Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Tristan
The second my mother’s name lights up my screen, I know two things—one, she saw the photos—two, if I don’t take the call, she’ll hyperventilate. Then spiral possibly to location tracking. Definitely to something expensive and inconvenient.
I push back from the table and mutter, “I should take this.”
Stella glances up at me, beautiful and soft from the morning and still somehow composed enough to make every other woman in the room look overdone.
There’s a flicker of nerves in her face before she smooths it away.
That alone tells me exactly what kind of call she’s expecting. The usual rich-parent version of concern that’s really just image management in a prettier coat.
I lean down and kiss her temple before I step away.
“Be right back.”
Jade watches me go with the expression of someone who would absolutely enjoy seeing me verbally spar with my mother over brunch.
Leo looks interested too.
Traitors.
I walk to the far end of the terrace, where the ocean is louder and the voices from inside blur into something soft enough not to matter. Then I answer.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Tristan.”
Controlled.
Elegant.
Not warm, exactly, but not cold either.
That should have been my first clue.
I brace one hand against the stone railing and look out over the water.
“You saw the photos.”
A pause.
“Yes.”
I wait for the lecture.
The questions.
The polished concern about timing and visibility and athletics and whether I’ve lost my mind.
Instead she says, “She’s beautiful.”
I blink.
The wind off the Atlantic cuts cold across my face.
“Okay,” I say carefully. “That’s… not what I expected.”
My mother makes a soft sound that, in another woman, might have been a laugh.
“I’m aware.”
There’s movement on the line, and I realize she’s not alone.
Then my father’s voice comes through, dry and amused.
“You did underestimate her, apparently.”
I straighten a little.
“Are you both on this call?”
“Obviously,” my mother says.
“Because that’s normal.”
I glance back inside. Stella is laughing at something Jade just said, one hand curved around her coffee cup, her head tipped slightly as if she’s listening with her whole attention.
It hits me again, sudden and fierce, how right she looks in every room that ever tried to make girls like her feel borrowed.
My mother speaks again before I can get lost in that thought.
“She has no meaningful social media presence.”
I turn back toward the sea, frowning.
“What?”
“Your girl,” my mother says. “Do keep up.”
I actually laugh at that.
“She has a few athlete accounts,” my father adds. “Game footage. Stanford media. Press clips.”
“Which,” my mother continues, “is impressive.”
I blink again, slower this time.
This conversation has now gone so far off script I’m starting to enjoy myself.
“You researched her.”
My father answers before my mother can.
“It was necessary.”
“Dad.”
“What?” he barks. “You flew to Newport, took her to a high-visibility event, and somehow thought no one would look into the girl on your arm?”
My mother picks up smoothly from there.
“Stanford. Division I athlete. Strong academic track. Serious coverage.” A pause. “No performative nonsense online. No social climbing. No thirst traps. No embarrassing digital trail of bad choices.”
I close my eyes briefly.
This is, somehow, her version of a glowing review.
“She’s not a project,” I say quietly.
“Good,” my mother says. “I’d be more concerned if she were.”
The wind pushes harder against the terrace.
I loosen my grip on the stone railing and let their words settle.
They’re not mocking.
They’re not circling.
They’re not looking for flaws so they can tell me I’ve made a mistake.
They’re impressed.
By Stella.
As herself.
And the stupidest, most childish part of me feels a rush of satisfaction anyway.
My father adds, casual as anything, “Emmanuel Cortez is an interesting detail.”
There it is-the icing.
I should have known it wouldn’t escape them.
I look back toward the table again. Stella has gone quieter now, probably pretending not to watch me while absolutely watching me. Jade is saying something with her hands. Leo is listening with that dry, dangerous half-smile of his.
“She’d still be Stella without him,” I say.
My mother is quiet for one beat.
Then, softer than she usually lets herself sound, “That’s exactly why we’re interested.”
That one gets me.
More than it should.
More than I want.
Because it’s not just approval.
It’s recognition.
They saw the obvious thing—the power, the lineage, the Cortés name—and looked past it fast enough to see the harder thing too.
Her.
My father hums on the line.
“Cortez is useful context. Not the headline.”
“Agreed,” my mother says. “The headline is that she appears to be excellent.”
I laugh once under my breath and shake my head.
“You two are unbelievable.”
“Yes,” my father says. “That does seem to be the consensus.”
I look out at the sea again and ask the thing I’ve been bracing for anyway.
“So this isn’t a problem.”
My mother’s answer is immediate.
“Why would it be a problem?”
That almost throws me harder than anything else.
I hear my own disbelief in the next words. “Because, I’m in love with her. The kind of love that already has me telling you right now to book out the yacht club for July in four years from now.”
My mother’s indrawn breath is sharp.
“You’re serious.”
“As a heart attack.”
My father snorts softly.
“Tristan.”
That one word says I’m being ridiculous.
My mother’s tone turns drier.
“You took a girl to a dance, not a yacht full of cocaine, that’s a serious improvement, but wedding talk?”
I laugh out loud.
Actually laugh.
A couple at another table glances over. I don’t care.
“She’s it for me. Part of me always knew it, too. I’m better with her in my life.”
My father sounds pleased now, like he’s been waiting for the moment I’d realize none of this was going the way I expected.
“Get back on time,” he says. “Don’t miss obligations— yours or hers.
No one’s grades catch fire. No coach is storming the complex.
Finish your season, settle in and then walk talk rings. ”
“I haven’t even met her yet,” my mother sounds aghast.
I drag a hand over my mouth to hide the smile that’s already there and fail completely. Then my mother offers, almost offhand, “We’re in town.”
I go still.
“What?”
“We came down yesterday evening,” my father says. “Dinner with the Willoughby’s. It was dreadful.”
“Utterly,” my mother agrees. “But now that there is finally a reason to salvage the trip—”
I turn all the way from the railing.
“You’re here. In Newport.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re telling me this now?”
“Would you have answered earlier?” my father asks.
Fair.
I exhale.
There it is then.
The next move.
The one I’m not sure whether Stella is ready for, except some instinct in me says maybe she is. Maybe because nothing about her shrinks from rooms like this anymore. Maybe because she was built for rooms like this and just never got invited in under the right light.
My mother speaks again.
“If she’d be comfortable, bring her for drinks this afternoon.”
I go quiet.
Not because I don’t understand the invitation.
Because I do.
This isn’t some formal ambush.
It isn’t a performance.
It isn’t “let’s inspect the girl.”
This is my family saying—we’ve seen enough to want to know her and hear how serious you are.
And that matters.
Enough that for one second I don’t answer.
My father fills the silence first.
“Only if she wants to,” he says, and I hear the real thing under the polish there too. “No pressure.”
My mother adds, “Do not spring us on her if she’d hate that. I like her already. I’d prefer not to ruin it.”
That gets another short laugh out of me.
Then I look back through the glass again at Stella.
At the way she’s listening to Jade now, head slightly bent, sunlight catching the gold at her ear.
At the long line of her body in cream and black.
At the fact that she’s here at all—here with me, after all the years we lost, after all the damage, after everything it took to get us into the same light.
“I’ll ask her,” I say.
“Good,” my mother replies.
There’s a beat.
Then, more quietly than I expect, “You seem happy.”
The words hit somewhere low and tender.
I don’t answer right away.
Because I know what she’s really saying.
That she saw it in the pictures.
That she heard it in my voice.
That maybe this is the first time in a long time I’ve sounded like myself instead of some polished, efficient ghost version.
“I am.”
Silence.
Then my father says, with the kind of dry affection he almost never voices directly, “About time.”
The line disconnects a minute later, my mother reminding me not to make Stella feel cornered.
I stare at the dead screen for one second, nothing about this weekend has gone the way I thought it would.
Not the dance.
Not the night.
Not the morning.
Not this.
I turn and head back toward the table.
Stella looks up first, immediately. Her expression is careful in the way people get when they’re trying not to expect too much.
That alone makes me want to kiss the worry out of her.
I slide into my chair beside her.
Jade lifts a brow.
“Well?”
Leo leans back with interest.
“Did anyone disinherit you?”
I look at Stella.
Just her.
And smile.
Her brows draw together.
“That is not the face of a man who got yelled at.”
“No,” I say. “It’s not.”
Something in her expression shifts.
Cautious hope now.
I reach for her hand under the table and lace our fingers together.
“My parents are impressed by you.”
She blinks.
I keep going before she can decide she misheard me.
“They already looked you up. Volleyball coverage. ESPN. Stanford. Your academic record. The fact that you somehow have almost no social media presence outside sports, which apparently my mother finds deeply erotic in a résumé sense.”
That startles a laugh out of her.
Good.