“I wanted to bring him down.” He stared at his feet. “I was angry with him.”
Everyone in the bar was watching us like a tennis match. I didn’t want to have this argument in public. I marched over and grabbed Alfie’s elbow. “Come with me.”
I turned back to Tristan. “You stay here.”
“What?” He threw up his hands. “What did I do?”
I dragged Alfie through the crowd out the front door. It wasn’t private enough, but it would have to do. “Explain.”
“Tristan was that guy who always got everything. I wanted to knock him off his pedestal. I saw an opportunity to make a fool out of him and I took it. That whole prank was aimed at him, but then you switched places, and like Tristan said, by the time I realized you were going to present, it was too late to fix it. I never expected it could hurt anyone, and I was horrified by what happened. I’m so sorry. “
“You expected it would hurt Tristan, though.”
“What?”
“You said you never expected it could hurt anyone. You meant to hurt Tristan.”
He shook his head, his eyes focused on something beyond me. “I told you I was a mess back then, and I couldn’t stand him.”
My fists clenched. I’d never wanted to punch a wall so badly. “And you never thought to tell me?”
“Back then?” He swallowed. “I wanted to, but I knew you’d hate me forever.”
“And now?”
His eyes slid back to mine, almost like he was afraid what he’d see there. “Believe me, I wanted to tell you. I knew it was weak to hide the truth from you, but it also felt sort of poetic that Tristan took the blame, because he might not have done that precise deed, but . . .” His lips pressed together like he was holding in a curse. “I knew if I told you what I’d done, you would have forgiven him, and that would have been fair in the narrowest way possible, but it would have exonerated how he treats people.”
I traced through every memory of the past few weeks. There had been infinite opportunities for him to come clean, and he hadn’t. Tristan had been warning me all along.
“Holy shit, Alfie, do you know what you did?” All that pain I’d suffered from that one single stupid day. “I’ve been trying to get my confidence back for ten years now.”
“I know. When you came in here that first night, I could see how badly I’d hurt you. I thought I could make things right.”
Alfie had been eager to help me overcome the damage he’d caused. Had this all been about compensating for his guilt?
“Is that the reason you’ve been so encouraging the past few weeks? Reparations?”
“No. I mean, yes, I did want to—”
“To fix a problem you created? Was I just a project to you?” The impact of his lie continued to reverberate.
“Sierra, I never intended—”
“It doesn’t matter what you intended. You did.” I was so disappointed. In him. In me.
“I told you I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Can’t you forgive me?”
Like that was so easy. “I’ve wrongly accused Tristan for doing this for years.”
Christ. There was no bottom to this pit of despair.
He narrowed his eyes. “But you forgave him easily enough, right?”
He had some nerve to throw that at me, like we could trade one crime for another.
I wanted to scream at him, but I moderated my tone to explain it to him. “Because I never really cared about Tristan!” I thought I had, but Alfie had shown me that I hadn’t begun to tap into the vast reserves of love I might feel for the right person. “Not like I’d started to care about you. Can’t you understand there’s a difference?”
He shook his head. “I thought you said it was because it happened so long ago.”
Why wasn’t he getting it?
“This revelation is news to me, Alfie. You can’t expect me to just get over it that easily.” He’d taken a wrecking ball to the wall we were building, and the shrapnel kept hitting me. I backed away. “I’m not sure I even know who you are.”
He stepped closer, bridging the gap I’d opened. “A week ago, you asked me to forgive you for something that happened years ago.” He sounded angry and frustrated, but he had no right to try to box me in with precedent. “Why can’t you forgive me?”
He was never going to understand.
I glared into those eyes that had hypnotized me and lured me in. “Fine. You’re forgiven for what happened ten years ago.” I was mad about it, but on some level, I knew I’d eventually let that go anyway. “But you hid the past from me until today. I don’t know whether I can trust you anymore. You deceived me. On purpose, Alfie.”
I wanted to talk to Aida to get a handle on this new reality. And Tristan. Shit, I needed to talk to him. He was a mess, but it was time I released him from my wrongful grudge. Dammit, now I owed him an apology.
Alfie crossed his arms and brooded, so I figured we were done talking.
A roar of laughter greeted me when I returned to the bar, and at first I panicked that it might be directed at me, but then I heard Zane’s voice regaling the crowd with a story about riding his bike down the cul-de-sac where his crush lived.
The show must go on.
I went to the bar and ordered a gin and tonic, double. I drank it down while Zane described the nature of the bird poop that landed on his shoulder at the precise moment his crush was riding up the street behind him.
“Trapped,” he said. “Between love and loss.”
Preach, Zane. I was right there with him.
He was a natural-born storyteller, and for a minute, I forgot I was mad, but Alfie came back in and passed me on his way toward the kitchen, maybe toward his apartment, and I had a sour feeling in my stomach.
How could he be the same guy who’d so patiently waited for my attention? Tristan was far from perfect, and he’d been downright shitty the week before, but maybe his bad behavior never disappointed me because I didn’t have high expectations of Tristan to begin with. If anyone had been put on a pedestal, it had been Alfie. And now he was laid low like the rest of us, and I didn’t know what to do with that.
As Zane finished and the crowd chatter rose, Miranda collected the scorecards before getting up to announce the winners for the night. I no longer cared.
“Moving on to the final round will be . . . Can I get a drumroll, please?” Fingers and palms beat on the tables, and she said, “Tristan and Zane. Congrats, Zane, you won first place for the night.”
Heather, Quinn, and I were eliminated. I felt nothing. No regret. Nothing but relief. I’d reached the end of the road. I planned to go home and sleep for days.
Miranda continued. “Next week the showdown finale will be between Tristan and Zane. And Sierra may use her Get Out of Jail Free card to return if she wishes.”
No thanks. I was done.
Everyone applauded, and I wended my way through back pats and condolences until I found Tristan.
“We need to talk.”
He met my eyes like we’d been fearsome competitors who’d earned each other’s full respect. But all he said was, “Yeah.”
I glanced over toward the kitchen and saw Alfie edging back into the room. Our eyes connected, and I could only guess what was going through his mind. I knew this was a replay of that long-ago night when he’d seen me kissing Tristan, but I didn’t care.