in the dark. You could have been seriously hurt, mauled by a bear.”
I’m quiet when I mumble, “I know.”
“What were you doing out there?”
“I went looking for Tristan.” When I say it, Dr. Wolf doesn’t seem shocked, like he already knew.
“Why?”
I stab another round of eggs with my fork. “My dad invited him to the table to eat pizza with us. My dad started talking about my mom, and—” I shrug. “—he needed some air, so he stepped out. When he did, Tristan…”
“Tristan what?”
“He showed me the scar on his arm. I mean, the name. I think he regretted it? Because when my dad came in, he ran out. By the time I said goodbye to my dad, Tristan was gone.”
Dr. Wolf watches me, his mouth drawn to a thin line. “And you thought you’d go after him. What I fail to understand is why you felt that need, why you thought it’d be a good idea to wander the woods in search of someone who clearly didn’t want to be found.” Up until that point, he always sounded detached and clinical when he talked to me, but something’s different about this.
It sounds like he’s really unhappy with me and my choices last night.
I go for the orange juice and take a tiny sip. “I just… I didn’t want him to regret showing me.”
“So you went after him in the dark.” To further hit the nail on the head, Dr. Wolf adds, “You went after a man with a violent past alone, in the dark, where anything could have happened. Did you not think that, perhaps, Tristan ran out there because he needed time alone, that he didn’t want to be found? What if you would have found him before he was ready, mmm?”
“Are you saying you think Tristan could have been—” It’s particularly difficult for me to say the next word. “—violent toward me?”
“I’m saying he is here for a reason. Unlike you, Tristan poses an extreme risk to others. I can’t let him in public, Mabel. I can watch what he does inside this house, but the property spans just under one hundred acres. I can’t watch every inch out there. You would have been at his mercy, if that’s what he chose.”
“But he didn’t! And he—” I barely resist confessing that Tristan and I kissed. I don’t know how Dr. Wolf would react to something like that. “I just don’t think he’d hurt me.”
The look Dr. Wolf gives me after that tells me his thoughts about the subject. “I’m sure you thought that about your brother, too—and while it’s true he never hurt you, he did, in fact, hurt many others.”
My gaze falls to the tray of food. “I know it’s stupid. I know it’s dumb, but I trust Tristan.” Even if we didn’t kiss like our lives depended on it last night, I’d still trust him.
“Tristan showed you the name on his left arm. Did he tell you who Shay is?”
I meet Dr. Wolf’s stare as I shake my head and say, “No. He didn’t.”
“Perhaps you should ask him who Shay is and see what he says before you decide whether Tristan is worthy of your trust. You might just find he’s not.” Dr. Wolf stands, straightens his suit, and heads for the door. “Eat up. I’d like you to spend the day resting that ankle. We’ll resume our sessions tomorrow.” He leaves after that, after setting my thoughts aflame.
It’s like my mind is at war with itself as I finish eating. My dream of Jordan, everything Dr. Wolf said, the way Tristan’s lips felt on mine. That last one especially takes up the most room in my head.
I’ve never been a girl who daydreams. Not really. I lost that habit a long time ago, when school proved day in and day out to be miserable. But a kiss like that? It’s enough to kickstart every urge to do just that.
It was like I could feel every ounce of his need, like he couldn’t breathe for himself and because of that had to pull the air out of my lungs for himself. That kiss was everything a kiss should have been.
My first kiss.
My first kiss was with a killer—someone who, now that I’m thinking about it, is just like Jordan. I don’t want to believe Jordan and Tristan are similar in any way, but I’m at the point where I can’t deny it any longer.
It seems I have a type, like I only feel comfortable with boys and men who are capable of wreaking deadly havoc upon other people. What does that say about me?
I finish eating and set the empty tray on my nightstand. I crawl out of bed, get some fresh clothes, and head to the bathroom to shower, all without putting too much weight on my sore ankle. I don’t rush; I take my time as I wash up underneath the hot water.
Dr. Wolf doesn’t think Tristan is good for me. He’s probably not wrong, but… I don’t know. It’s like there’s something invisible tying us together, like I just can’t help being intrigued by him. I can’t help but want him, and based on the on the urgency behind the kiss last night, I’d say he wants me, too.
But I know people like Tristan, like Jordan, can be good liars. I know from past experience that sometimes you can never know what they’re truly thinking, the darkness they hide from everyone else. It could all be a twisted game to Tristan, something to liven up his life.
The mere thought of it being a game to Tristan makes my stomach churn in the worst of ways. I don’t want to believe that. For my sanity, I can’t. If I have any hope of getting better, of being better, I need to believe in something good—otherwise what’s the point?
It becomes clear that hanging out in the hot shower isn’t doing any good for my mental health, so I end it. I get out, brush my hair, and change into clean clothes. I don’t know what I’m going to do today, but I definitely need to take some time to clear my head.
That dream… I don’t need Dr. Wolf to psychoanalyze it for me. I know I feel guilty deep down over kissing Tristan, like I betrayed Jordan by doing so—which is ridiculous because Jordan is my brother. Kissing another guy shouldn’t make me feel an ounce of guilt.
What would you know? When I return to my room, I find it’s already occupied by the very man who stirs up that weird guilty feeling inside me. I freeze the moment I see Tristan, and I suddenly wish I would have dried my hair instead of choosing to let it air-dry. Clean as I am, nobody looks good right after taking a shower.
Tristan stands on the other side of my bed, wearing all black like he usually does. Long sleeves, pulled down to his wrists. When I see him, he appears almost guilty, like he was caught doing something he shouldn’t have been.
“I,” he starts, “came to see if you were all right, and then when I saw you weren’t in here, I—” His shoulders rise and fall with a shrug, and the action reminds me of how those arms cradled me to his chest as he carried me back here last night. “—I didn’t want to leave.”
With everything that filled my mind during my shower, seeing him right now probably isn’t going to help, but it doesn’t matter. I push the door behind me, not fully closing it but giving us some semblance of privacy, and I say, “It’s okay. We should… we should talk about what happened last night, maybe.”
As I walk closer to my bed, Tristan watches me and notes how I don’t put much weight on my injured ankle. “If that’s what you want,” he says quietly.
I want to tell him I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I need. I’m so confused and maybe even a little scared, but as I stare into his chocolatey brown eyes from across my bed, I don’t say a word. He has me tongue-tied. Tongue-tied and so very confused about all of the warring desires inside me.
Everything I want, everything I shouldn’t want, all of the guilt I shouldn’t feel but feel anyways. Tristan is driving me insane.
Neither one of us speaks right away. We’re locked in a staring contest, the bed the only thing between us. With the daylight, I can see every scar on his face, everything he did to himself to feel pain. With the angle of the light hitting him from the window nearby, I can see a different type of scar on his neck, near the collar fixed to it.
The things this man did, what he’s been through to get here… he really is as broken as me, if not more so. Maybe that’s why I feel so connected to him, why I’m so drawn to him even though I shouldn’t be.
Tristan is the one who breaks the silence first, “Do you…” He leans his hands flat on the edge of my bed. “…regret it?”
Regret what? Going out into the woods to try to find him, or the kiss? Either way, however you frame it, the answer is the same, and I tell him that, “No. Do you?”
His reply comes immediately, “Not for a second.” The look he gives me right then is unlike any other look I’ve received—not only from him, but from anyone in my life. It makes me feel like he’s right in front of me, like there’s inches between us and not a full bed. An intense gaze that’s amplified by the hard breath he exhales.
The longer he looks at me with that smoldering stare, the more heated my cheeks become. How on earth could a single look make me feel so… so heavy with a pressure I can’t describe?
“I’m going to be honest with you,” Tristan whispers. “It’s taking every ounce of self-restraint in me to stop myself from crawling on top of this bed to get to you.”
“What happens if you do?”
Tristan’s gaze narrows somewhat in my direction, like he thinks I’m testing him. I’m not. I really am curious what the answer is. “Then not even God himself could pull me away from you.” He blinks, and his gaze falls to the bed. His voice comes out softer when he adds, “I’ve been known to be too much. To go too hard. The things I wanted in the past weren’t right. The things I’ve done… I’m not like you. I’m not a good person. I never will be.”
Is he trying to warn me away? Is he hoping that, by saying all this, I’ll change my mind and tell him it was one big mistake?
“You’re too good for me,” he says, “and I’m too bad for you.”
I take a small step to the side, inching toward the foot of the bed, and the moment I do, Tristan matches my movement on his side. “Who are you trying to convince: me or you?” I make it to the corner of the bed, and he moves to the opposing corner. I have to hold onto the bedframe for support, while Tristan’s hands hang at his sides, in a constant state of flexing.
“I go from zero to one hundred real fast,” he warns.
Maybe that’s what I need. “I’m not running.” And then I realize I couldn’t run even if I wanted to—not with this ankle of mine—and I open my mouth to start to make the joke out loud, but Tristan doesn’t let me.
All of a sudden he’s in front of me, grabbing my face with both hands and pulling me in toward him as his tall frame bends to close the distance. His mouth lowers to mine, and it all happens so quickly that I’m startled by the fast action and gasp into the kiss—but Tristan doesn’t seem to mind based on how hungrily his lips press upon mine.
The hands cupping my face curl back and weave into my hair. My eyelids flutter closed. If I thought last night was a fluke, that we were both only feeling so desperate thanks to the circumstance of me almost getting lost in the woods, I’m proven wrong. This kiss is just as demanding, just as fierce and passionate—maybe even more so, because now I know what to expect. I’m not going in blind. I know exactly how to kiss him back.
Tristan’s hands fall to my sides, and before I know it he picks me up. Our lip lock doesn’t break as he walks us around the bed and crawls on top of it. My head meets my pillow as he lays me down, his body on top of mine, pinning me down in every way.
His mouth moves off mine so he can trail fervent kisses along my jawline and down to the crook of my neck. He kisses a tender spot, making me moan and arch my back against him, and he responds by nibbling that same spot and making me do it all over again.
He lifts his face away from my neck, and I crack open my eyes to find him staring down at me. “What?” I breathe out the question, willing to do anything to get that mouth of his back on me.
“You make the sweetest—” Tristan’s nose grazes mine. “—softest sounds.” His lips brush against mine for the shortest of seconds before he takes my bottom lip between his teeth and draws out another stifled moan from me. “Promise me they’re mine. Promise me they’re all mine, that you’ll only make those sounds for me.”
One of his hands curls around my upper neck as he stares down at me, the desire written plainly on his face. “Tell me you belong to me,” he murmurs. “Tell me you’re mine.”
Maybe I lost my mind somewhere along the way, or maybe it’s the heat of the moment… or maybe I already believe it to be true, but I can’t say no, can’t deny him this. Nodding once, I whisper, “I’m yours, and you’re—” I lift a hand and trace one of the scars on his face, the one near his jawline on the right side of his face. “—mine.”
Tristan’s entire body shudders above mine, like he felt my words in his very soul. “Yes,” he pants, “you’re mine, and I’m yours.” His mouth crashes down on mine again as he inhales everything I am, getting drunk off it. Off me.
I’ve never felt like this before. I never knew it could be like this. How deeply you could feel for someone else in such a short time, like the other person has somehow found a way into every fiber of your being and forever changed you. Consuming in every possible way even though it defies all logic.
The hand on my neck roams downward to my collarbone and lingers there for a few seconds before it drops even lower, cupping my right breast over my shirt and bra. Even with two layers of fabric between his skin and mine, it’s still enough to make me shiver; no one’s ever touched me like that before.
It doesn’t stay there, either. Tristan really wasn’t kidding when he said he goes from zero to one hundred in an instant. That hand falls to the bottom of my shirt and snakes beneath it. His hand dances over the skin on my belly before rising to my chest once again—only this time there’s no fabric between our skin. Beneath my bra, his large, rough hand cups my tit and starts to massage it, and his finger runs over my nipple and instantly pebbles it.
I moan into the kiss. Everywhere he touches turns to fire, and I can’t get enough.
This… this doesn’t feel real. Is this really happening? How am I supposed to do anything when my mind is always going to be here, on this bed, with Tristan? How the heck am I supposed to focus on anything else when the thought of Tristan and his mouth and hands is always going to be right there?
Tristan pulls his mouth off mine, breathing hard as he nuzzles against my neck once more. My body squirms under his, the assault on my neck and the constant pressure of his hand on my chest is almost too much to bear.
I don’t doubt Tristan would go all the way with me right now if I let him. I know he wants to—and, heck, I want to, to—but right now, I think this is as far as we get today. Plus, I don’t really want to have to worry about my ankle when I should be totally focused on him.
But I want to. God, do I want to. Shut my mind off and let our bodies do what bodies do naturally. Live in the present instead of the past. What I wouldn’t give to feel like this twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Tristan’s hand drops lower, moving off my chest, its destination undoubtedly the area between my legs, but I grab his wrist and stop him. He pulls his face away from the crook of my neck to look at me, questioning.
“Can we just…” I’m slow in releasing his wrist, bringing that same hand to his face and letting my fingertips dance along his sharp, scarred jawline. “…lay here?” Whether I blush because of what I’m about to say or because kissing Tristan brought it out of me, I can’t say, but I do blush something fierce when I add, “I don’t know if I’m ready for—”
For some reason, the word sex just doesn’t want to come out, so I settle for, “More.”
Tristan lets out a haggard breath, and before he flops onto his side next to me, he straightens out my shirt. The man would gladly keep going, but at the same time, he won’t push me to do anything I’m not fully ready for—and that’s something I appreciate more than he can know.
I roll onto my side to face him. His head rests a few inches away on my pillow, and though he’s so close his face is a little blurry, I still study him in the daylight. This is the longest we’ve been around each other, not to mention the closest; it allows me to see every single scar on his face and his neck.
For some reason, I feel the need to touch him, so I bring a hand to his face again and lightly touch one of his scars. I just can’t imagine him doing all of this to himself. None of these scars are from suicide attempts; he told me he didn’t want to kill himself, he wanted to die. A distinction most people might not understand, but I do.
I do, because I’m on the other side of the spectrum. I want the pain to end. Some days I feel like I can’t take it anymore and death sounds like a mighty fine alternative.
My roaming hand falls to his neck, near the collar, and I gently touch a scar that doesn’t look like the others. Unlike the others, it’s not a thin line. It’s messier, non-uniform. No bigger than a quarter, but still a noticeable scar marring his flesh.
“What’s this one from?” I ask, half-expecting Tristan to pull away or take my hand in his to move it off his neck.
But he doesn’t. He holds my stare with an intensity that makes my heart skip a beat. “I got shot.”
I swallow hard as my finger traces the outer edge of the scar. A bullet hole. Of course. I should’ve guessed that’s what it was from. “Someone tried to kill you because of what you did?”
“No.” When I give him a questioning look, he clarifies, “They’re a good shot. They just wanted to bring me down. Here.” Tristan’s hand taps his leg. “Here.” That hand moves to his stomach, on the side, and then it moves to cup my hand on his neck. “And here.”
It took three bullets to bring him down? Three bullets that, if I’m understanding correctly, were aimed there on purpose. Wow. Tristan must be a machine, an animal when he sets his mind to it.
Maybe it’s wrong of me, but the words are out of my mouth before I can stop them: “I’m glad you didn’t die.”
Tristan’s hand roams up my wrist and arm, curling around my back and holding me close to him. “You’re the only one that feels that way,” he whispers. “And if you knew…” Shadows cross his face, and he shuts his eyes and sighs.
“You can tell me, if you want. You don’t have to, but I’m here. I can listen. I won’t judge. I… I’m the last person who should judge.”
He opens his eyes and stares at me, and before he says a word, I know in my heart of hearts he doesn’t want to talk about it. Doesn’t want to tell me. Maybe he will, someday, but that day is not today.
Maybe someday I’ll know who Shay is.