Chapter 54
TRISTAN
“You’ve been distressingly short on updates,” Whit scolds over the video call the afternoon after my disastrous proposal.
Sienna laughs and starts penciling her other eyebrow. I can see directly up her nose.
“You should start plucking those nose hairs, Si-Si. It’s a forest in there,” I tease.
She gives me a slow middle finger and tilts the phone so I can see nothing but nostril.
“Love you too,” I mutter, but my chest is warm with genuine affection for my siblings. I’m in the stillhouse at Crownhaven, checking the barrels of Old Kingdom we distilled last year and making notes in my notebook for Mac.
“Updates, Tristan. Come on.”
My stomach sinks at the question I knew was coming when I started this call. I pass a hand through my hair. “I asked her to marry me,” I mumble. “She said no.”
There’s silence on the phone.
I wince and force myself to the next barrel.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Whit leans into the phone. “I mean, seriously. You’re supposed to be the smart one.”
Sienna is shaking with silent laughter. “I have to sit down,” she gasps. “You’re so dumb. You’re dumber than Aiden. You’re dumber than Whit, which is really difficult. He’s been hit on the head so many times his brains are coming out of his ears.”
“Hey,” Whit protests mildly. “Just the left one.”
I groan and drop onto the dusty floor. It smells like sawdust in here. The angel’s share is nearly tangible. It’s the portion of each barrel that evaporates. Aiden worships it. I spend my time wondering how much each barrel can tell me about the contents before it ages.
There’s a scrape on the floor before Aiden drops down next to me.
“Oh good,” I mutter. “Gang’s all here.”
“Tristan proposed,” Sienna says gleefully. “She said no.”
“Taking it slow, I see,” Aiden says thoughtfully.
The twins cackle with laughter and I raise my head to glare balefully at my older brother. He raises an eyebrow at me, but his gaze is amused.
“What did she say?”
The twins lean in on the video.
“She said no, and she said something about bodyguards not marrying billionaires. She’s scared. I know she’s scared.” I slam my palm against the floor, and sawdust rises into the beam of sunlight. “I just don’t know how to fix it.”
“Hold on a second. Have you told her you love her?” The question comes from Aiden, whose head is cocked.
“Love?” I swallow. “I, ah, I haven’t. I don’t know—”
“Fucking hell,” Sienna mutters.
“What?” My head jerks up. My throat feels like it’s closing.
I think about delving that deeply inside myself, admitting to some fundamental weakness that leaves me exposed, the way I was all the time as a child.
Panic threatens to cut off my air. “My way is fine. I’m winning her over. ” My words tumble out.
Aiden’s hand lands on my shoulder. “Okay.”
Sienna looks pissed.
Aiden is in full problem-solving mode, and I shove down the sick feeling that rises.
“I risk losing her, don’t I?” I look between my siblings.
Aiden sighs. “You have time, Tristan, but not much. You need to show her you’re a man she wants to be with. Not just a friend. More. And don’t fucking push her to marry you.”
The twins grimace. We hang up.
I shut my eyes and knock the back of my head briefly against the barrel. I have literally never done this. I’ve never tried to win anything like this. I don’t let myself get in this deep, this desperate.
I don’t leave myself exposed.
Maybe that’s the point.
I think about Katie on the boat yesterday. How her lips trembled like she wanted to say yes to me but was holding herself back.
There’s something there. She wants a man who is willing to feel small. To lead with his heart.
“How would I know if I was in love with her?”
Aiden looks up at me from where he’s crouched, checking the date on one of the barrels. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what would I feel? What do you feel?”
His gaze crawls over my face, and with anyone else, I’d expect him to mock, but because he’s Aiden, steadfast and loyal and thoughtful, he simply drops to the floor and tips his head back against a barrel.
I mirror his pose, my arms draped over my knees.
We’re in the darkest corner of the stillhouse, where we keep the old barrels.
It’s cool and hushed. I used to be terrified of this part of it as a kid.
I’d tempt myself to go alone, get five steps in and then run for the light and not look back.
“I feel…whole,” he says finally. “Like I found a piece I didn’t know was missing.
Things will happen and I’ll immediately want to tell Emory.
I want to do things for her just to see her smile.
I spend every morning wishing I had five more minutes with her.
When I think about dy-dying, my greatest regret will be leaving her alone. ”
His voice is thick when he finishes.
I frown, turning over his words in my head. “I don’t worry about dying. I just imagined that as long as she was there, I’d be there too. It’s inconceivable to me that we’d be separated. And I’m not missing any pieces, because she’s already filling those gaps. So how will I know?”
“Tristan.” He smiles, his eyes crinkling at the edges.
“What?” I scowl at him, because he’s being so Aiden, all literary and thoughtful when I need action.
He leans over and grabs my knee, gives it a good shake. “Tristan. How long have you felt that way?”
“I don’t know. I mean, pretty much since I met—her. Oh no.”
I blink. Pieces rearrange inside me, like some sick version of Tetris where my heart gets too big and my lungs expand and my chest is too tight.
“What’s wrong?”
“She said no, Aiden.”
“You said that.”
My stomach feels like it’s crumpling in on itself. This is why I’d prefer not to have feelings. I can’t think past them. I can’t scheme. I just exist—awash in this awful, potent cocktail of longing.
“I love her and she doesn’t want me. Of course she doesn’t.
” I press my head to the barrel. “She told me all the things she was looking for in a man. Someone who will go for the things that make him cry, not someone who actively avoids feeling anything deeper than a teaspoon’s worth of emotion. God, I am a fool.”
“She wants you.”
I shake my head. “She was pretty damn clear about not wanting me.”
“Tristan, it’s a huge risk for her. Can’t you see that?”
I nod, but I don’t have any scheming left in me.
I’m just one gaping wound. I want to howl at the frustration of it all, at my inability to just grow this useless, stunted part of myself.
I’ve never nurtured it before. I’ve done my best to kill it off, and now I suddenly need a heart when I always prided myself on not having one.
“She spends like 90 percent of her free time with you. You employ her. You’re her best friend.”
“She said I was everything to her.”
His expression is grave. “I think you might be, Tristan. She’s probably terrified.”
“Still.” I swallow, my old fears rising to the surface. “Still, Aiden. Assume I confess my love to her. Why would she say yes? No one I’ve ever loved has wanted me as much as I want them.”
His eyes go wide. “You really think that?”
“Sure.” I shrug. “Mom. Dad. Every girlfriend I’ve ever had.”
“You didn’t really try with those girlfriends,” he chides.
“Because I was terrified.” The words burst out of me, and his head jerks back. “I was so scared to fuck things up. To ruin things. To want things and be out of control, just like I was back then.”
He looks confused. “Back then when?”
“Oh come on. All those times when we were kids, when I broke things just to get attention. When Whit broke his arm during that dumb prank. The car I crashed.” The bitterness of my voice seems to burn my throat. “The divorce.”
“The divorce?” Aiden’s eyes widen. “No, Tristan. That wasn’t—”
“It was me. I heard them. They were fighting about me the night Mom left.” I force the words out through the lump in my throat. “I fucked things up for the family back then and I’m scared I’ll fuck them up now. That I’ll ruin Prince Bourbon and if I push Katie, I’ll ruin things with her too.”
Aiden is gazing steadily at me, his face unreadable. “I hate—” He shoves off the floor, breathing hard. “I hate that you feel this way. I wou-would do anything to protect you, Tristan.” He drags a hand over his face, his shoulders slumping. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was partly me.”
He shakes his head. “It was partly all of us. Mom di-didn’t want to have kids. Not really. And Dad was absent, and fu-fuck, I tried.” He slams a fist down on one of the barrels, curling over it. “I tried so hard to keep their problems from you and the twins. And I failed.”
I’m standing now too, approaching him warily.
“You’ve given everything to us, Aiden. We never blamed you. I blamed myself.”
“You were a child,” he bites out. “They sent you away. They nev-never should have done that. I tried—” He inhales, long and slow, trying to quell the stutter. “I tried to go in your place.”
My mouth drops open. “But I was at my worst back then. You would have been sent away for me. I was a shithead.”
“Of course I would have.”
I stare at him. My heart is a wild animal inside my chest.
“I always thought you resented me for it. Not a lot. Just—deep down.” My voice is thick.
“Never,” he says. “And I don’t resent you now.”
“You don’t?”
“God, Tristan.” He pulls me into a hug before he releases me, only to keep a hand on my shoulder. “Love isn’t conditional. Not for any of us. Being your older brother has been the greatest privilege of my life. I see so much in you. So much potential. If only you believed in yourself the way I do.”
There’s pressure behind my eyes that threatens to spill over. I take a long, shuddering breath. “You think she’ll want me, then?”
He gives me a choked laugh. “Yeah, Tris, I think she’ll want you. But I also think sometimes, you have to take a risk without knowing if you’ll succeed. You can plan all you want, but there’s no way to know for sure. Love isn’t like that.”
I take a seat and stare into the cool dark of the stillhouse, my brother by my side. I feel cleansed. Whole.
For the first time ever, enough.