CHAPTER THREE
I unlocked the door and stepped inside. The air was still, but I felt Tristan behind me like a pulse—his presence warm and quietly potent.
He didn’t crowd me. He lingered at the threshold, letting me claim the space first. When I turned to him, he didn’t move.
He waited, like he needed my final permission.
“You can come in,” I said. My voice was low, but it still felt loud in the quiet room.
He crossed the threshold, his expression unreadable. There was a quiet intensity in his eyes, but his lips stayed sealed. I turned away, trying to settle my nerves. I set my purse down on the mirrored dresser, my gaze flicking to the untouched queen bed.
It looked too pristine.
Too expectant.
What are you doing, Daisy?
“You just checked in?” he asked, gently placing his guitar against the wall.
“This afternoon,” I confirmed.
His eyes scanned the room, thoughtful. “Where’s your stuff?”
I hesitated. “I didn’t pack anything.”
He leaned against the wall, his hands tucked into his pockets. He didn’t react immediately. He absorbed my words like they were pieces of a puzzle. Tristan was deliberate. He let the silence stretch with ease while I waited for his questions.
“It’s a nice room,” he said finally.
My shoulders relaxed. I exhaled. “It’s not bad.”
“You think the bed’s comfortable?”
I glanced at it, cheeks warming. “I don’t know. That bedspread is breaking some laws.”
He chuckled. “It’s pretty vintage.”
The floral pattern screamed nineties. The whole room felt like a time capsule. One I had lived through and still had memories of.
I looked back at Tristan, wondering. “How old are you?”
His smirk was slow, teasing. “Twenty-six.”
Oh, boy.
I wrung my hands together. “You look older.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“Must be all the sun.”
It wasn’t the sun. It was the way he carried himself—grounded and confident, like he’d lived more than his years. I felt so much older, though only six years separated us. It wasn’t the number. It was the distance between the lives we had lived.
I waited for him to ask my age, but he didn’t. He only watched me, quiet and steady, as I paced the room, trying to make sense of this madness.
“Aren’t you going to ask how old I am?”
His answer was quick. “I don’t care.”
Oh.
I didn’t know what to say to that. My body certainly liked it because my skin burned just then, satisfied.
He stayed near the door, as if he knew I could still send him away. I kept wondering what would happen if I let him close the gap. Would he make the first move? Would I want him to?
What would it mean to accept another man’s touch after the wreckage I had left behind?
Everything would change.
Irrevocably.
I mused, unrealistically, that I could still go back. Back to my chair, my books, my learned truths. I waited for that temptation to rise. For the safe routine to win, or at least for the desire for it to.
But it didn’t.
This wasn’t me.
And yet…I didn’t want to be me anymore.
I looked at Tristan. My heart jumped. He was watching me, unmoving except for his eyes. They followed me like a tether.
“Well, I’m thirty-two,” I finally said.
He didn’t flinch.
My heart began to beat wildly. “Does that bother you?”
“No,” he said without hesitation.
“I also don’t know what I’m doing.”
He stayed silent.
I squeezed my hands together, my eyes fixed on the bed. “You might think I’m experienced. But I’m not. So, if you’re waiting for me to make a move…”
“I’m not waiting for anything,” he said softly. “I’m just watching you. And if that’s all I get to do tonight, that’s fine by me.”
I looked at him, unable to resist. “I feel like I’ve led you on.”
“I’ve been the one chasing, if you haven’t noticed.”
“And it led you in here.”
“I hope that’s not because you thought you had no choice.”
I shook my head. “No. But you might feel like leaving now that I’m falling apart in front of you.”
He glanced at my clasped hands. His voice was low. “I don’t want to go.”
“What do you want?”
He smiled, and it reached his eyes. He was beautiful. Exquisitely beautiful. The kind of man I might have dreamed about in another life.
He ran a hand through his hair and let out a soft laugh. “Daze, I’m not looking for an easy fuck. I didn’t come in here expecting anything.”
His bluntness jolted me. “I just think another woman would have mauled you the moment you walked into this room.”
“I’m not with another woman.”
I wanted to ask why he had pursued me. But I didn’t want to sound insecure. Still, the last week had shaken me to my core. I was out of my depth. Reacting nonsensically and impulsively.
Could he really be sincere?
Eyeing him warily, I quietly asked, “Do you really find me beautiful, or was that just a line?”
His humor vanished. His gaze was fierce.
“You are easily the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
I dropped my arms, my fingers curling into the fabric of my dress. His words hit me like a soothing balm.
I swallowed hard, confessing in a rush, “I know how strange I must suddenly seem. I’m just having one of those days, you know? I feel like I’ve peeled off a layer of myself, and I don’t know the person underneath. So…I’m out of my depth.”
He shifted, as though he wanted to come closer but held himself back. His hands clenched at his sides, his voice tight.
“I know what that’s like.”
“Really?”
His eyes bore into mine, a hint of vulnerability showing as he said, “Really.”
When I didn’t answer straight away, he said, “We still have time to turn your day around. We can go for another walk. Watch something dumb on television. I can make you smile, Daze.” His voice lowered. “Or you could let me come a little closer.”
My eyes burned, and I dropped my gaze to the worn rug at my feet, its pattern blurring as I tried to steady myself.
I didn’t want another walk around the block.
I didn’t want the distraction of a television screen.
I wanted him—his attention, sharp and consuming, the way it could pull something ancient and restless awake inside me. I wanted the warmth of being seen by him, the closeness I’d been aching for.
I blinked hard, forcing down the tight knot rising in my throat.
Finally, I whispered, “Then come closer.”
Tristan didn’t move straight away. He looked at me like he was memorizing the moment. Like he needed to be certain I meant it.
Then, slowly, he stepped forward.
The space between us dissolved, and I felt the air shift.
He stopped just short of touching me. Close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his skin. Close enough that if I leaned in even slightly, our bodies would meet.
I looked down at his fingers—those beautiful, callused fingers—and then back at his face. He was watching me with such tenderness that it made my chest ache.
“I want this,” I whispered. “I want…you.”
Tristan’s breath stilled in his lungs as he stared at me.
Then his eyes darkened.
“Then let me have you.”
His hand finally landed on my arm, light as a feather.
I shivered at the contact.
It wasn’t sexual. Not yet. But I knew what it would lead to.
I looked up at him, and something inside me cracked open.
“I’m a little scared right now,” I admitted.
“I know.”
I searched for the right words. Anything to make him understand. “I don’t know how to be this version of me.”
“What version?”
“Carefree.”
He leaned in, his forehead almost touching mine. “She’ll come out, Daze. Just breathe. Be here with me.”
Emotion rose inside me, that swell that could have undone me, but I held it back. I wasn’t uncertain or sad, but I wanted to feel it all clearly.
I wanted him.
I’d felt it the moment he slid into the seat beside me. In the wake of everything I’d abandoned, I’d stepped into a different world—and I wanted to sink into it.
I could sense her there, too. The carefree girl I once was, glowing for one tender heartbeat in the sun before life demanded that she grow up.
His gaze dropped to my mouth, and I saw his intention written all over him. In the way his jaw flexed. In the way his hands, once clenched at his sides, slowly rose.
I braced myself.
My heart leapt because what he was about to do felt inevitable now.
His body met mine, and I waited for the rush. For the wild passion. For things to become physically intense.
But that didn’t happen.
His touch wasn’t rough or rushed.
It was firm.
His large hand slid around my lower back, pulling me into a tight embrace. I gasped softly as he brought me flush against him, our bodies aligned perfectly, like we fit just right. His other hand clasped mine and raised our joined hands between us, as though we were about to dance.
This was different from what I expected.
Nothing like the fantasy I had constructed in my mind.
It was better.
I felt splayed open, like his slow touch left me more undone than the fast intensity I had expected.
“How’s this?” he asked, his voice low.
He was warm and gentle. His touch ignited my skin. My head swam.
I nodded once and answered shakily, “It’s good.”
And it was.
This man was a stranger, but his touch felt too familiar to shake. When I looked at his lips, I felt like I already knew how incredible they would feel against mine.
Are we dancing?
He rocked me from side to side, though no music played. There was only silence and the barely breathing air conditioner as it rumbled back to life.
My head came just beneath his chin. He brought me closer so that I fit there. I felt even smaller against him.
He was like a tree, his arms like branches wrapped around me. I pressed my forehead to his hard chest and inhaled his scent. It made me think of the wild.
This man is wild.
I could feel the life pulsing out of him. The recklessness merged with gentleness. He would have been from a different world one week ago. Our paths would never have crossed. We would have walked past one another on the street.
That thought, stark and honest, only urged me to live in the moment.
Seconds fell away.
His heat traveled through me. Something told me I would shiver if we broke apart. Whatever warmth I possessed had been brought on by him, and without it, I would regress into that cold shell I had lived inside for so long.