by Liz Gavin
“Right, right. My folks lived next door to the Andersons. They got front row seats to your meltdown.”
“Isolde and Angus wouldn’t let me in to talk to Izzie.”
“As I recall, she also didn’t want to get out of her parents’ house and talk to you. Maybe they respected her wishes?”
“I just wanted her to explain to me why. Tell me why I wasn’t good enough, you know? What the fuck was wrong with me that pushed her away. Was it that much to ask?”
“Big T, you didn’t ask. You tear down the fucking garage door with your bare hands.”
“Your dad and Angus had a hard time keeping me down.”
“Dad told me they dragged you kicking and screaming to my parents’ house. Lucky for you, Angus and Isolde loved you like a son, and didn’t press charges.”
“Whose side are you on, anyway?” Tristan fumed. A little sympathy from his childhood friend would be nice.
“Yours. It’s just that fifteen years have gone by and that put things into a new perspective.”
“That is the point I’m trying to make. After fifteen years, she washes up at my door like some fucking driftwood the sea rejected.” Tristan returned to venting and pacing. “What did she expect me to do? Roll over like a fucking puppy and beg for a belly rub? I mean, those days are over. I’m done with her. I’ve been done for years. She has no right to show up out of the blue and demand I listen to her. She’s fifteen years too late, man. That’s what it is. Too damn too little, too damn too late.”
As he turned around for the millionth time, Tristan bumped into Noah’s chest. His friend fastened his hands around Tristan’s upped arms, steadying him as their eyes locked. “Breathe, Tristan. Just breathe. You’re making me dizzy.”
He took a deep breath that came out as a huff. “Happy?” he asked, unapologetic.
Caught by surprise, Tristan didn’t react when Noah shoved him toward the couch. “Sit the fuck down and shut up for a second. For the best part of the day, I’ve been listening to you go back and forth about all the multiple reasons you should never see Izzie again. And the wicked ways she made you suffer. Okay, I get it. She wreaked havoc. She destroyed you. I was there, dude. I witnessed it all, you don’t need to paint me the picture, I watched the live show.” Noah paused and stared into Tristan’s gaze, as if for effect. Or maybe he was waiting for his words to sink in. “Fifteen. Fucking. Years. Ago. I also followed your attempts to get over her.”
“You say it like I’ve failed.”
Noah went on as if Tristan had not interrupted him. “Right here in Florianópolis. Always beside you, going through similar growing pains. I too got my heart ripped out of my chest, remember?”
“I’ll never forget.”
“You know I feel you, right? I’m not a bystander, I’ve been there with you every step of the way, have I not?”
Tristan begrudgingly nodded.
“I’ll tell you something I came to realize quite recently. We both have been running away ever since we moved down here. We never stopped. We’ve spent a decade and a half pretending we moved on, when we have not. The way I see it, we’ve been chasing our own tails like two stupid old dogs.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“I am, but that doesn’t mean my truth is less truthful for you. I’ve done a lot of soul searching lately because of a certain redhead that won’t give me the time of day. She doesn’t trust me because of my serial dating routine. I don’t blame her. That’s what you and I have been doing all this time. Meaningless one-night stands.”
“It’s been working fine,” Tristan muttered, smothering an inner voice that tried to side with Noah. “What I’ve got with Bruna isn’t meaningless.”
Noah rolled his eyes. “Don’t get me started on that. You should be ashamed of the way you lead her on. She deserves better.”
“She deserves the best, no doubt about it. But, I’ve never lied to her. We’ve got an understanding.”
Noah eyeballed him before replying, “You’re not bullshitting me. You believe that crap. Dude! I could smack you right now.”
Tristan didn’t get it. Noah read people quite well, but he was off the mark there.
“What the fuck for? Bruna doesn’t want commitment. We’ve had the talk right off the bat. I’m not a jerk.”
Noah, who had been looming over Tristan, flopped down on the couch. “You’re a hopeless case, Big T. Maybe that was true in the beginning, three years ago, correct?”
“That’s about right.”
“Three years is an awful long time for casual, don’t you think? How many times have you seen Bruna with another man?”
“Shit.” Tristan’s stomach dropped. He had been too self-absorbed to notice. “I’ve no idea.”
“My point exactly. You sweep stuff under the rug, man. You excel at keeping shit apart, neatly stored away from sight, in tiny little compartments. You suck at dealing with crap. That’s not moving on, that’s denial.”
“You sound like my mom.”
“You visited Lilly?”
“I went over there this morning. Except for the part about Bruna, she pretty much delivered the same message as you. Have you been talking to her?”
“I wish,” Noah chuckled. “I miss her insightful comments.”
“She misses you too.”
Noah’s hand clamped around Tristan’s shoulder. “I guess what I’m trying to say here is that life is too short. You’ve already spent fifteen years pretending you moved on, when you clearly haven’t.”
“You think I haven’t gotten over Izzie because I didn’t settle down? That’s not true. I had made peace with the past. I was fine until she reappeared.”
“If you had made peace with the past, you wouldn’t be hurting the way you are now.”
Damn the man. Now he’s quoting Bruna. What the fuck?
Tristan shook his head. “You’re wrong,” he insisted, less vehemently.
“You know I’m right. You owe it to yourself to set the record straight. That’s the only way you will make peace with the past. You should give Izzie a chance to talk.”
“When hell freezes over, I’ll think about it.” Tristan stood and left the living room, without so much as a glance Noah’s way.
He didn’t want to see his friend’s smug expression.
Knowing Noah was right didn’t make it easy for Tristan to accept it.
9
Izzie
Blowing out air a couple of times, Izzie rang the doorbell. She swallowed hard to make sure her heart wouldn’t climb out of her chest when the faint thud of barefoot steps on a wooden floor got closer. She held her breath when Tristan yanked the door open and glowered at her.
“I wasn’t going to open it, but I figured if you went to the trouble of convincing my mom to give you the access code to the penthouse elevator, you might even camp outside the door or something equally stupid.” He blocked the way, which forced Izzie to remain in the hall.
Craning her neck to make up for their considerable difference in height, and accepting the challenge in his defiant stare, she countered, “I didn’t twist her arm to get it. Truth is, Lil volunteered the information when I mentioned her blockhead of a son wasn’t picking up my calls or returning my messages. It’s been over two weeks, dude. Can we please act like the adults that we are?”
An angry flare lit up his blue eyes, then was gone. His animosity deflated, it left Izzie with an odd taste in her mouth. Not a bad one, though. She had come prepared to wrestle the proverbial bull by its horns and the sudden change in Tristan’s mood was as unexpected as it was welcomed.
Half the butterflies in her stomach dropped dead. The others were alive and well and making her queasy each time her eyes swept over his broad bare chest, which Izzie tried her best to ignore.
Not an easy task with his taut nipples right in her line of sight, taunting her. She bit the inside of her mouth to avoid gliding her tongue on her lower lip.
Mouthwatering sight.
Tri
stan twisted his towering frame to the left and gestured for her to step in. As she found her way to the seating area, his deep voice followed close behind her. “Honestly, I’m just tired of running around in circles, or trying to convince myself you’ll drop the bone,” he muttered, his tone, drab. Izzie would take dull over surly anytime.
Glancing around the spacious room, she rapidly identified which objects belonged to Tristan and which were Noah’s, since the former tended to become a neat freak when stressed. As if proving her point, Tristan rearranged a pair of brocade cushions three times before sitting on a chair facing the couch, where Izzie perched. She was too tense to enjoy a magnificent view of the shimmering waters of the North Bay, or Baía Norte as the locals called it.
“Okay, I’ll cut to the chase. You’re right, I’m not going anywhere until you hear me out. I came to Brazil because I need your help, but first I owe you the truth. I lied to you,” Izzie blurted.
That piqued his interest. “You mean other than before I caught you and Mark?” His eyes searched her face, but he didn’t offer anything other than an arched eyebrow.
“After that.”
He blew out a heavy breath. “Izzie, I mean it. I’m tired. I don’t want to play your little guessing games. They were annoying when we were young, they’re pointless now. What are you saying?”
He was right.
Again.
Every time she got insecure, she tended to stall, and that drove people crazy. They thought she did it on purpose, the telling stories in installments thing she did. Truth of the matter was that, most of the time, she was too nervous. Like right now.
The moment she dreaded and anticipated in equal parts facing her, Izzie eyed Tristan as she smoothed nonexistent wrinkles on her khakis.
“I let you believe I was having an affair with Mark. I was not,” she confessed.
He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.
When he stared into her eyes again, she read in them his struggle to keep his feelings in check as clearly as if she was reading a book.
He muttered, “That night at the party, when I caught you two having sex, that wasn’t the first clue I got. It was just the undeniable one. The last straw that broke me. For months before that, I would walk into a room and see Mark’s arm slung around your neck, or his hands touching your face, your waist. And every fucking time I asked about it, you said nothing was going on, but you’d get antsy. Still I didn’t believe my own suspicions because I thought you loved me.”
“I did.” She noticed his subtle flinching movement, but didn’t dwell on it, or she’d lose focus. “And that’s why I didn’t tell you about Mark’s inappropriate behavior, at first. You worshiped the man and I was naïve to believe I could handle him, until it was too late. I didn’t sleep with him before that party.”
Tristan’s hand rubbed his neck. Hard. So hard Izzie spotted the red marks faint as he buried his face in his hands.
“Yeah, you said that then, and I believed you. Even though I had caught you gagging on his dick, I believed you. I forgave you. When you begged me to stay, I caved in because I really didn’t want to go. I wanted to believe you loved me, not him. I stayed and tried to make it work, didn’t I? And how did you repay my trust?” His words were harsh, but his tone remained flat.
Izzie’s heart burst at the seams as she relived the torment of those days. Tristan had also been to hell and back, all because of her. Wretched, she stared at the wriggling fingers on her lap and waited.
He continued, “How did you prove your love to me, Izzie? A couple of months after the party, you ripped my heart out again, stomping it under your feet. You told me you were pregnant with Mark’s baby and you were leaving me. What am I missing here? Which part was a lie?”
Izzie snapped her head up and held his cold stare.
He was right, yet so wrong.
“Most of it. All of it. I didn’t sleep with Mark before or at that party.” She raised her hands to cut off Tristan’s rebuttal, then joined them in a steeple in front of her face and pleaded with him. “Hear me out before you say anything. I promise I’m giving you the truth now. That means you never heard it before.” She waited for his acknowledgment that he had heard her. It came as a curt nod. She added, “In the beginning, I thought Mark was just being Mark, you know. I mean, the man chased anything in a skirt, but I believed he cared for you, respected you too much to mean anything with his silly comments and wandering hands. I took it all as a lame joke. Often, he’d say something to me, or hug me, in front of other women and I thought he was trying to impress them. Remember how wasted he was all the time back then?”
“He hung out with those guys from the Crips in Los Angeles.”
“Exactly. They were a vicious crowd, into heavy drugs and guns and stuff.”
“Mark would pick fights in between concerts. We had to bail him out a couple of times or he wouldn’t make it to the next gig,” Tristan noted. “He was a liability, but a damn good guitarist. Plus, he knew everyone that mattered in the business.”
Izzie didn’t miss those days.
She nodded. “Exactly. When we arrived at the party, Mark pulled me aside and apologized. He said he had been an ass, that you were like a little brother to him and that he’d never jeopardize your friendship. He said that night was yours and that we should celebrate your future success.”
A shadowed crossed Tristan’s expression as if the memories of that evening haunted him. They certainly haunted Izzie.
He whispered, “Except for the apologies, that was pretty much what he said to me too. I thought he was happy for me.”
“Did he offer you champagne to toast your bright future?” Unable to leave out the sarcasm, although directed at herself, not Tristan, she was relieved he didn’t pick up on it.
“Nope.”
“He handed me a flute of bubblies and I emptied it in one swig. I was all for celebrating your contract. I was thrilled for you. After I bottomed up the drink he gave me, I went looking for you and found you in a heated discussion about race cars with Noah.”
Tristan’s stare turned nostalgic and a reluctant smile hitched up the corner of his lips. “You hated racing with a passion.”
“Still do. Anyway, I mingled, talked to friends, and lost track of time. At some point, I felt lightheaded and Mark just popped out of nowhere. He snaked his arm around my waist before I passed out.”
“Now, wait a second. Izzie Anderson passes out in a crowded room and nobody says anything? I was there and I’m sure I would’ve noticed the commotion.”
Without thinking, Izzie reached out and clasped his wrist for emphasis. Tristan didn’t snatch it away, so she held on to it. He had always been her anchor and she needed to feel grounded now, if she had ever needed support. “It felt like fainting to me because the next thing I remember I was sitting on the edge of a bed while Mark opened my top. He made me kneel in front of him. I swear I tried to stop him, but my arms and hands didn’t obey me.”
The mix of anger and anguish in Tristan’s eyes threatened to undo Izzie’s resolve. He muttered through clenched teeth, “Mark slipped roofies in your drink?” His hand gripped hers, knuckles turned white, but Izzie paid no heed.
She nodded, waiting for his outburst.
It never came.
10
Tristan
Tristan’s jaw ached, a muscle ticking in his left cheek, as he muttered through gritted teeth, “Mark King drugged you and then sexually assaulted you. He threw a party for me, saying he wanted to celebrate my signing with Tarmac Records, then spiked your drink, and dragged you up to his bedroom. His buddy Reg came up to me and said Mark wanted to give me some pointers before my meeting with the execs, so I went looking for him.”
He didn’t need to shut his eyes as he revisited the events of that night. The image of a lingerie-clad Izzie on her knees blowing Mark would forever be branded in his retina. He couldn’t unsee it. Except now, the scene played out in his head under a different light
. What he once believed to be exhilaration on her face just turned out to be stupor.
The one thing that had triggered his reaction that night had been Izzie’s gaze. Instead of pouncing on Mark for suspecting him of sexually assaulting Izzie, Tristan had frozen at the door when he noticed her eyes glazed over. That happened when he aroused her, so he connected that flimsy piece of evidence with the countless incidents of Mark touching Izzie that he had witnessed before.
He had misread the whole situation.
He was wrong.
Dead wrong.
Unforgivably wrong.
“Instead of doing something, like punching him or wrestling you away from him, I turned and fled. I bolted down the stairs and didn’t stop until I was out of the house.”
She nodded, but didn’t say anything, as if she understood he was thinking out loud.
He went on. “I thought you wanted to be with him. All these years, I thought you had chosen Mark over me, but you had no choice that night.”
His head was about to explode.
His heart clawed its way up his throat.
He choked.
His chest compressed as if a giant held him in a tight fist.
Conflicting emotions jumbled up inside Tristan.
Too many for him to sort them out.
His brain stalled.
“I feel like I should yell or cuss or both. I’m numb, though.” That wasn’t entirely true. Through the haze that fogged his mind, one idea stood out like a beacon. Would he dare hope? His next words bypassed his brain and came out unfettered. “You didn’t betray me.”
“I did not.”
“Why did you let me believe you did?”
Izzie knelt between his knees and framed his face in her warm hands. In his addled state, Tristan just stared into her forest green eyes. “What would you have done if I had told you all this back then?”