14. Liliana #3
“Well,” I say, calm as still water. “At least now the tackiness is on the outside where everyone can see it, too.”
Then Tristan moves.
He’s between us before I fully register it, one arm sweeping me slightly behind him, his jacket already coming off his shoulders.
He drapes it around me, wrapping me in the warmth of it, his hands gentle at my shoulders even as everything else about him has gone hard and cold, and he takes the cloth napkin a stunned waiter offers and presses it into my hands, murmuring.
“You okay? Here… wear my coat,” before he turns.
And when he turns on Hallie, his voice could freeze the whole room.
“That’s enough.” It isn’t loud. It doesn’t have to be as it lands in the sudden silence.
“You’ve done enough. To her, to me, to all of it, for long enough, and it stops tonight.
You threw a drink on my wife at a charity gala because she wouldn’t give you the reaction you came here to film.
Do you have any idea how pathetic that is? ”
Hallie’s mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
“Whatever you thought was going to happen here, it isn’t going to.”
He steps forward, and she actually steps back.
“You don’t get to touch her. You don’t get to touch us.
You are going to walk out of this room, and you are going to stay out of our lives, permanently, or I promise you, the next story with your name in it will be the truth about what you’ve been doing.
” His voice drops, lethal and certain. “Now go. Before I stop being polite.”
The silence after is absolute. Phones are up all around us, recording, and Hallie stands frozen in the center of it, wine glass empty in her hand, her face a blotchy ruin of humiliation, and for the first time since I’ve known her she has nowhere to hide and nothing to say.
And then my mother arrives.
Aurelia Astor cuts through the crowd, two large men from security in her wake, and she does not raise her voice.
“Remove her,” she says coolly, with a flick of her fingers toward Hallie. “She is not a guest. She is trespassing, and she has just assaulted my daughter in my home.”
Her gaze sweeps over Hallie with pure glacial contempt. “Do enjoy explaining that one to the press, dear. I’ll be certain they hear my version.”
Security closes in, and Hallie is escorted out through the parting, murmuring, phone-wielding crowd, and my mother watches her go with the serene satisfaction. Then she turns to me, and for one brief moment the ice cracks, and there’s real concern under it.
“Are you hurt?” she asks quietly.
“I’m fine, Mom.” And I am. “Just wine.”
She reaches out and squeezes my wine-damp hand once, hard, a whole apology and a whole promise in the pressure of it. Then she straightens and turns to smooth things over with her guests.
The crowd doesn’t disperse. If anything it thickens, everyone pretending not to stare while absolutely staring, phones still half-raised, the whispers already starting to build into a roar, and I feel the old panic start to rise, the too-many-eyes, the everyone-watching, the exact conditions that broke me open on a different night not so long ago.
But Tristan is still here.
He’s turned back to me, his jacket still around my shoulders, his hands cradling my arms, his whole body angled to put himself between me and the worst of the crowd, shielding me the way he did outside the concert venue, blocking out the cameras with the breadth of his back.
And this time I know exactly what it means.
This time it isn’t damage control or optics or a story he’s trying to manage.
It’s just him, standing between me and the world, telling all of them without a single word that they’ll have to go through him first.
I feel, against all reason, completely safe.
And that’s what does it, I think. Not the flowers or the notes or the song in the rain.
This. The way he plants himself between me and the storm and dares it to come.
I reach out from under his jacket and I take his hand, lacing my fingers through his from behind, and I feel him go still. He turns his head to look at me, a question in his eyes.
“Take me away from here,” I tell him, low, just for him.
His fingers tighten around mine. “Where to?”
“Just away.” My voice wavers, and I let him see all the way in for once. “Far from all of this. I don’t care where. I just want to go… with you, right now.”
Tristan doesn’t ask another question. He doesn’t hesitate.
His hand closes around mine, sure and warm, and then he’s moving, pulling me with him, cutting a path straight through the glittering crowd and the raised phones and the flashing lights, his shoulders carving us an exit, his grip on my hand never once loosening.
People part around us. The lights chase us all the way to the doors.
Somewhere in the middle of it, half running, his hand locked in mine, the cool night air rushing up to meet us as we burst out into it, I start to laugh.
I get it now. After everything, after all of it, I finally understand the thing that’s been true since a rooftop in the dead of winter, the thing I keep forgetting and keep relearning.
He was never the thing I needed to run from.
Because it was always the one I ran to.
My escape.