Chapter 50
TRISTAN
She hates it. We’re on a blanket that I stuffed into a dry bag and remembered to grab and she’s sipping a bottle of water and looking around curiously, but she isn’t saying anything and I feel like an idiot.
The island is a small, bird poop–covered rock with a red-and-white lighthouse, not fairyland, not something a grown woman would love. It’s magical only to children, even if it’s still magical to me.
I feel like I cut my heart out and offered it to her on my palm.
That would be easier, in fact.
“Can we go inside the lighthouse?”
I blink at Katie. She comes back into focus, heartbreakingly pretty with her damp, fiery hair and her tiny black bathing suit.
It’s made for swimming laps in, because of course it is.
Bailey is practical even on her days off.
My heart seems to squeeze as she smiles at me, her mismatched eyes glittering.
“You want to go inside?” It’s the first thing I asked my dad when we discovered the island, and I can’t help my laugh.
“Of course.” She pokes me in the side, and I capture her hand and hold it against my ribs. “Don’t laugh at me.”
I chuckle and pull her off the blanket. We pick our way to the lighthouse, through the brush, around the scrub pines, past seagulls nesting on the beach, who eye us suspiciously.
I point out the now-fraying rope swing I installed and the sign Whit made that says “Keep Out” with a skull and crossbones.
Katie laughs and her hand squeezes mine every time I show her something, like she wants to make sure I know she sees me.
Like me, I tell her with every squeeze I give her back. Like me as much as I like you.
I worry that I’m not enough. That this island is too little, too late, that she won’t understand what it means.
Do I impress her? Does she want me like I want her?
I’ve never considered whether I check her boxes. I am suddenly, searingly desperate to check them. I’ve wanted to be the yardstick by which she measures other men, and now I realize that I might not even be on the scale.
I push open the door to the lighthouse and gesture for her to go ahead. It’s clean and sun filled, because I come out and scrub the floors and wipe the windows. The sun beams over the floor through the old glazed windows and Katie turns slowly in the space, tipping her head up to take it all in.
I squeeze my eyes shut and inhale through my mouth. Aiden’s advice is ringing in my head—that Emory liked him more when she knew everything about him.
“This is where I was going to come the day of Dad’s funeral.”
Katie’s head whips around and she stares at me, eyes startled and huge under her thick lashes. “You were?”
“Until you came over, yeah.” I swallow thickly. “Dad brought me here a lot as a kid. It was our place. I’ve come here over the years to escape.”
“Escape what?” she asks. Her eyes are soft and I can barely meet her gaze.
“Mostly the consequences of my own actions.” I meander through the space, throat working, seeing ghosts of my father in every corner of this place. “I fucked up a lot as a kid, Katie. All the time. I was so jealous of Aiden.”
I hear her sharp inhale.
“We’ve always been close, but as kids, I felt like he had it all. Our parents lavished Aiden with attention. The wrong kind, but still, I burned with jealousy. I was—an afterthought.” I trace the dust on the frame of one of the windows.
“I caused trouble constantly. Attention-seeking, I suppose. I was so selfish. So rebellious. I crashed Dad’s car following Aiden and Dad to the distillery one day. I broke Whit’s arm by pushing him out of a tree. I got kicked out of boarding school for fighting.”
The memories are drowning me now, along with the certainty that I’m still that person, and that person doesn’t deserve someone like Katie.
“In so many ways, I was alone, even with my family.”
“I’ve seen the photos.”
I dart her a surprised glance. “When?”
“The ones in the main house. There’s one that sticks with me. You’re all on a boat, but you’re off to the side. Everyone is celebrating, but you look lost. I wanted to give that little boy a hug.”
My throat is thick. “If only that little boy knew he had a Katie to look forward to.”
She slips her hand into mine and squeezes.
“In my heart, I’ve been the odd one out. I fuck things up. And I refuse to be the person who fucks Prince Bourbon up too. That’s why I haven’t pushed to announce myself as CEO, even though I want it so badly that I lie awake thinking of ways to make it better.”
“I don’t see you that way,” she says fiercely. Her gaze is blazing.
“It’s okay.” I give her a small, sad smile. There’s no way she likes me after this. She’ll see me the way my family does—a mess. Not someone who can be counted on. Not a partner.
“Tristan, you don’t understand.” She frowns at me. “I like you. Exactly how you are. I like you for your faults.”
“I almost decked a guy for dancing with you,” I say dryly, but my heart is pounding in my chest at the determination in her gaze and the hard set of her jaw. This is Bailey mad, and I like her mad. I like her angry and protective and loyal, and I like that I get to be the one she wants to protect.
“Yeah, and I liked it.”
“You what?” My laugh scrapes from my throat.
“Of course I liked it. I’ve never had anyone who wanted to do that for me before, Tristan.
Just you. If that’s being selfish, or rebellious, I’ll take it every day.
” She flattens her palm over my heart. “You don’t understand.
I was drowning when I came to Crownhaven.
You were a lifeline for me. That first day and every day after.
You don’t see how people smile at you, sometimes just because you smiled first. You walk into a room and the lights get brighter.
People stand taller. You see people. You think I don’t know how you tip 200 percent every time we go somewhere or how you ask people how they are and listen to the answer?
How you make small talk with every damn person you come across?
And those stupid novelty t-shirts and the birthday gifts and your invasive way of making sure people are okay—no, but really okay? ”
“Katie.” I can barely get her name out.
“I’m not done.”
“Yes, killer.”
Her hand presses to my chest, pushes me flat to the wall. “You have to like yourself, Tristan Prince. Because I like you, and I won’t stand for anything less.”
My heart throbs against the wall of my chest.
“You like me?”
“So much. I feel electric when I’m with you, like I can do anything. In awe of myself. You give me confidence and it drives me so crazy that you don’t see how amazing you are and how happy you make people. How happy you make me—”
My mouth is on hers before she finishes the words.