Chapter 20
KATIE
When we get home, we go straight to Tristan’s.
He shoves papers under other papers and swipes up scattered pens when we get into his kitchen.
I smile to myself at the barely organized chaos.
Outside of the areas where he has visitors, his house looks like his brain.
A million interests going a million miles an hour.
My chest warms with affection for him. He’s curious and passionate and a little bit wild.
I like that I get to be the person who sees behind the scenes.
We wash our hands side by side in his kitchen sink.
“Who wants to go first?” He holds up a roll of gauze and a bottle of whiskey.
I choke a laugh. “Or we could go to the urgent care like normal people.”
His brow wrinkles. “Why would we do that?”
“Far too normal.” The hospital is also the perfect place for paparazzi, which we avoid at all costs.
“Far too sane,” he agrees, eyes alight with mischief. “And how else would I get to play real, live Operation?” He purses his lips as he looks me over.
“What do you think?” I spread my arms. “Will I live, doc?”
“I’m not sure.” He tilts his head. “My skills are a bit rusty. It’s been—” He squints at the fridge, where he has a whiteboard filled with his illegible scrawl.
“One hundred and eighty-three days since you last injured yourself.” His eyes are wide when he looks back at me.
“Bailey, it’s a new record.” His whisper is awed.
“No thanks to you.”
He grins. “Face it, my girl, you are a liability.”
“Takes one to know one,” I mutter.
“Ah, but for me it’s devilish. It adds to my charm. I’m a bad boy.”
“You are not a bad boy.” Tristan’s far more complicated than that.
He pouts briefly before he taps the counter. “Up you go.”
I hop up onto the cool marble. Tristan sets the bottle down next to me, then a bottle of antiseptic. “It’s shocking how low your pain tolerance is. I practically have to coddle you.” He mimes snapping on surgical gloves and I scowl.
“In a perfect world, I wouldn’t get injured, Tristan.”
He steps between my legs. We’re the same height like this. He braces his arms on the counter. “Let me kiss it and make it better,” he teases.
I’m used to his teasing, but this time, something twinges in my stomach.
“That’s unsanitary.”
He wets a paper towel with antiseptic. “You cried like a little baby last time.”
I shove at his shoulder. It’s like shoving a boulder. “So did you.”
Tristan and I have been bandaging each other up in this kitchen for years.
Him, when he fell out of a tree during a prank and scraped his back up.
I made that one hurt as payback. Me, when I was stung by a wasp and he plucked the stingers out of my shoulder.
Most recently when I punched myself in the face while doing bagwork in the gym and split my lip. He laughed for days over that one.
“And yet, here we are again.” He holds up the paper towel. “You know how this will go.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and sigh. “Fine. This is how it always ends.”
He chuckles, then passes me the bottle of liquor. “Where’s your gun?”
I crack the top. “At home in the safe. I’m off duty.” I take a hearty sip, then roll the whiskey over my tongue. It’s sweeter and smokier than Prince bourbon.
Tristan snags the bottle, then tips the whiskey back, careful not to touch his upper lip. The motion of his Adam’s apple draws my eye. Tristan has a nice throat. Strong, bronzed, curving into a set of very nice shoulders.
He wipes at his bottom lip with his thumb, and my stomach twinges.
Tristan might be my best friend, but right now, as our fingers brush and his eyes gleam as he passes me back the bottle, he feels like a stranger. In the sunlit kitchen, his eyes are gem-bright and he looks half-feral, the way he did earlier.
When he came for me, protected me, held me. Even though I never ask anyone for help and I never expect anyone to come. Tristan came.
Normally, I wouldn’t have another drink, but something inside me wants to put my lips where his have been.
I drink while I hold his gaze, the smoky liquid warming me from the inside out.
He was different today. More. More protective than I’ve ever seen him.
It makes me see him in a new light. More than just a friend, a man.
One who’d go to war for the ones he loves.
His lids go heavy as he watches. “Bold today,” he murmurs.
“Feels like I cheated death,” I say lightly, but my heart is thudding as he watches me.
When we’ve bandaged each other before, it’s been clinical, never intimate.
The air has never been thick like this. His gaze has never felt physical like this.
I want to roll my shoulders to ease the tension, but I hold myself still on the counter as his fingers dance over my stomach, grazing the edges of the scrapes.
“How’d you get these?”
I swallow the shiver that rises. “When I rolled onto my stomach on the platform. I was too short to hit it at the right height.”
He looks up at me with dark eyes. “I could kill him for that.” His words are rough, and I feel them inside my chest.
“Please don’t. I don’t want you to go to jail.”
His lips tug up before he wets another piece of paper towel from the antiseptic. “Lean back. I’ll be gentle.”
I brace myself on my elbows. He bends down, cradling my back with one hand, his hot breath ghosting over my stomach. My skin wants to tremble.
I hiss a breath as he swipes the cloth over my side.
“I know,” he murmurs. “Just a little more.”
The sting makes me want to whimper, but I bite my lip. He glances up, then grins. “You want to scream into my neck?”
I nod, and he cups the back of my head and presses my face to his neck.
The breath shudders out of me as he passes the cloth more firmly to the scrapes.
I gasp into his shoulder. His skin is hot and smooth, right here at the crease, where the ridge of his muscle meets his pulse. It’s a really nice neck.
“I should bite you instead.”
He chuckles, smoothing his hand over my bare back, drawing shivers up my spine. “Bite me, then. I like a little pain.”
There’s a twisting in my stomach, then another sting from the cloth. I sink my teeth into his neck, my tongue tasting salty skin. For two heartbeats, we’re connected, his body curved over mine, his hand against my stomach. He looses a heavy breath before we pull away.
“All done,” he says roughly. “Now let me do your wrist.”
He cleans the gash in my wrist and gets me a splint from the collection he keeps in the downstairs bathroom, then passes me the bottle of antiseptic.
“Your turn.”
He tips his head up, his lashes fluttering closed, his lips parting. I cup his jaw, sliding my palm over the hard angle where it meets his neck, down the solid ridge, scraping stubble, until I reach his mouth.
I’ve never touched his mouth.
“How’d you get this?” My thumb skims the valley below his bottom lip, where there’s a shallow cut.
“Scraped it against the bark.”
It feels like my pulse is beating in the pads of my fingers.
“Do it, Bailey.”
“Don’t bite me,” I warn.
His smile is crooked. It’s the one he gives in photos. It says, maybe I will bite you, but I promise you’ll like it.
I clean the cut as gently as I can, dabbing at it with the paper towel and antiseptic. His breath hisses out, his powerful chest shuddering, but he otherwise doesn’t react. When I press my fingers to his lips to keep his face still, it feels like I’ve inhaled drugs.
Bandaging Tristan Prince is the most intimate thing I’ve ever done.
My chest aches. It might be the most intimate thing I’ll do for a while. I didn’t think I was missing out on the range of human connection, but now it feels like there’s a big blank space inside me, one that I assume most people fill with the kind of casual intimacy Tristan excels at.
The dates will help with that.
I loose a shuddering breath and start putting pressure on the wound. He has fantastic lips. Firm, plush, mobile. Always laughing or teasing.
I wonder what they’d feel like against my own.
My stomach dips. I need to stop thinking like this. This is dangerous. This is why I need to meet someone.
“Bailey, I can hear you thinking.” His lips move under my fingers.
“Just, ah, thinking about my date.”
His lashes lift. “Please tell me you’re not going to see Ryan again.”
“I don’t think he would, even if I wanted to.” I dab the paper towel gently, my fingers on his jaw drifting slowly over the hot skin. “He practically ran away once he realized I was fitter than him.”
Tristan snorts. “You can do better.”
There’s a twisting inside me, a small voice that tells me to make myself more palatable like I did with my past boyfriends.
“You kicked his ass today, didn’t you?”
My hands drop. Tristan is giving me that crooked smile.
“I did.” I grimace. “I didn’t mean to. He just wouldn’t stop being so damn arrogant and I kept hearing your voice in my head. Confidence is sexy. Be yourself.”
His dimple pops. “It sounds like I helped. It sounds like you let yourself go.”
“Yes.” I can’t help my laugh. “Yes, you arrogant ass. I left him in the dust. And honestly? It felt fucking awesome.”
“Hell yes.” Tristan smacks the counter with both palms. He grins and winces as his lip pulls.
“Hell yes.” He holds up his hand and our palms smack together.
“Go Katie.” His eyes spark. I can feel myself grinning back, feeling like I’m filled with sunlight, the way I felt when I kicked Ryan’s ass earlier.
That feeling propels me to jump off the counter, nearly knocking Tristan back.
“I’ll be back.”
I stride down the hall and into his guest bathroom. The mirror is massive and framed in warm wood that complements the greens and muted creams of the potted plants he has in here.
As I wash my hands, I stare at myself in the mirror. I barely recognize myself. My hair is falling out of its braid. I have mud streaks on my chest and bruises on my arm. My eyes are wild, lit by a light that seems to come from inside me.