About being adored.
My muscles tighten. My throat clenches. For a few horrifying seconds, I fear I might break into tears in front of him, but I swallow them down.
This sharp ache in my chest is necessary. This knowledge is everything I need to move past our experiment.
He’s been reading my blog, and he sees it only as an experiment. Only as marketing.
He’s not connecting to the hidden confessions I hardly realized were there.
He’s only responding to the bigger purpose—the competitive one.
And that means when the clock strikes midnight, we return to friendship land.
At least we can return intact.
I haven’t blurted out the truth of my heart, so I’m safe, and we’re safe, and we’ll return to who we were.
“So, there you go. It’s a damn good thing I started it, and I’ll just have to keep writing more about lingerie,” I say in a cheery tone, trying to keep the mood featherlight to convince him the posts were only ever about the underwear.
Not about me.
Not about him.
“You should keep writing it, since you seem to enjoy it.” He props his head in his hand. “Hey. I have good news. Did you know the Harriet’s sale is over?”
“It is?” I ask, brightening.
“I saw it today. I couldn’t wait to tell you. But then I got distracted by this beauty in the tub,” he says, rough and raspy again, his eyes hooking into mine.
And the look in them is like a sign I should try one more time.
Because he looks at me like he feels the same way.
Put yourself out there.
“So you find me distracting?” I ask leadingly.
“You are highly distracting, Peyton.”
That’s promising, but then again, sex has been known to distract men. “What did you think of our tests? Did you learn anything?” I ask, trying to mask the hope in my voice.
He swallows and nods, his hazel eyes flickering with something darker, deeper.
That.
I want to know what that is.
That look is what I feel.
“What did you learn?” I ask, holding my breath, hoping he’s going to say he learned that I’m the one. Maybe he doesn’t need to read between the lines of my blog to take a chance with me. Maybe he’ll take it anyway.
His lips twitch in a wry grin. “That life doesn’t always play out like a romance novel,” he says, and my heart plummets.
I want the romance of the romance novel.
I want the sex and the love and the happiness.
“But what if it could?” I ask, pushing past the ache in my chest.
He taps my shoulder, grinning. “You didn’t let me finish.”
“Okay. Finish,” I say, mentally crossing my fingers.
His fingers trace lingering lines on my hip as he says, “Life doesn’t always play out like a novel, or even often. But sometimes, every now and then, you’re so in sync with each other, you come together.” He stops abruptly, like he was about to say something more, and I wait, on the edge of possibility. But all he says is “Right?”
There it is.
We are just sex.
He’s not catching feelings for me.
I should kick him out. I should let him go. But I want one more time.
And he’s going to give it to me.
“Right,” I answer as I reach for him and bring him close, and he follows my lead.
Taking my wrists, he pins them over my head, groaning with appreciation at the sight of me stretched out for him.
He doesn’t say, One last time. He doesn’t have to. It’s clear.
What’s clear, too, as he enters me is that getting over him now will take infinitely longer than last time.
And honestly, I’m not sure I ever did.
I think a part of my heart has always belonged to him.
Maybe that makes me dishonest.
Or maybe I’m finally being fully honest with myself.
As Tristan moves in me, breathing with me, moaning with me, I’m certain now. I gave a part of myself to him ten years ago. And I never took it back.
Trouble is, if I don’t retrieve it now, I’ll be lost for good.
When he leaves, he kisses me goodbye at the door, soft, sweet, and quick.
“Bye, Peyton.”
“Bye, Tristan.”
It feels like goodbye forever.
And I hate this feeling.
He holds the door open longer than he has to, then turns around and whispers my name. “Peyton?”
It sounds like the opening of a prayer.
“Yes?”
“What I meant to say is . . .” His lips part, but no more words come. He just looks at me like he’s trying to understand the secrets of the universe. “What I meant to say is thank you.”
It’s like a hand grips my throat. “For what?” I choke out.
“For asking me to help you. For trusting me. I was so glad when you asked me. I didn’t want it to be some other guy. I hate the thought of anyone hurting you ever again.”
But you’re hurting me right now. You’re hurting me, and you don’t even know it, you wonderful, beautiful, thoughtful man who doesn’t love me the same way.
“You would never hurt me,” I whisper.
He nods, swallowing roughly, his jaw tight. “I never would.”
He steps into the hall, turns around one more time, and gives me a look that would make movie audiences throw their popcorn at the hero.
A look that would make them shout, “Kiss her, tell her, love her!”
But life isn’t like the movies. It’s not like the books.
That’s what I learned this last week.
After the door shuts, I let the tears rain down.
27
Tristan
My hand doesn’t move. It’s stuck to her door like I can feel her through it. Like I can impart all the things I didn’t say.
All the desperate, pathetic words that threatened to fall from my lips.
Like I love you so much it hurts.
Like I don’t want to read too deeply into your blog, but if you tell me you feel one-tenth of what I feel, I will be the happiest guy in the world.
And like this—By “come together,” I didn’t mean sex. It’s hard for me to say what I mean because I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose another person I love. But let me try to say it better. Let me rephrase. Life doesn’t always play out like a novel, or even often. But sometimes, every now and then, you’re so in sync, you come together like it was meant to be for the two of you. Right?
And she’d say yes, and she’d throw her arms around me and smother me in kisses, because this is our time. It has to be our time. We won’t get another chance.
I’ve already let two opportunities pass me by.
I’d be an idiot to let the third one go.
Barrett would tell me as much. I smile privately, thinking of my brother. Of how I’ve tried to goad him into asking out Rachel, and how he’s tried to push me into speaking the truth to Peyton.
How can I raise him to be a man of action, a man of truth, if I can’t do it myself?
I can’t say one thing to him and do another. That’s not what my parents taught me, and it’s not what I want to impart to Barrett.