Chapter 24
KATIE
“Okay. Listen up.” I clap my hands the way I imagine teachers do and scan the high school girls who are sprawled across the gym mats on Sunday morning. There are six of them, from fifteen to eighteen, and one nineteen-year-old alum who is sticking close to Emory.
Malika, the youngest, has braces and a rapt look on her face as I position myself in the front of the gym.
I didn’t plan what to say next, and my stomach squeezes. My gaze flicks to Emory, who is giving me a small, encouraging smile. She thinks I can do this, be a good leader, like her, or an example. But I’m nothing like Emory.
She owns a room, and I really prefer the background, and now that I’m in front of all these kids I can’t let down, my palms can’t stop sweating, and all I can think is sweaty palms are a liability over and over in my head.
Why did I agree to this again? Emory assures me it will make me feel big inside, but I can’t stop thinking about how Nour would be better suited, how I’m too awkward and quiet and there’s absolutely no way I can connect with a group of high school girls.
High school girls didn’t like me when I was a high school girl.
“Did I miss it?” The front door swings open, revealing Tristan backlit by bright sunlight.
Heads whip around. There’s a collective intake of air.
I nearly laugh. Tristan Prince with last night’s stubble and finger-combed hair is a sight to behold.
He’s big and broad and larger than life.
Men like him belong in glossy magazine pages or in fantasies.
They don’t just stroll in and look at you like you’re sunlight when the whole world is clouds.
My stomach jumps at how he’s watching my face. He mouths hi, before he winks and turns his gaze curiously to the group on the floor. One girl sneaks her phone out.
Harmony, the alum, looks at Emory and whispers, “Is nineteen too young for marriage?” Emory barks a laugh and covers her mouth. Her shoulders shake.
A potent cocktail of relief and nerves and irritably pleasurable warmth spills through my stomach.
He strides forward, mouth lifting in a cocky smile, grass-green gaze scanning the girls, and I’m right back to where I was in the kitchen yesterday.
Practice with me.
Ask me with your body.
Oh god.
Luckily, he doesn’t see it. Instead, he’s introducing himself, sheepishly apologizing to the girls for being late.
“Why are you here?” I fold my arms over my stomach, a slight defense against the warm smile he throws my way. I don’t like how I feel, my body reorienting itself toward him, a silly little sunflower to his sun. “You’re supposed to be on a date.”
“Thought you might need a practice dummy.” He strides forward and spreads his arms wide. “Here I am.”
I scowl, then take a quick, shaky inhale before I turn to the girls.
“Mr. Prince has volunteered to be our attacker for this scenario.”
Behind me, Tristan chokes a breath.
“You’re going to beat him up?” Malika sounds skeptical, and one of the other girls giggles. Rosh, I think her name is.
“She’s going to try,” Tristan says merrily, and sparks kindle inside me.
I’m reminded of the first time I sparred with David, the first time I beat him. I felt a hundred feet tall. I felt like I could conquer the whole world. I want to give these girls even a fraction of that feeling to carry with them.
“First lesson,” I say, looking at each of them. “It doesn’t matter how big an attacker is. With leverage and practice, you can beat him every time. Even someone my size.”
Shoulders straighten across the room.
“He’s going to come at me from the front and try to grab me.” I lift my hands, motioning Tristan forward. “I’m going to climb him and gouge out his eyes.”
“But not literally,” Tristan says with a wink.
The girls giggle. I’m too busy giving Tristan murder eyes.
“We’ll see,” I mutter. “You don’t need eyes.”
Tristan is fighting a smile. “Oh, Bailey,” he whispers. “You like my eyes.”
Right then I resolve to beat him. He rushes me, and I let him grab me in a solid collision of limbs. His arms go around my waist, lifting me up. He huffs a triumphant laugh before I loop a leg around his, grab his shoulders, and climb his body like he’s a tree.
I bare my teeth in his face. His eyes are wide.
“You’ve never—”
I growl. “Stop talking.” I cup his cheeks more roughly than I need to and mime digging my fingers into his eye sockets.
“Like this, girls. Don’t be afraid to pop an eye out.”
“Jesus fuck,” he mutters, jerking his head back.
“Don’t you dare drop me.”
“Bailey, if you like it violent, all you had to do is ask.”
I shove back, heat gathering in my stomach as I slide down his body.
He steps back, eyes gleaming, chest heaving, like he knows exactly what he does to me.
“Okay. Imagine your attacker has a knife.” I turn to the girls. None of them are lying down now. All of them are staring at me, and something fires inside me. “What do you do if that happens?”
Sasha raises her hand. She’s the shyest and the newest member. Her skin is blotched with pink on her cheeks and throat, and I’ve noticed she can’t even look at Tristan. I smile at her encouragingly.
“Um, you run away?”
The other girls snort, like they’d never run, but I nod.
“Very good. Everything I’m showing you here today is a last resort. De-escalating a situation and running away is always safer, okay?”
The girls look skeptical. “Do you run?” Malika asks. Her face is wrinkled and I nearly laugh. Emory is looking fondly at her. Malika is practically Emory’s mini-me, with two curly braids instead of blond waves. But the attitude is the same.
“All the time,” I say seriously. “My job is to protect him at all costs. Nine times out of ten my best bet is to get away because it means he’s away and he’s safe.” My throat constricts, the way it always does at the thought of Tristan not being safe.
“And if you can’t?”
I sigh. “Then I might use some of what I’m going to show you today. I might pull my weapon. Always as a last resort.”
The girls’ eyes are wide now.
“Has he ever been hurt?”
I shake my head.
“She’s very good at what she does,” Tristan says quietly. “The best, actually.”
My face heats. The girls are staring at me like they’re meeting me again for the first time.
“But he can’t even fit behind you,” Rosh says.
Malika giggles.
I catch a chuckle from behind me.
I turn to Tristan. His grin is way too arrogant. “Tristan,” I say silkily. “Want to spar?”
“I don’t know,” he drawls. “Should I let you win?”
I grin at him. “Don’t worry. You won’t need to.”
The energy in the room is electric. Tristan and I face off in the center of the mat.
“This is just practice,” I remind them. “I want to show you what you’re capable of. He has thirteen inches on me and about eighty pounds.”
“Of muscle,” Tristan murmurs, and I shoot him a look.
We crouch.
“Fancy seeing you here,” he taunts. “You want to touch me, Bailey? You don’t need an excuse for that.”
I lunge, fast and low, dropping my shoulder and ramming him in the stomach. The breath leaves his body before he’s even on the ground. He falls onto his back and locks his thighs around my waist before I can straddle him.
His eyes spark with something unholy.
I sneak a foot under him and twist my torso for leverage, break his hold, and flip us. His stomach pushes against my thighs.
“Not so cocky now, are you?” I growl.
His gaze skates over my face before he laughs breathlessly. “You have no idea what you look like right now.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
We’re a mess of clawing hands and straining limbs until I finally twist him onto his stomach and wrench an arm behind his back. We’re both panting.
The girls clap.
“Give up,” I whisper in his ear. His smoke and pine scent is in my nose, and every muscle in his torso strains against me. I’m reminded of how deliciously warm he was against me last night. How he caged me with his arms and how small and safe I felt.
“Tristan.”
“Not a chance in hell,” he says huskily.
“Then apologize for insulting me.”
He laughs and goes limp under me before he turns his cheek to the mat, and I catch the lift of his lips, the slow sweep of his lashes.
“That wasn’t an insult,” he murmurs. “And I like this too much to stop.”
The words send heat spiraling in my stomach. It sounds like Tristan is flirting with me. No. That can’t be it. He’s just naturally charming.
I leap off him. He takes a second before he rises, and when he does, his eyes simmer with something I can’t name. He passes a hand over his face before he turns back to the girls and sketches a bow.
“Who wants to practice?”
All the hands in the room go up.
Thirty minutes later we’re winded and lying on the mats. Catering dropped off breakfast for us, and the girls are tucking in to breakfast tacos and orange juice like it will evaporate at any moment.
“Teenagers.” Emory grins broadly at me.
I thought they’d ignore us because we’re deeply uncool adults, but instead, they’re circled around us like we’re the center of the world.
Tristan sits next to Sasha, who is permanently pink from his presence.
“What’s your favorite subject?” he asks, his head cocked slightly toward hers. I’ve seen him adopt this pose with Sienna when she’s in a bad mood. It reminds me of what cats do when they feign disinterest at the times they are most intent.
She avoids his gaze. “Chemistry,” she says quietly. “Math is my second favorite.”
“You do that experiment with the soda bottle and the Mentos yet?”
“Yeah, like years ago.” Her tone communicates how lame he is for asking.
He grins. “What about the one with the water bottle they light on fire?”
Her eyes go big. “Yes! I loved that one. My chemistry teacher said she doesn’t have any nerves left in her right fingertips from that experiment.”
Tristan snorts a laugh, and Sasha goes pink again. They share a tiny smile. She asks him shyly why he knows so much about chemistry.
“I have to,” he says cheerfully. “Whiskey is all science, after all. I like figuring things out. I like to know the why of things.” He takes a gulp of orange juice.
“Me too.” Her smile is bright.
“Maybe Emory will let you guys come see the distillery one day. I can take you on a tour.” His smile falls. “I mean, if you want to. No pressure.”
The girls clamor that they would love to, and Emory rolls her eyes, mouthing seriously? at Tristan, who doesn’t see.
He’s too busy answering questions about his job there, hunching over his knees so he can get on their level. Sasha pulls out her phone to ask him a question about her chemistry homework, and their heads bend together over the screen while they talk about it.
“This is so him,” Emory says.
I know exactly what she means. This is the Tristan Prince magic at work, in a whole new way.
I’m slightly stunned as I watch him come alive with the girls.
He makes each of them feel important as they joke.
Harmony sticks close to Emory and me, but the younger ones pester him with questions, their shyness forgotten.
It’s like they can sense he’s a little shy with them too.
“They really like him,” I tell Emory.
She smiles and nods. “He has a big heart. They can tell.”
The back of my nose prickles. “The biggest. He doesn’t even realize.”
Tristan has no idea. He claims not to have one.
He claims it’s frozen, but today, I’m seeing how he’d be with kids, with a family.
It’s the way he is with his siblings. I catch him on endless FaceTime calls with Whit.
I catch him texting dumb memes to Sienna when she’s had a hard day. Aiden is the fixer, the Heir.
But Tristan, he’s the heart.
I told him that the other day, but the evidence is right in front of my face, and he doesn’t even realize. My chest feels heavy with affection. My eyes are hot.
Tristan deserves so much more than he lets himself have.
He catches me looking and gives me a bright grin over the tops of their heads. He raises a brow. You good?
I give him a nod and a smile. I’m good, but I’m also unsettled. I feel big things shifting inside me, things I didn’t expect. It’s what we were after today, but I also feel unmoored, like I’ve found something essential, only to realize it’s already drifting away.
“Can we do this again?” Harmony’s question is quiet.
“You want to?” Emory asks me.
I don’t even hesitate before I say, “Definitely.”