Chapter Eight
“There!” Tristan pointed to a sign reading Clapperton Brake Check.
Turning off the highway, into a rest area of sorts, the engine sputtered and lost power, and the whole vehicle lurched before Tristan guided it onto the gravel shoulder.
He shut off the ignition, jaw flexing once. “Fantastic.”
Reaching under the dash, he popped the hood release and jumped out of the van, slamming the door.
Exiting slowly, I followed even though I knew nothing about engines other than don’t touch the hot thing.
The headlights cast ghostly beams into the open compartment, lighting the metal like a crime scene.
Tristan braced both hands on the frame, head hanging for a second.
“Do you know what’s wrong?” I asked, stepping closer to the engine compartment.
“No.” A long lingering sigh blew out. “But I know guys who stand around and stare at engines because that’s what we’re supposed to do and somehow things happen.”
Josh did that with his friends too. Whenever someone got a new car, they’d pop the hood and purr and praise the metallic thumping beast in the frame. I didn’t understand it at all.
A single truck roared past on the other side of the divider, its lights flashing over Tristan’s jaw before disappearing down the grade toward Salmon Arm.
“My ex used to say I’m useless with anything mechanical,” he muttered but continued staring as if a solution would rise and present an answer.
Oof.
“So Kristen shamed you over your... lack of MacGyver instincts?”
He snorted. “She wanted someone who could build a canoe with dental floss and optimism.”
“Sounds exhausting,” I said. “Also... sexist.”
He blinked. “Sexist?”
“Yeah. Expecting you to fix everything.” I gestured broadly. “That’s not love. That’s a handyman subscription.”
His mouth twitched. Tristan wiped a hand over his face. “I hate not knowing what to do. The van was supposed to be fine until I got back.”
His voice wasn’t annoyed anymore. It was... small and there it was, the part of him I’d forgotten existed.
Not the confident, controlled version of Tristan everyone else saw.
This part—soft-edged, unsure—was the one who didn’t have all the answers and who hated that truth about himself.
And I felt something in my chest shift. It was dangerous, this reckless urge to step closer, and to make it better.
But I’d learned the hard way: when you start caring about someone’s broken pieces, you start believing you’re responsible for fixing them. And that’s how you lose yourself.
“Hey.” I touched his arm, just above the wrist. The warmth radiated into my fingertips. “You don’t have to fix everything and be everything. It’s okay, you know.”
He looked at me.
And for a breath, the air between us felt like the moment before a match catches flame. The night pressed around us, deep and sharp, the kind of mountain dark that swallowed sound. In that heartbeat, it was him and me, the quiet tick of cooling metal, and the faint smell of fresh mountain air.
Headlights lit up the horizon and an eighteen-wheeler roared on by, the wind kicking up and swirling away the bubble we’d been breathing in.
I put some distance between us. “You should call for a tow truck or something.”
He fished out his phone, thumbed through menus, muttered about spotty service, and sighed a soul-crushing breath before dialing. “Tow truck says at least a couple of hours as they’ve got to send one south from Kamloops. I’m sorry.”
“For what? It wasn’t your fault.”
“Well, this pushes everything back, and you’re not going to be arriving at any airport anytime soon. I’m sorry I’m delaying you.”
I glanced around at the area devoid of benches or even a scenic view. “Could be worse. We could be stuck here without an outhouse.”
His laugh cracked through the chill, brief but real. “Always the optimist.”
“Practical,” I corrected. “And slightly desperate.”
When I returned from the outhouse, he killed the headlights which had been shining for my benefit, and the whole area went black.
Before I took another step, he offered me the crook of his elbow, guiding me to the back of the van.
He motioned me inside the cargo bay, where the faint smell of cardboard and grapes still lingered.
We silently perched on the edge, feet dangling over gravel, watching the occasional big rig zoom by.
The night air nipped at my cheeks. Somewhere in the trees an owl hooted and I shuddered.
“Well ... Since we’re temporarily stranded,” I said, rummaging through my tote, “might as well break out the essentials.”
Tristan’s brows rose. “You travel with essentials?”
“I came prepared for a breakup, not a breakdown, but some overlap exists.” My fingers wrapped around the cold metallic of my trusty flashlight I’d warmly called Hal.
“You still travel with a light?”
“Old habits are hard to break.” I smirked.
That’s why years ago he’d nicknamed me Nightlight since I always had a light source to keep the darkness at bay.
Under the weak and yellowing glow, I pulled out the Tina Rescue Kit—truffles, face mask, the petty His Loss T-shirt—and finally, two small bottles of wine and a tin of shortbread.
He stared. “That’s... impressive.”
“I’m a nurse. We believe in preventive measures.” I twisted one of the mini bottles open and took a sip. It was sweet, metallic, and barely passed as a wine. I winced. “Wow. That tastes like regret in liquid form.”
“Let me help.”
Leaping out of the cargo area, he opened the cabin and returned with a bottle of water and our disposable coffee cups.
With a swish, he swirled and tossed the contents onto the side of the road.
A quick rinse with fresh water, and he reached into one of the labeled crates near the back and popped the seal on a bottle of something far more respectable.
“You deserve better than airplane chardonnay.” He poured a little into the coffee cup before handing it over.
“Now, keep in mind, it should be in a nice, perfectly formed glass, but circumstances being what they are...” He held onto the cup as my fingers wrapped around it, lingering a breath longer than was necessary, as if it somehow felt needed. “This is wine.”
The scent hit first of dark berries, smoke, and something warm and peppery. When I sipped, it was smoother than I expected, like velvet versus burlap.
“Okay,” I said, half-smiling. “You win.”
“Always nice to hear that from you,” he murmured.
I pretended not to hear the low note in his voice as I studied the stars instead. The sky was ridiculously clear; the Milky Way stretched like spilled sugar across the black.
The wine went down easy, and before I knew it, my cup was empty.
“More?”
“Please.” I cracked open the shortbread container and passed it as he added more of his speciality to my cup.
Cookies and wine weren’t the ideal combination, but neither was a sketchy pull-out area in the middle of the mountains.
He leaned back on his palms beside me, close enough that our shoulders brushed.
“So tell me about them,” he said quietly. “Your kids.”
The question caught me off guard, despite how it warmed me from the inside. I started talking, fast and fluidly, about Josh’s dream to be in cyber security, about Allie’s great achievements in her culinary program, the way they made me laugh and infuriated me in equal measure.
As I spoke, his expression softened, the teasing gone. He was listening. Really listening. And for the first time in a long while, I felt... seen and heard.
“You light up,” he said when I paused for air. “You probably don’t even notice, but your whole face changes when you talk about them.”
I ducked my head, embarrassed and weirdly grateful. “They’re my everything. They saved me in a lot of ways; ways I could never fully explain to them. Or anyone, really.”
He lifted the bottle of wine and waved it.
“Yeah, don’t be shy. It’s not like we’re going anywhere.” I held my cup as he poured more before he added a bit to his own.
“You’re a proud mom; anyone can see that. And it sounds like you’ve done a bang-up job raising them. I hope they are as proud of you as you are of them.”
The words landed heavy. I didn’t trust myself to answer, so I took another sip of wine.
He shifted, glancing sideways. “So... can I ask you something without you threatening to revoke your passenger privileges?”
“That depends on the question.”
“Why didn’t you ever ask me out?”
Maybe it was the wine. Maybe the blurring stars. Maybe sitting in the dark with someone who once mattered and suddenly mattered again.
But honesty felt like a ledge ... one step and there’d be no going back.
And I wasn’t sure I could risk breaking twice.
The breath caught in my throat. “What?”
“Back in high school,” he said lightly, but he stopped casually swinging his legs.
I cut him off with a shaky laugh. “Tristan, you were... you. Confident. Lizzy’s older brother. I was barely functioning under the weight of teenage hormones and algebra.”
His mouth curved. “Translation: you thought I was out of your league.”
“Maybe a little.” I hesitated, the confession hovering. “Truth?” He nodded. “I had wanted to ask you out. Once. After graduation. But then life... rerouted.”
Silence stretched between us, soft and charged. The breeze off the highway placed a strand of my hair into his arm.
We sat there, wine between us, headlights cutting weak halos into the dark.
The stars blurred slightly and the warmth in my veins loosened something I’d kept locked down for years.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
He angled toward me, legs brushing mine. “You can ask me anything.”
“Why didn’t you ever ask me out?”
The night paused.
There was no laughter, no deflection. He looked at me like I had cracked open a vault.
“I wanted to,” he said quietly.
My heart pounded, embarrassingly loud.
He stared out at the open road before turning his focus to me. “There are two reasons why I didn’t.”
I crossed my dangling feet at the ankles and turned to face him.
“First, and this one is probably the most important one, but Lizzie made me swear up and down that I wouldn’t date anymore of her friends after the fiasco that was Dingbat Denise.”
“Wait? You dated her?”
“Once, and she expected to go all the way on the first date, and I wanted nothing to do with her. I liked her, but not that way. Afterwards she made a big deal out of things and blew everything way out of proportion.”
“Wow. I never heard that side of the story. Lizzie just stopped inviting her to hang out.”
“Yeah.” His tone didn’t indicate that he was proud of the reasoning. “After the Denise Debacle, she made me swear I’d never date another of her friends.” He looked right at me and the corners of his eyes tugged downward as he sighed.
“Oh. I see.” I hung my head. “But you’d wanted to.”
“Yeah, because it was you.”
My chest tightened at his words, and the headlights from the passing vehicle on the highway made the blues in his eyes sparkle for a fraction of a heartbeat.
Although the night air was chilly, I was suddenly warm enough to heat the back end of the van.
Thank goodness it was dark and he couldn’t tell my face was hotter than an oven.
“And... This sounds truly terrible, but after you and Lizzie stopped being friends, I figured the deal was off. You weren’t her friend anymore and I could ... you know, ask you out...”
My heart skipped a beat. He had been interested in me. As much as I had been in him.
“But before I could, you were with him.”
Boom. My rebound—Gregory Adams—the one who became the father to my children.
Gregory had been interested in me, and feeling brushed off and lonely as my final year of high school came to a crashing end, I accepted his date.
He wasn’t well known, wasn’t part of any major social cliques, so we blended like oil and vinegar, until a few years later when we couldn’t blend together anymore.
“And I wasn’t going to compete with someone you chose.” He lowered his head a beat, and for a split-second, the cocky, confident guy was gone, and in its place was the Tristan I’d known privately; sweet, raw, and decidedly honest.
And that was the problem. I was noticing him, and way more than I should.
Fun was fine. Banter was fine.
But this—whatever this strange pull in my chest was—it wasn’t fine.
My life was not built for sparks or detours or men who make silence feel comfortable.
My life was overnight shifts, bills, and figuring out dinner for the three of us so we can share and grow together.
I already have a heart commitment. Two of them.
And they come first.
Always.
I sucked air into my shaky lungs. The air was cold enough to sting, or maybe that was the ache of everything unsaid between us.
He watched me, quiet for a beat too long.
“Would it be wrong,” he said softly, “if I asked you out now?”