Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Tristan
The last thing I wanted to do was go for drinks with mates.
But being at home just reminded me of Parker.
I’d eaten nothing but Uber Eats for a week because I couldn’t spend any time in the kitchen.
I’d moved bedrooms to the top floor because I couldn’t sleep in my bed without her.
I was stretching out the time I spent in my office because what else would I do but work?
Not being with Parker was worse than expected. I was more miserable than I could have possibly imagined.
“Hey, Tristan,” Brigette, the hostess at the Mayfair bar Beck had nominated today, greeted me with warm familiarity.
I managed a smile. Brigette was five ten, blonde, smile as wide as the Atlantic.
She was also usually subject to my very best flirtation.
We’d usually go back and forth—I’d tell her I’d like to take her out, show her the best date of her life.
She would tell me there was nothing she’d like better but she wasn’t allowed to date patrons.
I would tell her that I was worth giving up her job for.
She would tell me she’d have to have a ring first, etcetera.
But not tonight.
I didn’t have it in me.
“Great to see you again, how have you been doing?” she asked.
“Good,” I said. “Is Beck here yet?”
She stiffened at my reaction but I couldn’t bring myself to care. “Right this way.” She showed me to the table where Dexter and Beck were already seated.
“Holy shit, what happened?” Dexter asked. “You look like your cat died.”
“Have you ordered drinks?” I asked.
“What do you want?” Beck asked.
“Anything alcoholic,” I replied.
“I’ll get it,” Beck said. “Anyone object to champagne? I feel like we should celebrate the first baby of the group being born. That one is going to have to play referee between her parents her entire life.”
“Sofia had the baby?” I asked.
“A little girl. They put a picture on the group chat,” Beck said. “You didn’t see it?”
I’d turned my phone off because I’d been obsessively checking to see if Parker had called or messaged. It was sending me half mad. “I must have missed it. A girl. Right. That’s nice.”
“Mate, you’re not very convincing,” Dexter said. “Anyone would think I told you they just bought a sofa.”
“I’m genuinely happy for them,” I said.
“Then tell your face,” Dexter said. “What’s got into you? I’ve never seen you like this.”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “I just have a lot going on at work and . . . you know, I’m not sure this thing with Parker is going to work out.”
“Did I just hear that right?” Beck said, coming back with champagne. “Parker is amazing and great for you. What’s the problem?”
“It’s nothing to do with her specifically.” She specifically was amazing; Beck was right. “I just don’t think I’m made to be with someone in the long term. I’ve always said that.”
Beck and Dexter both stayed silent. I looked up in time to see them exchange a glance.
“What?” I asked.
“I was just thinking we need Andrew,” Dexter said.
Beck cleared his throat. “Or Gabriel at least.”
“All of us probably need to be here,” Dexter added.
“I don’t need an intervention. I’m different from you lot. I never saw myself with anyone.”
“I know,” Beck said. “What’s brought this mood on?”
I thought back to the divorce papers I’d sent her yesterday. She needed space. She’d had a lot to take in. I hadn’t kept her safe. I understood it.
I explained to Beck and Dexter what happened when Parker found out Arthur had known about our ruse all along. And then how she’d completely overreacted about the email monitoring.
“But you barely knew her then. You owed your loyalty to Arthur.”
“Agreed. But at the same time, I could have told her after things developed between us, even though Arthur had asked me not to. She would have been angry at me either way, but I think the right thing to do would have been to encourage her to speak to her father before now.” I regretted that.
It was a testament to her character that she went to tell her father the full story before she got her hands on her trust. I should have encouraged that at least.
“You should have asked her before you started monitoring her emails,” Beck said. “That’s kinda not okay.”
“She knew I was trying to get to the bottom of what was going on with the money transfers and the break-ins. I told her I put cameras in her house. And she knew I was monitoring her bank accounts. Of course I was monitoring her email.”
Beck sighed. “I don’t think she would have necessarily assumed you were monitoring her emails. It’s normal for you to hack into someone’s private messages but not normal for most normal people.”
Maybe I should have told her. I really hadn’t thought it was a big deal. I’d assumed she’d known.
“Okay, so you had a falling out,” Dexter said. “Isn’t it fixable?”
I went on to tell them about her ex and the would-be kidnapping attempt. “It’s completely understandable that she’d want her space after finding out something like that,” I said.
“Is it?” Beck asked. “What am I missing?”
“She’s been under a tremendous amount of stress—her life was potentially in jeopardy. The last thing she needs is me.”
“What are you talking about?” Dexter asked. “She needs you now more than ever.”
“She asked for space. I’m not going to argue with her. It’s completely understandable that our relationship wouldn’t weather this storm. Her ex was a nasty piece of work.”
“I’ve never seen you with a woman the way you were with Parker. Don’t your feelings for her make you want to fight for her?” Dexter said.
I let out a laugh. “My feelings about her are precisely why I don’t want to fight.”
“I’m not following you,” Beck said.
“Maybe we could get over this, but I don’t know if she could ever trust me again. But say we do, and then what? We build our lives together and then something hits us that we can’t recover from. Where does that leave us?”
“So you’re saying leave now because it won’t hurt as much?” Dexter said.
I shrugged. There was nothing to add. Dexter had boiled it down to its core.
“No,” Beck said. “If she’s the kind of woman you’d never recover from losing—that’s the one you have to chase. That’s the woman you have to fight for.”
“Why?” It made no sense to me. Better I protect us both from getting our hearts ripped out and our lives destroyed at a later date.
“Well first of all, because what you’re feeling right now—that snarling dog of regret that howls at you every night—isn’t going to go away.”
Dexter started nodding as if he knew what the hell Beck was talking about.
“That regret will burrow deep—so deep eventually you’ll come to realize that not fighting for her was the worst mistake of your life.
But worse than that, you’ll never be all the man you could be if you don’t have her by your side.
If she’s the right woman, she’ll challenge you in a way that makes you better.
She’ll love you in a way that makes you stronger.
Just being with her will make you more of the person you were always meant to be. ”
I felt trapped, paralyzed with fear as a juggernaut of truth came at me at a hundred miles an hour.
What Beck was saying made sense. Parker made me better.
I knew I was happier, stronger, more with her by my side.
“But I’m not in control of everything. If she doesn’t want me, I can’t change that.
If she dies, I can’t change that. If she wants a divorce when we’ve got kids and a life together . . . that will break me.”
I clenched my jaw, trying to hold back a lifetime’s worth of hurt.
Being with Parker was even more terrifying than being without her.
What if she put herself in danger again and got hurt?
What if she left me? I’d rebuilt my life after my family was torn apart.
I wasn’t sure I could do it a second time.
Dexter slung his arm around my shoulder. “That’s why you need her. Because you’ll be broken without her. There’s always a risk that somewhere down the line, something will change and tear you apart. Grief. Death. Whatever it is. But to avoid joy, to avoid life to keep yourself safe, isn’t living.”
Beck nodded solemnly. “You can’t avoid life, mate. You can’t purposefully avoid falling in love with the woman you’re meant to be with. It’s not right. I think your parents would tell you the same thing.”
I never talked about my sister with my parents.
I never spoke about their divorce or the way my childhood had been overshadowed by illness, death, and divorce.
What was the point? I’d learned my lesson—that I never wanted to feel like that again.
I’d always thought that the easiest way to make that happen was not to care too much about anyone.
Now with Parker gone, I was beginning to feel like I’d already let things go too far.