Chapter 25 #2
This thing between Tristan and me could wait. He'd already wasted so much time in my life with his crap, and I was sick of it, sick of thinking about him and what he'd done.
I needed to move on to bigger and better things, and now that he knew my identity, the entire revenge thing had fallen apart, which meant I never had to see Tristan D. Hawthorne ever again.
Which should have made me ecstatic. But I wasn't.
Oh, God, why wasn't I?
"Look," I said, standing up, surprised to find my limbs a little shaky, "I need to get going. It's a big night for me, you know."
Rising to his feet, towering over me, he nodded. "I get that. I'm sorry. It was a mistake to show up here like this. I should have waited."
Ugh, stop being so nice.
"What was it you wanted to tell me?" I asked, blurting it out with zero thought.
While he hesitated, his eyes never left mine. "Do you really want to know? It's kind of a lot, and I want you to just go and enjoy your night."
Oh, great. Now my curiosity was piqued, and I had to know. "Yes. Yes, I do want to know."
He ran an agitated hand through his hair, sighing deeply. "Man, I fucked this up," he muttered.
"Fucked what up?" How could he possibly have anything worse to tell me? What could be worse than what he'd already done to me?
Shaking his head, I could feel that whatever he was about to say... it was going to unravel something. This thing he had to tell me wasn't small. It was big. Huge perhaps.
"Tristan..." My voice faltered, torn between urgency and dread. "Please tell me. I need to know. Please."
At my final plea, something in his demeanor changed, and his expression turned resigned. "Okay. I'll tell you. I—after all this time, I'm not sure how to begin." He offered me a small smile, and I almost felt sorry for him.
I shrugged, no idea what to say since I couldn't even comprehend his struggle or what it could be about.
"So I have a confession about that awful day in high school, you know, the day that disgusting poster was plastered everywhere."
He hadn't needed to clarify—I certainly knew what day he was referencing—but I nodded so he would continue. "A confession?" I prodded.
Looking down, he nudged something on the concrete with the toe of his shoe. "Yeah, a confession."
"What kind of confession?"
Glancing back up at me, his wounded eyes met mine, so full of anguish it took my breath away.
"I didn't do it," he said.
And just like that, the ground beneath my feet shifted again.
He didn't do it? What? What did that even mean? Was he trying to say...?
Mouth agape, all I could do was stare at him, the words ringing in a relentless loop between us.
"I didn't do it," he repeated. "I only confessed in order to get expelled."
Wait, what? He wanted to get expelled? Was that the right conclusion to come to?
His words made no sense to me whatsoever.
Was I having a stroke right now? Or was it all just that confusing?
"What do you mean?" I asked, my voice sounding like a stranger's.
"I mean, Preston and Sloane stuffed the extras in my locker, panicking and in a rush to get rid of them. They knew I never locked mine. And that big stack in there... that's why I was prime suspect number one."
"What? Are you—are you joking right now?"
"I've never been more serious in my life. This is not a joke, not a lie, only the absolute truth that I should have told you a long time ago. But I didn't think it'd matter. The harm was still the same, no matter who did it."
Still not quite comprehending, I finally was able to find my voice and wanted answers. "Why would you confess to something you didn't do then? Why on earth would you want to get expelled?"
"It was a split second decision, obviously the wrong one, one that I've regretted deeply in the years since.
But I was young and I was desperate... to get away from my home situation.
And while I was sitting there, being accused, the stack of posters in the principal's hands, I remembered something my dad had said, that if I fucked up one more time, they'd send me off to boarding school.
Well, boarding school sounded like fucking heaven compared to my actual home.
" He shrugged, like he hadn't just rocked my entire world view.
"So you lied and took the blame, just to get away from your parents?"
"That's right. I couldn't see a way out... until I was sitting there being accused of a crime I didn't commit."
"But... but you were friends with them. You were in on the planning of course." So he was complicit which was just as awful as the actual bullying in my opinion. "Right?" I added.
He stepped closer, his face even more serious somehow. "No. I had nothing to do with it. Nothing."
What? I couldn't believe that. How could he possibly expect me to believe that?
"But you knew about it. At the least, you would have heard about it beforehand."
"No. I absolutely did not." He closed his eyes.
"What I mean to say is... if I did, if I happened to be in the same room, or—or sitting at the same lunch table or something, I didn't actually hear it.
I was too much in my own head then, too obsessed with how rotten my home life was and thinking up ways to get the hell out of there.
That particular time in my life was worse than any other time before it. "
Oh. Huh. Okay.
My eyes darting around the room, looking at anything other than the anguish on his face, I didn't know what to think, didn't know how to feel, every thought in my head swirling around in complete chaos, the events of the day exhausting enough, and now this added to it?
Once again, my phone made noises. A bunch of noises, jolting me out of my stupor.
"I—I need to go," I said, glancing somewhere in the vicinity of his chin, not daring to meet his eyes, afraid of what I'd see there.
He bowed. He fucking bowed his head in my direction. "Of course. Can—can I help you get there? Or at the least offer my driver?"
"No. No, thank you," I revised, because I was fucking polite to a fault. "I have my own ride."
And with that, I walked past him to the exit.
But just before I walked out the door, he called my name. My real name, the sound of it on his lips something I'd never in my life forget.
"Astrid. I just want you to know one thing..."
I paused, curious despite myself, but I didn't turn back.
His deep, sexy voice rang out again in the dim room. "I think you're the most beautiful woman in the world with the most beautiful soul I've ever seen."
Damn him.
Tears sprung to my eyes as I left, walking into the cool night air again.
Why did he have to say that? Of all things, why that?