I trail my thumb up and down the wooden arm of the chair and think of our trip to my old house. She didn’t deserve the reaction I gave her, and I don’t blame her for being wary of a repeat episode.
“This isn’t easy for me. Believe it or not, I’m trying pretty hard to keep an open mind and not freak the fuck out every time I get hit with something vaguely familiar. For years, I convinced myself I didn’t care about whatever happened in the past. Promised myself I’d never give in to the temptation to seek it out. Now being here, being with you… It’s like I’m rewiring my brain to accept things I never thought I could. And sometimes I’m an asshole about it.”
“I’m trying to help.” Her voice is so genuine, her expression filled more with concern than pity.
“I know you are. I’m trying to let you.”
“Why didn’t you ever try to find out who you were?”
I look out the window. The leafless branches scrape against the house. The truth is, I could have found out. The search was at the tip of my fingertips any day of the week, but I’d valiantly resisted. Until now.
“I figured enough people’s lives had been shattered because of me. I knew if I started digging for answers, more people I cared about would get hurt and I’d probably end up dead.”
She’s quiet a moment. “What about the people in your book? You took those jobs and didn’t think twice. Lives were shattered.”
I did think twice. I contemplated Jay’s first assignment a lot longer than she wanted me to. I did my research on the mark and sat with my doubts for days until she demanded action. Then something became clear. If I was going to play this game with Jay, survive as one of her hired guns, I couldn’t be the judge. I had to point and shoot. Erase the humanity from all of it. There was no other way.
I lean forward, rest my arms on my knees, and release a tired sigh. How could I explain it to someone like Isabel, with such a pure and patient heart?
“Did you ever hear about that experiment a long time ago where they withheld human contact from babies? No talking, no eye contact, no affection.”
Sadness swims in her eyes. “I have. It’s awful to think about.”
“When I got to Rio, I had nothing. I had Jay, and our conversation had been so brief, the only thing I knew walking away from that was she was going to give me this chance—the only chance I’d ever get—but if I fucked it up, I was probably going to wind up dead or in prison.”
“What does that have to do with the experiment?”
“I was kind of like a grown-up version of one of those babies. Isolated, deprived, trapped in a situation I was too vulnerable to find my way out of. The only person who cared I existed was Jay, and she gave me just what I needed to survive. An occupation, an income, a way to stay alive. Not a single shred of warmth or compassion to reassure me that I was a human being. Because to her, I wasn’t. And little by little, whatever humanity existed in the man you used to know ceased to exist. With every hit, I had to give more of it up until there was nothing left.”
Tears glisten in her eyes. Releasing her knees from her chest, she crawls to the edge of the bed. She swings her legs down to rest between mine and takes my hands in hers.
“I wasn’t there for you when you needed someone to care about you, but I did care. All that time. Sometimes I would hate you and curse you for leaving me the way you did, but I could never bring myself to believe that you’d done it to truly hurt me. It just felt like you were…lost. By the time I realized how lost you’d become, I couldn’t find you. I would have never given up on us.” She squeezes my hands, and it feels like she’s got another hand around my heart, massaging the dead thing back to life. “You were right, Tristan. I still haven’t given up.”
It’s too much. Too much truth and heaviness. I don’t know how to be human and acknowledge one of the scariest emotions on the map—her love for me. I don’t know how to reassure her, even though a part of me undeniably wants to know what it’s like to truly accept her affection without the debilitating fear that we’ll be doomed if I let it go too far.
So I unlatch our hands and pretend to stretch. I even smile a little and hope she doesn’t feel rebuffed. This halfway is progress, because a bigger part of me wants to fly out the window and disappear into the night. Back to the darkness I know so well.
She watches me carefully, and I’m convinced she’s just read my mind.
“At the beginning, maybe you were more…like this.” She gestures with a flick of her hand in my direction.
I cock an eyebrow. “Huh?”
“You asked me what you were like before. You were more like you are now. Guarded. A little resentful, maybe. You didn’t like me very much, or at least you didn’t act like you did. I think in your eyes, I was just some rich girl trying to fill out her college résumé by helping out at a disadvantaged school.”
“Were you?”
She smirks. “I could have filled out my résumé without taking a bus to Baltimore twice a week.”
“Then why did you do it?”
She glances toward the locked door. “I lived a sheltered life for a long time. I was tired of being careful all the time. After Mariana died, my mother couldn’t let me out of her sight. By the time I turned sixteen, I couldn’t take it anymore. I was suffocating here.”
“Who’s Mariana?”
She stares at me thoughtfully before pointing to the photo on her bureau. Two toddlers with big brown eyes and wavy brown hair wear matching pink dresses and broad, nearly identical smiles.
“Your sister.”
“Twin sister,” she says lightly. “Sometimes I forget this is all new for you.”
“Are you sick of repeating yourself?”
She smiles a little and looks down. “No. I want to help you remember things, or at least understand what’s missing.” She looks to the photo again. “Mariana got sick when we were really young. Leukemia. She died when I was three. I don’t really remember her. I was too young to see how it changed my parents, but they were always so much more protective over me than my friends’ parents, and I figured that was why.”
“I’m sorry.” Even though she’s not grief-stricken, it feels like the appropriate thing to say.
And here, in her room where I’d sneaked through the window who knows how many nights to be with her, I’m compelled to be better for her. Better than I was yesterday. Better than the man who was too afraid to stay in her life and face the pain instead of running to the desert to bury it.
I cross my legs at the ankle and lean back, ready to listen to as much as she’ll tell me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Isabel
The doorbell rings, jarring me awake beside Tristan. I fell asleep in his arms last night, very likely midsentence. For some reason, mentioning Mariana sparked his interest not just in the tragedy of losing my sister too soon but in everything else. He asked me about my family. About college at George Washington and teaching English in Rio. About my love of dabbling in all the languages I haven’t found the time to truly master yet.
Every once in a while, his lips would find mine—deliberate, searing kisses that spoke a language filled with all the things he couldn’t tell me, either because he couldn’t or he wouldn’t. I wished his kisses would take us further. But beyond the occasional roaming hand and teasing touch, he showed impressive restraint against my whispered pleas, even though I could feel exactly how our closeness affected him too.
I haven’t won the war with Tristan, but I know I haven’t lost it. I feel him breaking down, showing what he’s capable of. Compassion, empathy, tenderness, remorse.
His confession last night is a fresh wound I’ll wear on my heart the way he wears his scars on his skin. Somehow his pain has always been mine. He was reborn into this new life a grown man, one with vulnerabilities so raw and deep he may as well have been a child. I’m more determined than ever to help him find his way home. I pray that home is me, us…
I’m unmoving beside him now, listening.
My mother opens the front door, her polite voice distinct but not her words. Then a male voice, just clear enough that my heart stops. I sit up in bed.
“What is it?” Tristan’s voice is a sleepy rasp that makes me want to curl up against him and forget the world.
Instead, I scramble to the door and open it to hear better.
“I’m sorry for the intrusion, Mrs. Foster. I got here as fast as I could. I told the local authorities everything I could but figured I might be more use here.” He pauses. “I’m Kolt, by the way. I don’t know how much Isabel told you about me.”
Kolt’s voice drifts off. I grip the edge of the doorway. Hearing him takes me back to the life we once shared. To the day everything changed. Everything.
“She mentioned you, yes.” My mother’s voice is hesitant but firm.
She doesn’t want him to know I’m home. Tristan’s sudden presence behind me and gentle hold on my arm communicates the same thing. I bite my lip, suppressing the urge to run downstairs and announce that I’m alive to the man who deserves to know.
“I appreciate you coming, but this isn’t a very good time. You must be exhausted. Maybe you could come by tomorrow after you’ve had some rest,” my mother says.
“Is everything okay?” My father’s serious tenor carries through the foyer and up the stairs.
“It’s fine, Morgan. This is Kolt. Isabel’s friend from the English school.”
“Can you tell us anything about what happened before she disappeared?”
“Morgan, not now—”
“In light of the current circumstances, I think he can answer some questions for us.” My father’s clipped tone leaves no question.
“I don’t know much,” Kolt says. “The day she disappeared, we were having lunch at our usual spot. She seemed really distracted. We were going to have dinner that night and talk things over.”
“What things?” my father asks.
Kolt hesitates a few seconds. “We were going to talk about our relationship. Where we wanted things to go, I guess. But we never had a chance. She took off, and I didn’t see her at the school for the rest of the day. She didn’t answer my calls. Her apartment was empty when I went by. I notified the police after she didn’t come to work the next day.”
I curse inwardly and open the door wider. Tristan’s grip stiffens, halting my forward progress. I turn, pleading with him with a look.
No, he mouths.
“He deserves to know,” I whisper.
“I don’t trust him.”
Kolt’s done nothing to betray my trust. This is something else. Something I wasn’t sure Tristan was capable of until now. This is jealousy.
“That’s not why you don’t want me to talk to him.”
“Do not go down there, Isabel.”
I set my jaw firmly. “Let. Me. Go.”
His chest moves steadily under his tense breathing. For a moment, I think I’ll have to wrestle free, but he surprises me by letting go.
We stand there a moment in silent opposition. The last thing I want to do is hurt him when we’re finding our way back to each other, but Kolt didn’t ask to have me ripped out of his life. Guilt on top of guilt compounds on me, but Kolt’s voice downstairs prompts me into motion.
“I’m sorry for just dropping in on you like this. I can come back tomorrow.”
“Sure,” my mom answers. “I think that would be best.”
I hurry down the stairs, my heart flying as Kolt’s figure comes into full view. He looks like hell—skin dull, hair unstyled and sticking up in places it shouldn’t, his button-down a wrinkled mess. I’ve no doubt he traveled all night and came directly here.
“Isabel.” My name breaks on his lips. “You’re here.”
I halt at the foot of the stairs. He steps between my parents. When he reaches for me, I can’t deny him. He clutches me firmly against his chest and buries his nose in my hair.
So much more than my absence has come between us. He has no idea I’ve been falling in love with Tristan all over again. Still, Kolt is the closest friend I’ve had for months. The cute coworker who kept me smiling and laughing until he became the lover who warmed my bed on lonely nights. Then I disappeared without a trace and followed Tristan into the jungles of Brazil. I’ve thought of Kolt from time to time, but the guilt of leaving him so suddenly has never been this heavy.
And he’s right. Only days ago we were negotiating the terms of our relationship—a relationship I was reluctant to define and eager to diffuse.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “So sorry.”
He looks into my eyes, cradling my face in his cool palm. “What’s going on?”
“It’s complicated. I can’t explain it all right now. I just needed you to know I was okay.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?”
I shake my head tightly. “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”
He opens his mouth to speak, but his attention is taken away. Creaks down the stairs have my heart plummeting to my stomach. I press my palms against Kolt’s chest, loosening his grasp. He backs off slightly, very likely distracted by the man behind me.
Tristan drops from the last step with a notable thud.
Stoic, deadly Tristan has arrived. Everyone in the room seems to feel it. Except when I chance a look at him, his eyes are fixed on me as if no one else exists.
“Hi there, I’m Kolt.” Kolt extends his hand.
Tristan regards him coolly, making no effort to return the gesture. Undeniably, he’s dark and damaged in ways he never was before. Somehow that makes him even more beautiful to me, though. And somehow all the other people in the room bring this truth into stark relief. Kolt is inches away, yet I’m drawn to Tristan so strongly, I worry Kolt must feel it too. That energy that hums between us, nearly palpable in its intensity.
“This is Tristan,” I say lightly, as if introducing the love of my life to the friend I’ve been casually fucking is the most normal thing in the world.
“There are matters at play here that you don’t understand and you don’t need to understand,” Tristan says without ceremony. “Isabel’s in danger, and no one can know that she is here. Can you keep your mouth shut?”
Kolt grimaces. “Excuse me?”
“I said can you keep your—”
“Do you know who you’re talking to?” Kolt leans in, his words and body language offering a challenge that has me in an instant panic. He has no idea who he’s dealing with.
“Kolt, please don’t.”
I reach for him, but he brushes me off like a fly trying to distract him from more important things and shoots daggers at Tristan.
Tristan reacts, grasping my hand in his. He takes a threatening step toward Kolt, wedging his body between us. I wrap my free hand around his bicep and squeeze, a silent plea for him to exercise restraint when I’m worried all he wants to do is write Kolt’s name in his little red book just for breathing.
“I know exactly who you are. You’re Kolt Mirchoff. Harvard University dropout, class of ’18. Your family’s made a fortune slinging legal drugs through one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. You’ve got too much money on your hands and all the time in the world to piss it away.”
“I didn’t drop out. I’m on a leave of absence. And my family’s business doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on with Isabel right now.”
“Maybe not. But you need to get out of my face before they think you’ve gone missing too.”
Kolt slides his gaze from Tristan to me and back again. “I’m not going anywhere unless Isabel says so.”
Tristan brings his face dangerously close to Kolt’s. “You’ve been fucking with the wrong girl, Mirchoff. She’s not in love with you.”
My father’s face reddens with anger. “That’s about enough of that.”
Thankfully, my mother gets between the two men before my father can. “Kolt, Isabel needs her rest. It’s been a long journey for her too. Come, I’ll walk you out an
d we can talk.”
Just like that, my mother manages to pull Kolt away from the house and lead him down the front path, but not before he pins me with a look filled with such confusion and defeat.
I resist the urge to go to him and apologize once more, but Tristan’s not wrong. I’m not in love with Kolt. I never could be. If Tristan hadn’t shown up on the street that afternoon, I would have explained it to Kolt that night. We can never be what he wants us to be.
He turns away, but the crushed look in his eyes won’t leave my memory anytime soon. My mother’s voice disappears when my father shuts the door behind them.
“Happy now?” Tristan works his jaw, doing nothing to mask his frustration. “I know you’ll do whatever you damn well please, but may I suggest we leave before someone finds out you’re here? The probability of that just increased substantially.”
I meet his challenging stare, all too ready to defy him.
“He’s right.”
We both turn toward my father’s voice. “But first I’d like a few words with you, Mr. Stone.”
Tristan’s anger seems to cool. Or maybe it goes inward. Something about his energy and posture changes. He’s black ice on a cold night. Dangerous if ignored. Of all people, my father might understand this.
“I’m going to get some things from my room. Give me five minutes,” I say.
Tristan nods but doesn’t look my way. He follows my father into his office and closes the French doors behind them.
I watch them a moment through the glass. Tristan’s rigid stance, my father circling his desk and dropping into his chair. I could watch and wonder, but I’ll have to pull it out of Tristan later. Our safety may be an issue, but right now, I’m more concerned about getting Tristan out of the house before someone snaps.
I don’t waste time. I go upstairs, tear open boxes from my old apartment that I’d stored in my closet, and put together a bag of warmer clothes so I can return Brienne’s. I have no idea why I kept so much stuff. I lived on next to nothing in Rio. A simpler life. A richer life. I’ll tell my mother to donate the rest before I go.
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