Chapter 36 #2
Because she still looks like she’s waiting for the catch.
There isn’t one.
My thumb strokes once over her knuckles.
“And yes,” I add, because I know she’ll think it if I don’t say it, “they clocked Emmanuel too.”
Her mouth tightens slightly.
I squeeze her hand. “But that wasn’t the headline.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
“The headline,” I say quietly, “was you.”
And there it is.
That look.
The one that undoes me every time.
Like she doesn’t quite know what to do with being chosen this cleanly.
Jade goes very still across the table.
Leo too.
Then Jade, because she was apparently born without the ability to leave beauty alone, presses one hand to her chest and says, “Oh, that was sickening. Do it again.”
Stella laughs, watery at the edges now, and looks down for one second before looking back up at me.
“What did they say?”
I smile a little.
“That you seem excellent.”
That gets her.
Her eyes shine instantly.
She looks away toward the window, toward the ocean, toward anything that will help her pull herself together.
Then she looks back at me and says, very softly, “Your family called me excellent?”
“My mother’s exact energy was colder than that,” I admit. “But yes.”
Leo snorts into his coffee.
Jade waves a hand.
“Trust me. From women like that, excellent is basically a standing ovation.”
Stella’s laugh breaks free properly then.
I watch her because this matters too. Not just that my parents approve. That she sees I wanted them to meet her without needing them to validate what I already know.
I lean closer and lower my voice.
“They’re in town,” I say. Then, because there is no reason to make it sound smaller than it is, I say, “They asked if you’d want to have drinks later.”
Her whole body stills.
For one second I think I pushed too fast.
That I should have waited.
That maybe this is the exact kind of high-society pressure she never asked for and never needed.
So I say it before she has to.
“You do not have to.”
She looks at me.
Really looks.
Then glances at Jade, who is suddenly pretending intense interest in buttering toast, and Leo, who has failed completely at pretending not to listen.
Then back at me.
“Are you serious?”
I nod once.
“Only if you want to.”
Her breath catches.
Just a little.
I can see the nerves now.
The calculation.
The questions.
And beneath all of it—curiosity.
Jade reaches over and taps Stella’s wrist once. Quietly, for her alone, she says, “You’ll be fine.”
Stella lets out a breath that sounds half laugh, half surrender.
Then she looks at me and says, “Okay.”
My chest goes hot.
“Okay?”
She nods once, eyes still wide.
“Yeah.”
Jade immediately grins into her coffee.
Leo murmurs, “There it is,” under his breath.
I don’t hear much beyond Stella’s yes.
Because once again, against every old instinct I had to hide, to delay, to make things smaller so she’d feel safer—she stepped toward me anyway.
The thing nobody tells you about happiness is that it makes you stupid about time.
One minute I’m at brunch watching Stella laugh with Jade like they’ve known each other longer than twelve hours and thinking maybe the universe isn’t always a sadist. The next, I’m staring at the hotel suite at sunset with a dress bag over one arm, her overnight things zipped back into place, and the ugly reality of Monday morning practice already circling overhead like a threat.
Weekends like this should not end.
That feels like a design flaw.
Stella is standing at the windows when I come back into the room, changed into dark jeans and a cream sweater, hair down now, looking out over the water like she’s trying to memorize the exact color the Atlantic turns just before evening.
The whole suite is washed in gold and firelight and late-fall Newport money.
She turns when she hears me.
“How bad is it?”
I lean the garment bag against the wardrobe and exhale through my nose.
“We have to leave tonight if we want to be back for Monday.”
Her mouth twists.
“I hate discipline.”
“No, you don’t.”
She gives me a look.
“I hate your discipline, then.”
“That’s fair.”
She comes toward me slowly, and the second she does, something in my chest eases. Maybe because that’s what’s been happening all weekend—my body spotting hers and deciding the room makes sense again.
“How much time do we have?”
“Enough.”
Her eyes narrow slightly.
“That was suspiciously vague.”
“I’ve learned specifics make you hostile.”
“That is because your specifics usually include felony-level transportation.”
I laugh, catch her around the waist when she gets close enough, and pull her into me. She comes willingly, settling against my chest like it’s already a habit. That alone does something to me I don’t know how to explain without sounding like a man who should be locked in a tower and studied.
I kiss the top of her head.
“Drinks with my parents in forty-five.”
She goes still.
Not rigid.
Just aware.
There’s a difference.
“Right,” she says. “That.”
I ease back enough to look at her.
“Still okay?”
She nods once too fast.
Then, because she’s Stella and honesty is one of the things I love most about her, she says, “No. But I’m coming anyway.”
That gets me.
I smile before I can stop myself.
“Baby.”
“What?”
“You’re brave.”
She makes a face like she’d rather be called dangerous.
“Don’t be weird about it.”
“Too late.”
She fake punches my ribs. I catch her wrist and kiss the inside of it.
“Also,” she mutters, “your mother scares me a little.”
I grin.
“She’ll love hearing that.”
“Tristan.”
I kiss her once, soft and quick and unfairly effective if the way she leans back into me is any indication.
“She already likes you,” I say quietly. “Now you just have to survive being excellent in person.”
That earns me an eye roll.
But I feel her relax a little anyway.
He stops me just inside the suite while I’m reaching for my bag.
“Wait.”
She turns.
I’m standing by the console table near the windows, one hand in my pocket, the other holding a small cream box tied with a navy ribbon.
Her pulse seems to stumble even from across the room.
“Tristan.”
“It’s not a big thing,” I say, which is already a lie.
She takes the box and looks up at me once before opening it.
Inside is a slim gold bracelet so delicate it almost doesn’t look real. A fine chain. A small oval charm. Dark blue enamel edged in gold, the exact deep midnight shade of the dress I chose for her. On the back, barely visible, a tiny compass rose is etched into the metal.
For one second she doesn’t speak.
“It reminded me of you,” I say quietly.
Her throat works.
“The color,” I add, voice lower now. “And the compass.” My eyes hold hers. “You feel like north to me.”
That does her in instantly.
She laughs once, small and watery and wrecked.
“That is an insane thing to say to a person.”
My mouth curves.
“Still true.”
She lifts the bracelet carefully from the box. I take it from her without asking and fasten it around her wrist, my fingers warm and steady, the gold looking delicate against her skin.
It’s perfect there.
Not flashy.
Not loud.
Just beautiful.
Just her, somehow.
She touches the charm with her thumb.
“You bought me Newport.”
I glance at the bracelet, then back at her.
“No.” A pause. “I bought you something so you’d remember this wasn’t a dream.”
She looks at me like I’ve just struck somewhere tender again, and maybe I have.
The hotel lounge is all low light and polished wood and the kind of beautiful discretion money buys when it’s old enough to stop announcing itself.
Fire glows in twin hearths at either end of the room.
The sea is visible through the windows in dark flashes between stone columns. Waiters move like choreography.
My parents are already there. My mother’s in charcoal silk and diamonds so restrained they’re almost rude. My father in a navy jacket, one hand around a low glass, the other tucked in his pocket like he owns not just this room but the concept of rooms.
They stand when we approach.
Stella’s hand tightens very slightly in mine.
I squeeze once back.
Then my mother does something unexpected.
She smiles at Stella first.
Not at me.
Not at the room.
At Stella.
And because I know my mother, I know how real that is.
“Stella,” she says. “You’re even lovelier in person.”
Stella blinks.
It’s almost imperceptible, but I see it.
Then she recovers in that gorgeous, composed way she has.
“Thank you for saying that instead of ‘you photograph well.’”
My father laughs first.
A real laugh.
My mother’s mouth curves.
“Good. She has aim.”
I almost smile outright.
Introductions happen even though they’re technically unnecessary. My mother takes Stella’s hands in both of hers for one brief, elegant second, and my father leans in to kiss her cheek in that European way that would annoy me from literally anyone else.
A waiter appears.
“What may I bring you?”
My mother looks to Stella first.
“What are you having?”
There’s no test in the question.
Still, I feel Stella straighten slightly beside me.
“Sparkling water with lime is perfect,” she says.
Not because she’s intimidated.
Because she’s in season, in playoffs, and not stupid.
I know that.
My parents know that, too.
My father lifts his brows once, approving.
“Disciplined,” he says.
My mother nods.
“Smart.”
No judgment.
No social-pressure nonsense.
No rich-people expectation that she play along with some performance of adulthood she doesn’t owe anybody.
I love them a little for that in the moment.
I love Stella more for not wavering.
I order water too, because I’m not about to sit there drinking while she stays sharp, and because we still have a flight and Monday morning waiting for both of us like a punishment.
We settle into a curved velvet booth with a view of the sea.
For the first few minutes, I mostly watch.
Stella in rooms like this has always fascinated me.
Not because she transforms. She doesn’t try to shrink. Doesn’t overcompensate.