CHAPTER SEVEN
I checked out with Tristan at my side, ignoring the receptionist’s lingering stare.
Her eyes had widened at the sight of him–tall, golden, and effortlessly magnetic.
But it was me she seemed most shocked by.
Judging. Wondering. Her gaze flicked between us like she couldn’t make sense of the pairing.
Our appearances clashed in a way that made us look worlds apart, and yet I hadn’t felt that divide once… until she looked at us like that.
We stepped onto the crowded path leading to his van.
My shoulders relaxed the moment I saw the cop car was gone.
No flashing lights. No imminent threat. The tension that had coiled in my spine for the last hour began to unravel.
I felt lighter. The heat of the sun didn’t bother me.
If anything, the world looked brighter, and it had little to do with the morning light.
We walked across the gravel lot, weaving between parked cars and sunburned tourists. Tristan’s stride was easy, confident. Mine was more hesitant, like I wasn’t sure what I’d find at the end of this walk.
Then I saw it.
A sky-blue VW camper van, vintage and charming, parked beneath a crooked pine tree. It looked like something out of a road-trip movie: rounded edges, white roof, chrome bumpers catching the sunlight.
It was spotless.
Not just clean, but beautifully maintained. The paint gleamed, the tires looked new. Even the windows sparkled.
Wow.
“This is it,” Tristan said, pride in his voice. “My ride.”
“You live in this?”
He nodded, unlocking the passenger door and sliding it open with a click. “Been living out of this for the last while. She’s got everything I need.”
I stepped closer, peering inside. “This is definitely not like the kidnapper van with tinted windows I was imagining last night.”
He shot me a half-smile. “Sorry to disappoint.”
The interior was surprisingly spacious. A small kitchenette hugged one wall, complete with a mini sink and stove.
A fold-out bed was tucked neatly in the back, covered in a gray blanket and a couple of mismatched pillows.
Another guitar leaned against the wall beside a stack of books.
Everything was tidy. It was minimal. Chosen specifically to occupy this space.
“You’re really organized,” I said, stepping in slowly.
He shrugged. “You have to be. When your whole life fits in a van, clutter becomes your enemy.”
I ran my fingers along the edge of the counter. “It’s cozy.”
“It’s freedom,” he said, watching me closely. “I go where I want. Stay as long as I like. No rent. No rules. Just the road.”
I turned to face him. “Doesn’t it get lonely?”
His eyes flicked away for a moment. “Sometimes. But I meet people. I play music. I keep moving. That helps.”
I nodded, absorbing his words. “You’re brave.”
“Or stupid. Depends who you ask.”
I sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the slight bounce beneath me. “Do you usually show people your ride, Tristan?”
He was strangely solemn. “No.”
“Just me?”
“Just you.”
The air shifted. My breath caught. I wasn’t sure what to say—didn’t know why I had even asked. I looked away, pretending to study the books stacked beside the bed.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he said quietly. “I just…I want you to know I’m not playing games. I don’t…I don’t do this, either.”
I nodded slowly, thinking of last night and how close he had come to unraveling. “I believe you.”
He stepped inside, closing the door behind him. The van felt smaller now. Warmer. Charged. Never comfortable, but not in a bad way, which shouldn’t have made sense, and yet…the tension I felt around Tristan didn’t make me want to pull away.
“So, how do you entertain yourself in this van?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood. “Do we have a cool screen you flip down from the roof or something?”
“No screens,” he said.
“Just your phone?”
He ran his teeth over his bottom lip, letting out a light laugh. “No phone.”
I let that answer sit for a moment. “Nothing at all?”
He motioned toward the front of the van. “I have a radio and an old MP3 player wired into the speakers. That’s as far as my gadgetry goes.”
Lost for words for a moment, I sputtered, “How does anyone reach you? What happens if you have an emergency?”
“There are phones you can use in most places, and I’m careful.”
“What if you broke down in the middle of nowhere?”
“I know my way around this van.”
“What if you ran out of fuel?”
“I have a fuel can stored.”
“What…” I paused, trying to find an emergency he couldn’t get himself out of. All I could settle on was, “But why?”
Tristan mulled that over, and I could tell it was a serious topic because there was little humor in him. Something bothered him.
“I want to show you something.”
He reached into a drawer beneath the kitchenette and pulled out a small, worn photo album. The leather cover was faded, the corners grayed. He handed it to me without a word.
Intrigued, I opened it slowly.
Inside were Polaroid photos—dozens of them. Not of sunsets or places he had visited, but of what I knew was Tristan and his father.
A younger Tristan, maybe six or seven, grinned beside a heavyset man with the same blue eyes and unruly blond hair.
They stood in front of the same sky-blue camper van, parked in forests, beside lakes, outside busy diners.
One photo showed them roasting marshmallows over a campfire.
In another, Tristan slept in the passenger seat, his head resting against his dad’s chest.
I glanced at the seat itself, imagining Tristan that small in this very camper.
“My old man loved the road,” Tristan explained softly. “He bought this van in the seventies. Even when it got old and rusted, it stayed the same. Felt the same. Old but familiar. Like home. He always said it was the only thing that ever made him feel free.”
I turned the page.
They grew older with every photo. His father aged. Tristan grew taller. The van changed along with them, aging until it looked nothing like it did now.
My throat thickened with emotion as I watched Tristan and his father grow before my eyes.
“He passed away…” Tristan’s voice tightened. He paused, collecting himself. “I found the van in storage. I didn’t even know he’d kept it until I went through everything he left behind. It was falling apart. Took me months to bring it back to life.”
I looked up at him, my heart aching. “You did all this yourself?”
He nodded and looked around the van, heavy in thought. “Every bolt. Every panel. I didn’t know what I was doing half the time, but I figured it out. I had to. It was the only way I could make it up to him…”
He paused again and took a deep breath.
“It was one of the most important things he left me. It’s not just a nice ride.”
I ran my fingers over a photo of Tristan, older now, standing beside the freshly restored van. He looked proud and determined, but…
Alone.
“We weren’t on the best of terms when he died,” Tristan said quietly.
“I was off being a young shit. He’d call me every night, and I put him on ignore.
I took oil and gas jobs in remote places where you make a shitload of money.
When I came home, I lived a very…” He paused, searching for the right word. “Materialistic life.”
I didn’t respond.
I waited for him to continue as he took a few moments to collect himself. His gaze was distant. He was somewhere else, lost to moments in the past I could see were still weighing him down.
“I got too wrapped up in the noise. Forgot about this way of life,” he finally continued. “But when he went…it wasn’t pretty. It was fast and painful, and all he wanted was someone there when he went. And I…”
He shook his head, rubbing his jaw as his nostrils flared.
“I wasn’t fucking there when he needed me, Daze.”
My eyes felt raw.
His hurt was so palpable.
“I’ve got a place where I want to scatter his ashes,” he whispered. “A place we used to love. I’m headed there now.”
“And then?” I asked.
“Then I keep driving, like I’ve been doing. Keep hitting the road and chasing those sunsets.”
I nodded with understanding and closed the album carefully, handing it back. “This is a beautiful album, Tristan. Thank you for showing me, and for opening up to me about this part of your life.”
He took it but didn’t look away from me.
Abruptly, he said, “Come with me.”
I froze. “What?”
“Come on the road. Just for a while. You don’t have to promise me anything.”
I hesitated. My heart thudded. “Tristan…”
“You don’t know where you’re going. I never know where the fuck I’m going. It makes sense.”
“Leaving with you doesn’t make sense.”
“Then it doesn’t have to.”
“Now you’re not making sense.”
He didn’t smile at my teasing response. He remained solemn. “I don’t want this to end.”
I didn’t move. I kept my eyes locked on his. “You can’t be serious, though.”
“I am.”
My guard slipped, and a moment of terror shot through me.
If I left with him…I was too vulnerable.
Didn’t he see that?
Didn’t he understand that I was a piece of broken trash?
At the same time, he didn’t want this to end.
And I…
My heart continued to pound. “Tristan…”
“I know you’re scared,” he said, his voice low.
“And yeah, I’m rough around the edges. Fuck, I’ve got places inside myself I didn’t know could corrode.
Probably don’t deserve another minute with you, but…
I swear you don’t ever have to be scared of me.
The world’s a scarier beast than I am, and I’d rather be your shadow than some ghost wondering how you’re surviving out here alone. ”
He swallowed, whispering, “I don’t want us to walk away and become strangers.”
I didn’t answer right away. I couldn’t. His words sat heavily in the air, like fog that wouldn’t lift. Tristan didn’t move. He no longer spoke. He just waited for my answer.
“I don’t know what you think I am,” I said, my voice hardly above a whisper as I forced myself to look at him.
“But I’m probably not it. I’m not mysterious or brave or beautiful in the way you seem to think.
I’m just broken, Tristan. And scared. And so tired.
And…I can’t be someone’s anything right now. ”
He inched closer, his eyes burning into mine.
“You think I’m looking for perfect?” he asked. “I’m not. I’m looking at you, Daze. Scared, exhausted, half-ready to run—and still here. Don’t turn that into something smaller than it is.”
I swallowed hard, my throat aching. “You don’t know me.”
“I want to,” he urged. “That’s the point.”
I looked up at him, at the way the sunlight caught in his messy blond hair, at the way his eyes held mine—hopeful but ruined in a way I understood too well.
“You should hear alarm bells around me,” I said next. “I have nothing on me. I didn’t pack a thing. I know you’re wondering why.”
“Of course I’m curious.”
“That should concern you.”
“Everyone’s running from something, Daze.”
I took a deep breath. “Tristan, I barely have two pennies to rub together—”
“You’re my guest,” he cut in. “I’ll worry about finances.”
He had thought it through. I could tell. Whatever I threw at him, he would reason away. He was unshakable in his invitation. He wanted me to go with him.
He wanted it badly.
I blew out a breath. “This is wild.”
He smirked. “But you’re wild.”
I let out a surprised laugh. “Only because I’m around you, and you are wild.”
“So let’s be wild together.”
I paused, trembling.
This was crazy.
This was a mess in the making.
The most impulsive thing I could ever do.
June would want this, and I would want this for her.
Out of the darkness, she would tell me.
I had been in it too long. But now it was too bright, and I didn’t know if I could withstand seeing everything for what it truly was.
I thought about Tristan leaving. About not being able to get in touch with him. He would be long gone. A distant memory while I…did what exactly?
I had already thrown caution to the wind by letting him into my bed and inside me. I had left my life behind even before that. I was aimless, and Tristan…
I didn’t want him to be a memory. Not yet, at least. The thought made my entire body grow cold with dread.
I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. “I’ll go, but I’m not promising anything.”
“I’m not chasing big promises,” he replied, his voice catching with excitement. “Just a seat beside me, Daze.”
I finally opened my eyes. “I don’t have anything to offer.”
“I just want you.”
I just want you.
The words felt like silk on my skin.
I just want you.
They also flayed me on the inside, dredging up wounds he had no idea existed.
I just want you.
Out of the darkness…
I gave him a weak smile. “Okay, Tristan.”