CHAPTER TEN
My eyes cracked open. The stillness was interrupted every now and then by birdsong and the faint shift of Tristan’s legs against the mattress.
His arm was wrapped around my middle, my back pressed against his bare chest. He breathed into my hair, and judging by the uneven rhythm, I knew he was awake. His lips moved slowly across my bare shoulder before he buried his face in my hair again and inhaled deeply.
My heart squeezed at the tenderness of it. The way he held me was so sure, as though waking up with me in his arms was already normal.
This sort of gentleness put a lump in my throat. I stilled and tried to take deep breaths to calm my heart.
Tristan noticed.
“Morning,” he whispered, his voice breaking through my pained emotions.
“Morning,” I whispered back so quietly I barely heard myself speak.
“You sleep okay?”
I had never slept so hard.
Except—
“There was a noise last night.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, we had some visitors.”
“Visitors?”
“Raccoons. I left a bag out with a few bars I forgot to pack away.”
“Oh, no.”
“They got into it. I had to run them off.”
My eyes widened. “What if it had been a big animal? Or a person trying to break in?”
He looked amused. “I go out with a knife.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a Buck 110 on the dashboard for easy access.”
I didn’t pretend to know what a Buck 110 was. “Is it big enough to fight a bear?”
He paused, his amusement growing. “Daze.”
That was it.
Daze.
Like that was answer enough.
He wasn’t laughing at me. I was aware my morning brain was asking silly questions, but he didn’t seem bothered. My cheeks burned beneath his intense stare, like he found me so damn adorable he didn’t know how to respond.
I looked away for a beat, biting my lip.
Changing the subject, I asked, “What time is it?”
“It’s morning,” he simply answered. “What did I say about the clock out here?”
I smiled, reflecting on our late night chat last night. “It doesn’t exist.”
His voice lowered. “You know what does exist?”
His arm loosened around my waist, and his hand ventured beneath my stomach. He found my center and lightly grazed his fingers along it as he said heatedly, “You. Me. Us. We exist right now, don’t we?”
I nodded, shutting my eyes as I pressed my ass against his already hard length.
He let out a soft curse.
“Can I fuck you, Daze?” he asked, almost breathlessly.
I twisted my face to look at him. His eyes were squeezed shut and his lips were parted. He was hardly breathing as I pulled his mouth to mine.
The kiss was sloppy and filled with lust.
He spread my legs apart, his fingers running along my folds. I let out a soft sound, and his kiss only deepened, turning messy as he slipped a finger inside me.
He grunted, as though he had noticed how wet I was for him and his touch.
He withdrew his finger and pushed me onto my back. Then he reached into the narrow drawer beside the bed, pulled out a condom, and set it near my hip before settling over me.
But we weren’t kissing.
He was staring at me, his quickened breaths hitting my face. He searched my eyes, and when I squirmed and looked away, his gentle fingers touched my chin, coaxing me to look back at him.
“What?” I asked quietly, my cheeks heating beneath the deep look he was giving me.
“Just wondering where you came from,” he murmured.
“Nowhere,” I said, brushing my lips against his. “I’m no one, Tristan.”
He kissed me back, but his eyes never closed. His brows drew together as he looked at me.
“Only people who are running say things like that.”
I looked at his mouth. Anything to sever the hold he had over me when I stared into his eyes.
“I don’t feel like I’m running right now.”
“No?” he prodded.
I shook my head slightly. “No.”
“No broken heart I gotta worry about?”
My chest tightened as my eyes flashed to his. I buried my shock quickly beneath the heat in his gaze.
I swallowed hard. “No broken heart.”
He kissed me softly. “Good.”
He reached for the condom without taking his eyes from me, tore it open, and rolled it on.
I wrapped my legs around his hips. My fingers curled into his hair. I shut my eyes, breathing him in as he slowly rocked into me, fucking me with a restraint I could feel in every tremor of his body.
My skin burned.
I was all feeling.
My entire existence centered around this.
I was vulnerable and aching and filled with life.
And this vibrant young man was enjoying me in a way I had never experienced before. His kisses were feverish, his breaths ragged. He may have been fucking me slowly, but I could feel how much effort it took him to hold back in the way he shook over me after every thrust.
“Don’t want this to end…” he whispered, drawing a long moan from me when he lightly ground himself between my legs, sending sparks of pleasure through me.
In the heat of the moment, hanging in that space between bliss and heartache, I whispered back, “Everything ends.”
He continued to move, his biceps straining as he rocked slowly in and out of me.
“Do you want this to end?”
I knew he wasn’t talking about the sex.
Whatever this was, it had already begun to mean too much to him. I could see it in the way he looked at me, like there was something here he was afraid to lose.
“No,” I admitted.
The instant the word left my lips, his mouth crashed against mine. His kiss was long and deep.
I ran my hands down his back, gripping his ass and trying to draw him deeper. His thrusts came faster and harder. We spiraled together quickly through hot breaths and kisses filled with teeth and tongue.
He fucked me so thoroughly that my walls gripped him, my body unwilling to let him go.
When I came, the world narrowed to that quiet pocket of morning inside the van. His warmth wrapped around me, cocooning me in his scent and tender touch until nothing existed beyond the man holding me and the small space containing us.
Nothing had ever come close to that kind of tranquility.
Bacon and eggs cooked on the stovetop, and the smell was to die for. Tristan filled two plastic cups with orange juice and handed me one.
I watched him as I sipped mine.
As though sensing my stare, he raked a hand through his messy hair like he wanted to tame it. Sitting down, I smiled into my cup as he returned to the food.
Within seconds, the only sounds in the air were birds chirping and food frying in the pan.
The morning was slow, golden, and quiet. I felt like I had stepped into someone else’s life—one where peace wasn’t a stranger but a familiar friend.
We ate with our plates balanced on our laps, perched on the folding chairs again, the fire pit now cold and empty. I looked out at the trees and the way sunlight filtered through the branches. It was beautiful.
“This is…nice,” I said, surprised by how much I meant it.
Tristan glanced over. “Yeah?”
I nodded. “I’ve never been in nature like this before.”
He leaned back, stretching out his legs. “Do you want to stay another night?”
I hesitated, but only for a second. “Yeah, I do.”
He smiled. “Then we stay.”
Before we did anything else, Tristan glanced down at the heels I had left beside the van and frowned.
“Gotta get you shoes, Daze.”
“Just some flip-flops will do.”
The campground office sold a cheap pair, along with toothbrushes and a small collection of travel-sized toiletries. Tristan bought what I needed before I could dig through my purse or begin protesting.
“You can pay me back by not breaking your neck on a trail,” he said.
The day unfolded like a dream.
We hiked a short trail that looped around the campground, nothing too intense. Just enough to feel the earth beneath our feet and the sun on our backs.
I hadn’t changed back into my dress. Tristan’s shirt fell well past my bum, and I had rolled his shorts several times at the waist to keep them from sliding down.
I must have looked primitive and wild.
And I didn’t care.
I had never done this before. Lived among this much nature, breathing in the scent of it, feeling the breeze move beneath my shirt.
If I had to walk barefoot, I would have.
Out here, nothing could touch me.
We passed a group of men coming from the opposite direction. Four of them, loud and sunburned, carrying cans despite the early hour.
Their conversation quieted when they saw me.
I felt their eyes before I looked up. They moved over my bare ankles, up my bare legs, lingering where Tristan’s oversized shirt hung over my thighs. One of them glanced at the others with a grin that made my skin tighten.
Tristan noticed.
His hand settled against my lower back, firm but gentle, guiding me to the inside of the trail. Then he moved closer, his body cutting off most of their view without breaking stride.
It happened so naturally I almost wondered whether he had done it on purpose.
Until one of the men looked back.
Tristan looked back, too.
He didn’t say anything. There was no challenge in his posture or ridiculous display of masculinity. Just a hard stillness in his face that hadn’t been there seconds before.
The man turned around.
Tristan’s hand remained against my back until we had passed them.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded. “Were you about to fight four men over my legs?”
His jaw shifted. “No.”
“No?”
“I was about to make sure they kept walking.”
I looked up at him. “That sounds suspiciously similar.”
“It isn’t.” His gaze dropped briefly to the bare stretch of skin above my flip-flops before returning to my face. Something darker moved through his eyes. “I don’t blame them for looking.”
My cheeks heated.
“I just don’t have to make it easy for them.”
There was something possessive in the way he said it, but he hadn’t touched me like I belonged to him. He hadn’t told me to cover myself or made their staring my fault.
He had simply put himself between me and something that made me uncomfortable.
I moved closer until my arm brushed his.
His expression softened immediately.
“Better?” he asked.
“Yes.”
His fingers spread against my back.
“Good.”
We continued down the trail and found a hidden stream where I kicked off my new flip-flops and lowered my feet into the cold water.
Later, we rested on a blanket near the van, napping lightly and talking about nothing. He played soft, ambient music through the van’s speakers, leaving the doors open so it drifted out toward us.
I thought about the past.
Memories from long ago.
Pulled out of the rubble, haunting me suddenly.
“There was a boy named Robert,” I began quietly.
Tristan turned his head toward me. “Yeah?”
“He was my first crush.” I smiled faintly at the memory. “He was eleven. So was I.”
“Did he like you?”
“God no,” I paused then. “I had serious competition, Tristan.”
“It’s tough being eleven, Daze.”
“Yeah, well, I knew him, but…I doubt he really cared to know much about me. That was the embarrassing part. We talked. Played. Did all that, but I wasn’t part of the It Crowd.
Anyway, I just thought he was beautiful.
” I picked at a loose thread on the blanket.
“He had dark hair and always carried a basketball under one arm. His t-shirts were always so long, and that was all the rage, to have them stop at your knees. I used to hope he would notice me, but every time he came near me, I forgot how to speak.”
Tristan’s mouth shifted. “Hard to imagine.”
“I was painfully shy.”
“You?”
“Yes, me.” I nudged him lightly with my elbow.
“One day, he walked right past me in his gigantic orange t-shirt. We’d done Art that day and he’d sat in my group, and he’d goofed around and called me a shrimp because I was smaller than him.
He was close enough that I could have said something, like bring that up, but I didn’t.
I looked at the ground and let him go. I really should have said something, Tristan. ”
The teasing left Tristan’s face.
“There was a shortcut a lot of kids took on the way home,” I continued.
“Someone had torn a gap in the chain-link fence, and instead of walking all the way around, kids would squeeze through and cross the train tracks. It was stupid, but everyone did it.” I picked at the skin around my nail.
“Less than an hour after I saw him, his basketball slipped away from him and rolled onto the tracks. He ran after it.”
Tristan went still beside me.
“There was a train…”
The music continued softly from the van as I took a moment to collect my thoughts.
“For months afterward, I would lie awake crying and stare at the ceiling,” I said. “I used to reach one hand into the air and wonder if he was somewhere above me, reaching back.”
“Daze…”
“I know. Silly thoughts from an eleven-year-old.” I swallowed.
“But sometimes I still think about him walking past me. If I had been braver, I might have said hello or make a joke about being the shrimp. Maybe he would have stopped. Maybe I could have delayed him by a minute, and the train would have already passed by the time the ball reached the tracks.”
“That isn’t on you.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I looked over at him. “Mostly.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“Maybe he would’ve stopped,” Tristan finally said. “Maybe he would’ve smiled and kept walking. Maybe the ball would’ve rolled onto the tracks five minutes later instead.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.” His eyes held mine. “But neither do you.”
I hated that answer because it was the truth.
There were endless versions of that afternoon inside my head.
In some, I spoke. In others, Robert stopped.
In one, the basketball rolled beneath a parked car instead and he spent ages fishing it out before taking the route to the train tracks.
I had rewritten those few minutes so many times that the real ones had begun to feel like only one possibility among many.
But there was only one version I had been forced to live with.
I lay there with the breeze moving over my skin, feeling bubbles of joy rise in the pit of my chest. I curled into Tristan, his body solid and warm beside mine. His hand found my waist, and I let it stay there.
“I don’t think I ever learned how to be calm,” I whispered. “But this…”
“What is this?” he asked.
“This is just…being.”
There was that word again.
Being. Existing. They meant the same thing, didn’t they?
Except they no longer felt like empty words.
Not here. Not with him beside me. For the first time in years, I could feel myself doing both.
Tristan watched me for a long moment. Then he leaned in and brushed his lips against mine, kissing me softly.
He wasn’t trying to turn that moment into something sexual.
He was simply there, sharing it with me.
Before we left the stream, I asked Tristan for his knife.
He handed it to me without asking what I intended to do.
I found a tree near the water where the bark was smooth enough to mark. Slowly, carefully, I carved ROBERT into the trunk. Beneath his name, I scratched a crooked circle with curved lines running through it.
A basketball.
Tristan stood several feet behind me and said nothing.