Seeing her phone location hovering over this location inspired a rush of anger, followed by a swift compulsion to get here straight from my meeting with Brennan.
Now that darkness has fallen, I make my move. I duck into the shadows of the trees that line the edge of the property. Much of the first floor is lit up, but I can’t spot them inside. The curtains are drawn in one room. The library.
A gust of wind sets a chime on their back patio jangling loudly, drawing my attention. The porch light illuminates a bare stone patio and the faint outline of an oak tree near the corner of the house. One of its branches leans unnaturally toward the structure, creating a perfect ladder to the second floor. To Isabel’s room.
I don’t understand how, but I know this house. After all that’s happened to me, somehow it’s still mapped in my brain. I can feel it. Warm inside. Smooth wooden floors on the bottom. Clean, plush carpeting on the top. Books on the shelves. Photos on the walls. Smells of food and flowers. Smells that a home should have. A real home.
I refuse to let my thoughts return to the house in Baltimore. I sped away from there determined never to think of that damned place again. Of course that means denying the time Isabel spent there with me, which isn’t exactly fair.
I step away from the nagging guilt and go to the base of the tree. I wedge my foot into the narrow valley of the trunk and propel myself onto the arching branch. A few feet away from what I’m convinced is her bedroom window, I shimmy along its sturdy length, feeling ridiculous but strangely compelled to find her on the other side. Once I’m closer, I reach forward and try the window but find it locked.
Damn it.
Straddling the branch, I withdraw my phone.
Isabel.
Are you talking to me now?
I will if you come upstairs.
I hope to hell she comes up alone. The last thing I want to do is climb back down this tree, and I’m feeling anything but stable waiting on it. A few minutes pass. As soon as I consider going back down, the bedroom light switches on. Isabel’s figure appears through the sheer, willowy curtains. She turns around but halts at the door when I rap my knuckles on the glass. She turns back and quickly unlatches the window and pushes it up.
“Tristan, what the hell are you doing?”
I don’t answer her as I slip through the opening and shut the window behind me. When I turn, she’s already a few steps away, locking the door. The distance irritates me. Because after one look at her, I realize I miss her. The same way I missed her when I watched her plane take off for Panama.
Too much space or time between us feels like a bridge we have to keep journeying over again and again. I can read it in her careful stare, her hesitant posture. She’s gauging my mood, wondering whether I’ll cross the space and touch her or offer the smallest reassurance that she’s still important to me. That I still want to kiss her and make love to her more than I want to protect her from the foolish affection she has for me.
Foolish? No, real. I can finally accept it was real for me too. The day I lost my memory, I was in love with Isabel Foster. She was red flowers and desert air and my last breath before everything went dark. Three years later, I’ve opened my eyes for what feels like the first time since, and she’s all I can see.
She finally breaks the silence. “How did you know how to get up here?”
“I don’t know. I just remembered, I guess. Did I used to sneak up here a lot or something?”
Her lips curve a little. “Until we got caught. Then my dad threatened to cut down the tree until I swore I’d never let it happen again.”
I laugh, but she presses a finger to her lips. “My parents are on high alert. We have to be quiet or—”
I take two long strides and press my lips to hers, silencing her surprised squeak. I cradle her against me and push my fingers into her hair, angling her how I need her. And hell, I need her. She melts, and I go deeper. Savoring all the soft recesses of her mouth. Binding her tighter to me. My instincts scream for more, but I know it’s never going to be enough. Not until she’s preaching my name again.
I force myself to tear from her lips, even though I’m hard and completely unwilling to stop touching her or fantasizing about all the things our bodies could do. She doesn’t help, guiding her fingertips along my unshaven jawline.
“Tristan, don’t stop.”
“We have to. Getting caught may have different consequences this time.”
She kisses the corner of my lip. “We’ll be quiet.”
I laugh softly. “You are not quiet.”
Color rises to her cheeks. I skim my knuckles across her warm skin, reliving the moment that has her embarrassed. “If you had any idea how many times I’ve heard your voice in my head saying my name, Isabel, you’d be blushing twice as hard.”
“I’m not blushing,” she says, patting her cheeks.
I step away and catch my breath, something I’m going to have to get used to if I don’t stop this thing between us. I’m not sure she’ll ever stop affecting me the way she does.
“We should head back, Isabel.”
The heat in her eyes cools. “I can’t. My mom…”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. She’s different. When I first got here, she was so upset, talking nonsense. She seemed to get it together after a while. I told her everything that happened. But I’m worried about her.”
“She’s upset over all of this. That’s to be expected,” I say.
“You don’t understand. This is her worst nightmare. Worse than her worst nightmare.”
“Then the best thing you can do is keep yourself out of harm’s way. Your father is here for her. That’s got to be enough.”
“Tristan…” She walks past me and drops onto the edge of her bed.
She sighs, but I can’t be sure it’s resignation. Exhaustion, maybe. Maybe if I hadn’t lost my shit at my old house and dropped her off at Brienne’s with barely a word, she wouldn’t have felt compelled to go off on her own. Now here we are.
“Isabel,” I say softly.
She lifts her wordless gaze to mine.
“We keep doing this to each other, you know.”
“What?”
“Second guessing each other. Then leaving each other behind when we’re trying to move in the same direction.”
Her shoulders soften, as if some of her defenses are already coming down. “Believe it or not, we weren’t always like this, Tristan. Not until you left, anyway.”
I lower into a chair in front of her writing desk and face her. She scoots back on the bed and props herself up against the wall with her knees tucked to her chest. She seems in no rush to leave, and against my better judgment, a part of me wants to stay too.
“What was I like…before?”
I’m almost afraid to hear the answer, but we’ve come this far. Brennan didn’t think I was too awful, judging by his warm reception and willingness to relive some of his worst memories for my sake.
She rests her chin on her knee, eyeing me calmly. “Are you sure you want to know?”
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 l
eafless 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 co
mmunicates 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.
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