Chapter 28 When You Break, I Bleed
WHEN YOU brEAK, I BLEED
He kissed me before I led him into my bedroom.
I let my shorts drop to the ground, then my sweater.
Tristan stepped closer, kissing my neck, then my shoulder.
I sat on the bed, watching him pull his shirt over his head, then step out of his pants.
I didn’t think I would ever get tired of seeing him like this.
The way the ink moved with each muscle. The way the lean muscle was stretched tight over bone. The way he was looking at me.
I lay down on the bed, and he hovered over me. He kissed my neck, the swell of my breast, my nipples. An ache started deep in my chest and wrapped itself around my ribs and followed the trail of Tristan’s mouth.
I watched the muscles in his back and shoulders flex as he slid me to the edge of the bed. I liked the way his dark head looked between my legs. The way his mouth felt on me. I twisted my fingers into his soft hair. Any thoughts of what tomorrow might bring melted under Tristan’s touch.
His name came out in shallow huffs. My hand gripped his forearm, which was wrapped around my thighs, the broken skull looking up at me.
He pulled away, watching me as he knelt on the bed, lifting my hips and resting them on his thighs.
He ran his hand up my stomach and chest resting it at the base of my throat as he slowly pushed in to me.
He moved his hand under my back pulling me closer. I arched off the bed as he kissed my ribs and the hollow of my stomach. The ache was now a need.
A need that consumed me. Making my blood too thick to move.
I needed him closer. I needed to feel his heartbeat on my skin and breathe the same air as him.
He pulled me closer, his cock sliding deep.
My mind stopped. It stopped thinking of all the things that could happen.
All the worries and fears. Fears of what could happen to him in that small town.
They slipped out because there wasn’t enough space to hold all my thoughts.
One had to go to make room for others. Like breathing.
Which was hard as the need burned through me before it sparked into lightness.
His name came out like a promise and curse.
Tristan pulled me onto his lap. He was deeper now.
His breath was ragged against my mouth as I rocked my hips, pulling his release from him.
Another built in me as I listened to the way my name sounded coming from his lips.
His fingers cut into my hips. His teeth on my shoulder.
His climax came as another rolled through me.
I let this moment settle into my bones and joints. It’d live there until the end of time. His face was buried in my neck. His hair was stuck to my cheek. The saltiness of his skin mixed with the tears I hadn’t realized I was crying. He lifted his head, his eyes bright with his climax.
“Ev,” Tristan whispered, brushing my hair from my cheek. “We can’t keep doing this if you’re going to cry every time.” He lay down, gathering me to his chest.
I pulled away, shifting my weight to my elbow. I couldn’t stop them. I wanted to beg him to stay. Not go. But I knew he would. He had to.
“Talk to me. What’s wrong?” He caught the tears.
Twelve years ago my immature brain couldn’t process the real fears I had for Tristan. They came out as selfish outbursts. “I’m scared.” I never told him how afraid I really was. He had enough to worry about all those years ago.
“He can’t hurt me anymore. I’m not some scared kid he can push around.”
“Not of James. Of your mother.” That was what I couldn’t understand about Laura.
What I hated about her. She had this beautiful boy who only ever wanted to be loved by her.
A boy who made her a Mother’s Day card in fourth grade and brought her flowers on her birthday.
He tried so hard to prove his love for her and she did nothing to stop James.
To stop her little boy from breaking and bleeding out for her.
For all my mother’s faults, I believe she would’ve protected me if my father had been a cruel man.
“I used to wish she would die. I still do.”
Tristan sat up and ran his hand over his face. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I can’t leave Noah. James had him arrested.” I could hear the same edge that he had twelve years ago.
“Where was Laura?” I sat up and pulled my knees to my chest.
Tristan rested his elbow on his knees. “Ev, don’t do this, please.”
“Don’t do what? Worry about you? Too late.
” I traced the dark line on his shoulder, the one James had dislocated.
“I used to watch you sleep. Listen to the rhythm of your breathing. Some nights I was afraid that you’d have enough.
That you would give up. I thought if I could love you enough, it wouldn’t matter that she didn’t. ”
“What do you want me to do? Leave Noah? He’s in jail.”
I blinked back the tears. It was happening again. Nothing I said would make this better. “No. Of course not.” Neither of us said anything. My tears were silent.
“Fuck.” Tristan pulled me into his embrace. “I’m sorry. This is what I wanted to protect you from. What I should have protected you from all those years ago.”
“How could you’ve? There were some days I didn’t know where you ended and I started.
” I pulled away and brushed his hair back.
Many of those days had been when Tristan didn’t know how to handle his hurt.
Like on his birthday, when Laura got drunk and screamed at him for being born.
Or when Noah cried himself to sleep because Tristan was in the bathroom trying to put himself back together again.
They were all moments that someone else had created.
Moments we had to live with. “Maybe this is all we are meant to be. Just moments between everyone else’s lives. ”
He pressed his forehead to mine. “I don’t believe that. I don’t believe I survived all of that shit for nothing.”
“Not for nothing. Just not me.” I didn’t know what Noah’s life would look like if Tristan had never been in it. There were things I knew about James and Laura, things that made me doubt the sacrifices Tristan made were worth it.
“I’m coming back, I promise. I’ll bail Noah out, and then I’ll be back.”
I thought he actually believed that. I wanted to believe him too.
To trust that I would be enough this time.
That what I could give him would be enough.
But I had seen how Laura could manipulate Tristan.
How she’d make promises to him she never intended to keep, used Noah against him.
People saw her as a victim. Not Tristan.
Not Noah. “Okay.” I didn’t know if I said that for him or for me.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore. I want to believe we can do this, start fresh.
But just as we step into the sunlight, our past keeps dragging one of us back.
” And our past was messy and his still scared the shit out of me.
I couldn’t let go of that fear because I had nothing to replace it with.
“If anything happened to you, I don’t know what I would do.
” I still had nightmares that Tristan died that night.
I could still see James’s hands around Tristan’s neck.
Tristan brushed the hair from my shoulder. “Nothing is going to happen to me. There’s nothing back there for me. Everything I need is right here. You have to believe me.”
“Noah isn’t here. He’s the one thing that will always drag you back, and she knows that.”
“And you are the one thing that will bring me back here. I’ll bail him out and make sure he’s okay. I have a couple clients I need to finish up in St. Cloud, and then I’m coming back. Then you and I will figure us out. Okay?”
I nodded and let him pull me back down into bed.
I let him kiss away the tears. I let the weight of his body press down on me.
I heard the words he said, but there was something about his family that kept him anchored to them.
Even Craig knew how hard it was for Tristan to not get sucked into that life.
To get lost. And that scared me. I knew how easily Laura could tear down Tristan.
She blamed his birth for the downfall of her life.
“I love you,” he whispered over and over again.
Maybe reminding himself. Maybe he was trying to erase the doubt that was between us.
I closed my eyes and let those words fill the space between my heart and ribs, hoping they would soften the blow of heartbreak.
That they would chase the fear away that he wasn’t going to come back.
I didn’t say it back.
Maybe if I had, this next part wouldn’t have happened.