Chapter 45
KATIE
By five p.m. Sunday evening, I’m stewing in frustration.
Emory is lying on her stomach on the floor and paging through one of the many college magazines I’ve collected over the past few months, trying her best to distract me.
There’s an ache that’s taken up residence behind my ribs and doesn’t seem to show signs of abating.
I guess this is how I live now—one little piece of me has been sacrificed on the altar of Tristan Prince.
It’s rude, is what it is.
I putter in the kitchen, equal parts annoyed at myself for not just walking up to Tristan and pulling him off his horse and yelling in his face, and annoyed at him for avoiding me.
“Look at this,” she calls over her shoulder.
“I probably know it by heart,” I call back. “You want tea or wine?”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
I pour two glasses, just a small one for me, even though Nour’s strict instructions were to stop working for the day and never come back.
“The dorms are like luxury apartment complexes.” Emory flips a page. “Almost makes me want to go back.”
I settle on the floor next to her, my back to the couch. “Almost?”
Emory grins at me. “Well, I did go to college with Aiden.”
I snort. “And you two tormented each other constantly from what I hear?”
“Torment or foreplay?” she asks cheerfully and we both laugh.
“I’d love to go to college, but it’s more theoretical than anything.” I snag the Brown University magazine. It’s dog-eared but not nearly as much as the Princeton one. If Emory sees it, she’ll know how many times I’ve imagined being a girl who went there.
“Why theoretical?”
“I did a year at a community college before I dropped out to support us. Before David died.” I grab the Princeton magazine and set it on my drawn-up knees.
“I loved it and I wanted more, but by then it was too late. I want the whole experience, Emory. I want the bookbag and the dusty library and the classes I might never use. As many as possible. But bodyguards don’t need to go to college. ”
She squeezes my knee.
“It’s pretty wonderful. I want it for you too.”
I tap the magazine. “Tristan is in this one, you know.”
“He is?” She gives me a surprised glance. I hold the magazine up. “Oh yeah, he bragged about that.”
“Of course he did.” There’s a skip in my chest as I turn to the page.
On it, Tristan is in a group of students, with a leather satchel slung over his shoulder.
He’s laughing and he stands a full head taller than everyone next to him.
He’s larger than life, even in this grainy picture.
I imagine what it would be like to be one of the girls in it.
One who speaks multiple languages and reads classic literature.
Someone who joins the swim team and makes out with him while studying.
As equals. As someone who belongs in his world.
“Emory?”
“Yeah?”
“Have you ever wanted something you already had? But not in the way you had it?”
She gazes at me steadily before her face twists. “Oh, Katie.” She scrambles up to sit next to me and lets me put my head on her shoulder.
The squeeze of her hand on my other shoulder nearly makes me cry.
Because Emory is the best person in the world after Tristan, she doesn’t press further, she just sits with me until rain starts slapping the windows and Aiden starts calling.
“I better go.”
I give her a hug and she hugs me back, tightly enough to nearly leave bruises.
And then I’m alone.
I lie on the floor, my heart slowly thudding as I listen to the rain. Tristan deserted me. We hooked up once, he promised nothing would change, and he immediately deserted me. He’s my best friend. He swore he’d always be there for me, and he fucking lied.
Suddenly, the anger is choking me. I scramble up. I don’t ever let myself feel this way. Anger, resentment, frustration. None of it serves me. I keep moving forward. I don’t confront people. I’m too busy trying to be liked, to be kept, to be chosen.
But right now I feel like I’m 90 percent rage, 10 percent Katie. I stride into my room and start pulling on my clothes. Normally, I’d pick something comfortable, but tonight, I want to dress to kill. I pick a silky blue dress with thin straps. I’ll be soaked, but I don’t care.
I clatter down the steps, and by the time I’ve made it to the grass between my apartment and Tristan’s house, I know I’ve made the right choice. The dress is plastered to my skin. I feel the storm on the outside, just like I feel it on the inside.
I’m nearly halfway to Tristan’s house when I see him, just a wavering shape in the rain.
He approaches slowly, hands shoved into his pockets, face uncertain.
He’s soaked too, in just an overcoat and sweatpants.
His hair curls at the ends, the golden brown darkened and dripping onto his chest. I track the drops down his tan skin, over the ridges of his stomach and into the hair at his navel.
Even angry, I want him.
“Hi.” He swallows.
“Hello. I’m really mad at you.”
He winces, the crease below his lower lip flattening in misery. “I know.”
“I tried to talk to you.” I tuck my arms around my stomach. “I showed up at your house yesterday for our run, and you were gone. I looked at you yesterday morning and you barely spared me a glance. You told me nothing would change, Tristan. You promised—what are you doing?”
He’s shucking his coat with jerky movements. “Giving you my coat.”
“I don’t want it.” I tip up my chin. Rain blurs my vision and sluices into my mouth.
“I don’t care.” He swings it over my shoulders in one swift movement. I mean to tear it off, but instead my hands clutch it closer. It smells like Tristan—whiskey and a hint of smoke and the scent of the evergreen hair products he uses.
“Go ahead.” He tucks his hands back into his pockets and holds himself still. The sweatpants dip dangerously low on his hips, and I will my gaze away. A rain-soaked Tristan Prince still holds a ridiculously magnetic appeal for me. “Yell at me.”
“Not when you want it.”
He barks a laugh. “I deserve it, Katie.” His eyes are hot and his throat works. “I am so fucking sorry.”
I tug the coat closer.
He takes one small step, then another. The rain turns his eyelashes into spikes of dark gold. “Forgive me, Katie.”
The words send a tremor through me. “For what?”
“For ignoring you. For running.”
“Why did you do it?” My voice sounds small and miserable and his mouth twists. We’re inches apart now. He reaches out and resettles the coat on my shoulders, his fingers lingering on the collar, then skating up my neck and tugging at the damp hair there.
“I’ve gotten very good at pretending I don’t have feelings.
” He pulls a strand free, then sighs. “It’s been my default reaction for a while.
Every time things got hard, or I felt too strongly, I’d distract myself, tell myself I didn’t feel anything.
” He tugs another strand free, and I shiver at the cool touch of his fingers on my neck.
“I don’t have an easy time feeling too much. ”
His gaze meets mine in a flash of bright green and my stomach tumbles.
“Katie, you make me feel so out of control.” His words are rough and damp and I feel them reverberate in my chest.
I don’t know what to say. We’re on the precipice of something, and I fear it might be everything I’ve ever wanted.
I fear it will be ripped from me before it can ever take root, that things will be ruined before they’ve ever had a chance to begin.
Wanting Tristan and not being able to have him has become a touchstone of my life, ballooning until it’s an immutable law—thou shalt not covet thy best friend.
All I get is practice and I told myself it was enough because if I reached for more, I’d be devastated.
My insides twist around the corkscrew of hurt that’s been there since this morning.
“I’m so scared, Tristan.” The fear scrapes along my nerves, tightens my throat.
“Why are you scared, sweetheart?” His palm cups my jaw and his eyes are achingly gentle. My own heat in response, even in the cold rain. The depths of my fear feel endless, like if I give voice to them, I’ll uncover more instead of setting them free.
Sweetheart.
Tristan tells me with his gaze and his small smile that he can hold these things for me, that even if I break down, he’ll keep me from dissolving.
“Because of how much you mean to me. You’re my best friend, Tristan. I’m so scared to break things with you. To lose you.”
“Oh, Katie, no.” He presses his cheek to mine.
My lip trembles from the force of all the secret fears I keep locked up. “I told you I was sixteen control issues in a trench coat.” I let out a watery laugh. “I have to be. I have to keep going. I can’t look back. I can’t let myself linger.”
“Why not?”
“Because of all the bad things.” My voice breaks on the last word, and he pulls back to look at me.
“What bad things?”
“I’ve moved so many times, Tristan. Things have ended with so many people. I’ve been—” My voice cracks again. “So fucking alone. And I try not to hate it. I have you, don’t I? Reaching for more terrifies me, because there’s always a possibility I’ll be hurt.”
His lips are warm when they meet my forehead.
“I will never let you get hurt, Katie.”
My insides pinch. “You won’t always be there.”
He hums. “I made you believe that today, but I promise you. I will always be there.”
Tristan pulls back, lets his hand drop. He’s hunting for something, head down, feet scuffing over the grass.
The rain is pelting us now, gathering force under the low, dark clouds.
The property is magical in the storms we get.
The sheets of rain turn the main house into something from a fairy story.
The lights flicker on as I watch, but then I’m distracted by Tristan kneeling in the grass, uncaring of the rain.
“What are you doing?”
He’s plucking yellow flowers from a patch of grass, and my stomach bottoms out.
“Tristan. What are you doing?” My voice quavers slightly.