Chloe
Lost in my thoughts, I stare out the window of the cozy cafe, the clatter of cutlery and distant conversations blending into the background. All I can think about is Tristan—the feeling of his touch, as possessive and hungry as it’s ever been.
For the past week and a half, ever since he fucked me on the hood of his Audi, he’s gone back to touching me the way he used to.
He doesn’t seem to be afraid that I’ll break anymore or feel like he needs need to hold back.
I’m glad. Really fucking glad. One of my favorite things about Tristan is how he doesn’t hold anything back while we’re together—I like his dirty words, his unrestrained desire, the way he makes me feel both filthy and beautiful.
I startle guiltily. The truth is, I didn’t, and it wasn’t because of my fucked up hearing this time.
I was just distracted, plain and simple, thinking about Tristan.
The last traces of a stupid grin are still plastered on my face.
God, I can’t even get through lunch with my sister without daydreaming like a moony teenager.
Setting my fork down, I shake my head. “Sorry. I zoned out for a second there. What did you say?”
Genevieve sits back, looking at me with a curious expression, her arms folded over her chest. “Okay. What’s up with you lately? You seem so different. It’s like talking to a stranger.”
I glance down at my plate, wondering how much to tell her. I don’t normally open up to Genevieve about things like this. We see each other often, but we’re not exactly close emotionally. We used to be when we were kids, but those days feel like a lifetime ago.
Before, I would’ve been content to leave things that way. The distance between me and my sister has never bothered me much. I’ve seen it as just a symptom of a professional family. Business has worked its way into our lives to the point that nothing’s personal, not anymore.
Lately, though, that’s been grating at me. I’ve seen the way Tristan and his brothers have started to grow closer. They’re becoming a tight-knit unit—a real family. If I want to have the same—a family I can rely on—I need to start opening up and taking risks.
I take a deep breath. “I think I’m falling for Tristan,” I admit. “I… I think this could be a real marriage. Something that lasts.”
My sister’s eyebrows go up in surprise. “Are you serious?”
I nod, expecting her to press for details. But instead, she leans back a little, regarding me carefully. Her expression seems skeptical, which takes the wind out of my sails a bit. “Are you sure? I mean, maybe take more time before saying stuff like that. You barely know him.”
Her response stings more than I expected. She’s my sister. I had hoped for some support, maybe even a bit of advice, and I can’t help but feel disappointed. Maybe it was too much to hope that we’d ever have that kind of relationship.
She seems to notice the way my shoulders sag and adds quickly, “It’s not that I’m not happy for you, Chloe. I just don’t want to see you get hurt, and I don’t entirely trust Tristan.”
Fair enough. I try to put myself in her shoes. If she came to me with this, would I be supportive or concerned? After all, Tristan and I haven’t been together for very long. Genevieve barely knows anything about him. To her, this must seem like a whirlwind romance that could easily go sideways.
“I get that,” I say, resting my elbows on the table. “I know it’s sudden, especially since I went into this whole thing expecting to hate him. But Tristan has been there for me in ways I didn’t expect. I know it’s hard to see from the outside, but he’s shown me a different side of himself.”
“Are you sure?” She gives me a look. “Or are you seeing what you want to see? Sometimes it’s easy to overlook the red flags when you’re caught up in the moment.”
I pause, trying to think of how to respond, weighing everything I know about Tristan.
It’s a challenging question, one that taps into my own uncertainties, but as I play back everything we’ve gone through together—the look on his face when I told him about Spencer, the warmth of his arms around me, the way his eyes light up as he laughs—I know that this is real.
I’ve gotten to know him more intimately than pretty much anyone else in my life. I’ve seen all sides of him, the broken and the whole, and I love every part. His kindness, his strength, his vulnerabilities… they’re all pieces of the man I’m truly falling in love with.
And I don’t think there’s anyone who knows him better than I do. Least of all Genevieve.
“I know,” I say. “Don’t worry. We’ve got all the time in the world to figure things out.”
She gives me a look I can’t parse, part concern and part something else.
Then she brightens and deftly changes the subject, launching into a story about some “pain in the ass new hire” in MediaSphere’s legal department—apparently a Harvard grad who’s already gotten on everyone’s nerves—and then telling me about the new pilates instructor at her studio, how cute he is and how she’s been switching her schedule around to make sure she ends up in his classes.
I nod and smile at the right moments, trying to match her energy, but my heart isn’t in it. All I can think about is the way she shut me down a few minutes ago, and how easily she’s moved past it. The connection I keep hoping for with her always seems to be just out of reach.
We hug outside the restaurant after the check is settled, and she squeezes my arm and says we should do this more often. I agree that we should, meaning it even though I also feel faint exhaustion at the idea.
She heads out, and I’m staring after her feeling slightly hollow when my phone buzzes. Tristan’s name pops up on the screen.
“Hey,” I say, holding it up to my good ear to answer. “What’s up?”
“Hi, dimples.” At the sound of his familiar deep voice, my shoulders drop about an inch. “I’ve got a surprise for you at home.”
I start walking toward where my driver is parked. “Oh yeah? What kind of surprise?”
“The kind you’ll find out about when you get home.”
“Can I have a hint?”
“No.”
“A small one. Tiny. Microscopic.”
“Still no.”
I laugh, rolling my eyes. “You’re so annoying.”
“I know. How was lunch?”
“Uh, it was okay. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Alright.” A beat. “Get home.”
I’m grinning when I hang up. It’s embarrassing, but who the fuck cares? I’m happy.
My driver takes me home, doing his best to find an efficient route among the always heavy LA traffic, and by the time we pull into the driveway, I’m curious enough that I’m out of the car before it’s fully stopped.
It’s a sunny day, and I can feel the heat of it warming my shoulders as I walk up to the front door.
The first thing I see is a yellow sticky note just above the door handle, in Tristan’s handwriting.
Welcome home.
I push the door open. Another note is stuck on the little table in the foyer, next to the bowl where he always leaves his keys.
Go upstairs.
I hustle up the stairs, my gaze already scanning ahead. At the top, there’s a note on the banister post.
Put on a swimsuit.
In the bedroom, a bright blue one-piece is laid out on the bed with a note on it.
Wear this one.
“Okay then,” I say to the empty room, and I change into it, smiling at the ceiling like an idiot. I find another note on the wall by the bedroom door.
Head toward the back door.
The back door itself has one more.
Go outside.
I push through onto the patio, glancing around. There’s a surfboard leaning against a tree, taller than me, with a final note on the nose of it.
Take this down to the beach.
My heart is going fast. I grab the surfboard and start making my way toward the private beach just behind the house. The sound of the waves gets louder with each step, the salt smell getting stronger as the wind blows my hair.
Tristan is at the water’s edge with his own board under his arm, his hair pushed back from his face and board shorts slung low on his hips. He grins when he sees me coming across the sand.
“You made it,” he calls.
“Did you put sticky notes all over our house?” I drop the surfboard in the sand.
“I did,” he says, looking extremely pleased with himself. “And by the looks of it, you found all of them.”
He crosses the sand toward me, slides a hand around my waist, and kisses me. I can taste sunscreen on his lips, and his sun-heated skin feels warm under by hands.
“I’m going to teach you to surf,” he announces when our kiss breaks.
Nerves kick up in my chest immediately, even though I pretty much guessed that’s what this was going to be about. “Um… are you sure?”
He laughs and kisses me again, his hand tightening at my waist. “Well, I’ve never taught anyone before, but I think I can do it. I’ll be right here with you the whole time. If you fall, I’ll catch you.”
“And if a shark comes?”
He lifts one shoulder. “Then I’ll fight the shark.”
I snort. “You’d fight a shark?”
“For you? Absolutely.” He says it straight-faced, and as I laugh, the lingering icky feeling in my gut from my lunch with Genevieve dissipates.
We wade in together, boards under our arms, and the cold Pacific water comes up around my ankles, then my calves, and then my waist all at once. I make a sound that’s somewhere between a yelp and a hiss, and Tristan grins sideways at me.
He actually is a really good teacher, patient and detailed with his instructions, happy to explain the same thing three times without making me feel bad about needing it.
He shows me how to position myself on the board, how to paddle with my arms cutting through the water rather than splashing around uselessly, and how to read an approaching wave by watching the horizon rather than the water right in front of me.
I’m bad at it, which is unsurprising. My strokes are uneven, my balance is horrible, and the waves seem to come out of nowhere.
But Tristan takes it all in stride, making adjustments to my form and offering little tips here and there, and after a while, I stop being embarrassed and just focus on getting incrementally less bad.
We’ve paddled out a little farther, the water dark and cold below us and the shore looking smaller behind us, when my hearing suddenly changes.
A sudden ringing fills my right ear, cutting through the sound of the ocean and Tristan’s words mid-sentence.
For a few disorienting seconds, the whole world goes muffled and wrong. The waves sound far away. Tristan’s voice becomes indistinct, like someone turned the volume most of the way down. I grip the sides of my board and go still and wait, my jaw tight, my heart thrashing hard in my chest.
It clears after about thirty seconds. The ocean sounds rush back in, Tristan’s muffled voice turns back into words, and the ringing fades. I let out a slow breath through my nose, trying to banish the unpleasant surge of adrenaline that shot through me.
“You good?” He’s watching me, his brows pulled together.
“Oh, yeah.” I shoot him a shaky smile. I’m not quite sure why I don’t just tell him what happened. Maybe I don’t really want to admit it to myself. “Sorry. I think I got water in my ear.”
He looks at me for a beat as if trying to figure out if there’s more to the story, but I manage to turn my smile into something more natural.
Finally, he nods and we keep going. I force myself to focus on what he’s been showing me, on the angle of my hands and the horizon line, and not on what just happened.
He shows me how to catch a wave, and I try, then fall off immediately.
I go under and come up sputtering, salt water up my nose and my hair plastered across my face.
Tristan’s arm is around me before I’ve finished coughing.
I drag the hair out of my eyes and we try again.
When I fall once more, he’s right there again, pulling me up before I’ve even fully registered that I’m going under.
We do this several more times, and somewhere in the middle of it I stop being scared and start feeling a little of the joy he described when he first talked to me about being on the water.
At one point, I actually manage to ride a wave in.
It’s small and wobbly and has none of the grace of when Tristan does it, but it’s one of the best feelings in the world.
“That was incredible,” Tristan declares, grinning.
We stay out until the light turns golden, the sun dropping toward the horizon. By the time we pack it in and start carrying our boards back up the beach, I’m exhausted in a good way, my arms tired and my legs slightly shaky.
At the top of the steps, I glance back at the water and the last bits of daylight glinting off of the waves.
For a brief second, the memory of that horrible ringing in my ear hits me, the way everything went muffled and wrong.
Then Tristan says something that makes me laugh, and I turn around as he follows me toward the house.
By the time we get inside, I’ve forgotten about it entirely.