by Caroline Lee
“This way,” she said, jerking her chin towards a path that led into the woods. Not waiting for him to acknowledge her order—because that’s what it was—she strode into the shadowy underbrush.
Glad for his warm jacket now, Tristan mentally shrugged and followed her. What’s the worst she could do to him, anyhow?
They didn’t walk for long before the path opened to a little clearing beside the lake. There was a fire pit with the remains of many campfires, and two logs were pulled up to act as benches. Another log—wide and not uncomfortable-looking—sat beside the water.
That’s the one she marched towards and when she reached it, she whirled to him, pointed to the log, and barked, “Sit.”
He’d spent his whole life being told what to do; first by Pop, then by all the cops and lawyers and judges and social workers who’d been assigned to his case. Since his release, he’d found the first real freedom in his life, and he didn’t think he’d ever be able to repay Maury for taking a chance on him and hiring him despite his past.
Yeah, he hated being bossed around, but he was used to it. And he could tell whatever was on Charley’s mind was important, and she needed to talk about it. He shrugged. He might not like being bossed around, but he was good at it. And he’d put up with it, for her.
He sat.
Charley handed him the helmet—which he placed beside him on the ground--and began pacing back and forth between the log he sat on and the water. The lake really was pretty; it stretched out impossibly wide, and the mountains rose up behind it. This was a nice place, a peaceful place. He could be happy here…if he hadn’t been forbidden from returning.
Speaking of which… “I thought you told me to never come back to the ranch.”
She halted, then stood staring down at him—which was impressive, considering how short she was—with her hands on her hips. “I changed my mind.”
“A woman’s prerogative,” he quipped.
But she scowled. “I’m not a woman.”
His eyebrows flew up, and she suddenly flushed. Waving her hand around in dismissal, she scowled harder.
“I mean, I am a woman. But I’m a police officer first.” Then her hands dropped and she seemed to deflate a little. “I mean, I was a police officer. Now I’m…” She blew out a big breath of air, and seemed to mentally shake herself before starting over. “I care greatly about law and order, Tristan.”
He nodded. Yeah, I can see that.
“And you were someone who— I couldn’t tell if you were breaking the law.” She started pacing again. “And even if you weren’t, you didn’t fall into the proper order of things. You were…” She threw up her hands, and he could sense her frustration. “You were wrong. You weren’t where you were supposed to be. You were out of order.”
Slowly, a grin crept across Tristan’s face. When she saw it, she glowered at him, but he didn’t stop. She really was kinda meticulous, wasn’t she? He remembered the way she’d deconstructed her dinner at the Chinese restaurant last week; meat in one pile, mushrooms in another, snap peas in a third. She liked things neat and tidy, and he’d messed up her nicely ordered life.
“Tristan,” she almost groaned. “This isn’t something to joke about.”
“Sorry.” But he didn’t stop grinning. “I can see it really bothers you. But I’m not sorry I met you.”
Her scowl eased and her hands dropped to her hips again. Not on her weapon this time. After a long moment, she exhaled. “Me neither,” she admitted. “But I should be.”
It took a moment for her words to pound through the fierce blaze of happiness that had filled Tristan when she admitted to being pleased to have met him. “Wait, why?” Why should she be sorry?
“You’ve been in prison.”
Dang. She’d seen his record. Tristan’s shoulders slumped in defeat. He’d known it would happen, and even suspected that’s why she’d summoned him here today. But it was harder to hear the confrontation directly. Especially from someone who cared about that sort of thing…and whom he wanted to impress. Badly.
When he didn’t deny it, she continued, “You’ve been in prison, and not just for a minor infraction, Tristan. Drug trafficking is a big deal.”
He winced. “I was a juvenile,” he defended himself, then winced again at how that made him sound. Like he was justifying it.
But when she said, “I know,” her voice was surprisingly gentle. He looked up to see an expression on her face that might’ve been pity.
It was his turn to scowl. He didn’t need her pity. Tristan stood up, not sure what was about to happen, but knowing he didn’t want to be sitting for it. “So what? You dragged me out here for what? To hear me confess? Yeah, Charley, I was in prison. So what? It’s not the end of the world, and it doesn’t mean I’m a…” He huffed and shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “Doesn’t mean I’m a bad person.”
Actually, from her point of view, that’s probably exactly what it meant.
But she didn’t respond to his angry words. Instead, her expression softened. “Will you tell me about it?”
That surprised him. “Tell you about what?”
“Why you were in prison? I mean, I know a little, but not the details.”
Tristan eyed her suspiciously. What did that mean? She didn’t know the details? But hadn’t she looked up all of his priors in her cop database or whatever?
Charley moved around him, careful not to brush his jacket, and sat down on the log he’d just left. He turned to keep her in his sight, not sure what she was doing. Once seated though, she just crossed her legs at her ankles and looked up at him. “Please, Tristan? Help me understand.”
“Understand what?” he barked, before thinking better of it.
“Understand your arrest and what happened. And how it doesn’t make you a bad person.”
Rolling his eyes, he stomped towards the lake. “It doesn’t. I mean, it does. Probably.” He propped one shoulder against a tree and stared across the water. “To you, at least,” he muttered.
“But not to you? You don’t think you’re a bad person?”
He snorted. “I didn’t rat on Pop, and that’s what mattered.”
“Ah.” That one syllable contained all sorts of meaning. Maybe she did understand why that mattered to him.
Tristan pulled his hands out of his pockets, folded his arms across his chest, and stubbornly refused to respond. Instead, he stared out towards the mountains. There was an eagle, swooping and diving above the trees on the far side of the lake, just far enough away he could see it, but couldn’t see if it was watching for prey or just enjoying the freedom of the air currents.
He had that freedom now. He could go wherever he wanted or needed. He could’ve picked back up where Pop and his uncles had left off if he’d wanted to. But instead, he’d gotten a good job, and was a contributing member of society. Wasn’t that the point? But, man, it’d be nice to be able to ride the air currents, way up there, and look down on all the people who’d looked down on him over the years.
“Tristan?”
His name was soft on her lips, but still startled him. He jerked and turned just enough to see her out of the corner of his eye. She was looking at him expectantly.
“I heard from the Sheriff of Riston that you were arrested when you were young, in connection with your family’s drug-making business. That’s all I know.” She paused, and when he didn’t respond, she continued, “I’d like to know the rest, from you.”
“Why?” The question grated at his throat, coming out harsh.
“Because I had dinner with you. And I enjoyed myself.” He watched her shift, watched her draw her knees up so she could brace her elbows on them. “I liked spending time with you, and I didn’t think you were a bad person. It…” She frowned down at her hands, now locked in front of her. “I like things in order, and you weren’t in order, so I shouldn’t have liked you. But I did, and then I found out that you were a bad person, except you’re still the same person, and now…
” When she looked up, she met his eyes. “Now I’m not sure what to think about you.”
The only thing keeping Tristan from cussing again was the memory of the ranch’s rules against profanity, which she cared about. Why did it matter to him, what she thought of him? Why did it matter that she didn’t like him cussing? Why did he care so much about her opinion?
Aw, what the heck. “It was Pop’s idea.” There. It wasn’t like that was a secret. Pop—and Billy and Uncle Gus and Jared—would be away for a long time. Their trial and conviction was on record, and Charley could look it up anytime. He was just saving her the trouble. “I was fifteen when they started, just small-time stuff.”
“You mean, cooking up methamphetamines?”
Tristan nodded and turned back to the lake. Somehow, it seemed less like a betrayal if he wasn’t looking at her. “It was easy money back then. The government had just started to crackdown on Sudafed sales, so he knew things would get hot soon. Of course, he didn’t have much to say about the government in the first place.” He remembered the way Pop would rant and rave, hurling half-full beer cans at Tristan or Jared. The night their local Walmart pharmacy told him they couldn’t sell him anymore Sudafed, the old man had come home and broken Tristan’s arm.
Maybe all those prison therapists were right; maybe he didn’t owe Pop any loyalty after all. “He was one of those… whadyacallits? You know, he wanted to live out in the woods, like in a compound. Away from…” Tristan didn’t want to repeat his father’s beliefs out loud. “Away from people who weren’t like him.”
“A separatist,” she said quietly behind him.
He shrugged, not really seeing the lake in front of him. “I dunno. All I know is that he’d stockpiled a bunch of rifles, and was always going on about living off the land and surviving after the government exploded and came for all the God-fearing white men.”
“Is that what you believed too?”
A harsh bark of laughter ripped out of him. “I was fifteen. Guns and beer and hanging out in the woods with my father and cousins? That sounded ideal. I didn’t care about the rest of it.” Although he’d had nine years—and plenty of sessions staring at the therapist while he or she lectured him—to think about it, and had come to the conclusion that his father must’ve been pretty stupid or angry to really believe the government was the enemy.
“So he was using the meth money to fund this compound he wanted to put together?”
“Yeah. He used to rant about how it was fitting, to break the laws of the ‘unjust government’ to fund his grand scheme.” Tristan shifted against the tree, trying to tamp down on the guilty feeling that sat in his stomach as he bad-mouthed his father. Calm down, man. Pop ain’t here to punish you. He can’t hurt you anymore. “Anyhow, after the big bad government started cracking down on selling the drug he and my uncles needed to make meth, I thought he might give up on his scheme.”
“He didn’t though, did he?”
He heard her shift on the log, but didn’t turn around to look.
“Nope.” Tristan remembered that fight, between Pop and his brothers. “They decided to get it from Canada, since we were so close.”
Behind him, she sucked in a sharp breath, and he finally turned. She was looking worried, now. Why? Didn’t she know most of this story already? He propped his butt against the tree and watched her as he told his story.
“It was my job to pick up the Canadian stuff. The Sudafed, whatever.”
She nodded slowly, her expression guarded once more. “You were only fourteen?”
“Naw, by then a few years had passed, they’d perfected the recipe. I started picking up the deliveries right after my sixteenth birthday. Pop said that since the government” —he sneered out the phrase just like his father had— “said I was old enough to drive, then I was old enough to pull my weight.” When she frowned, he sensed her disapproval. At Pop’s scheme, or because he involved his under-age son? The shrinks had had plenty to say about that, for sure.
“I was picking up a batch of the pills when the cops swooped in and busted me.” His stomach soured at the memory. “I found out later that they’d just gotten lucky; one patrolman just happened to see the car that matched the description and called for back-up. They caught me red-handed and did their best to get me to testify against my father and uncle.” A fierce kind of pride made him frown. “I didn’t, but they had enough to nail them both, and my cousin and one of their friends.” He would never forget his father glaring at him from across the courtroom, the threat obvious in the old man’s haggard face. “I haven’t seen Pop since.” It had been Tristan’s decision, once he’d gotten out, to avoid contact with his father. He was glad Maury paid him in cash, so that when Pop got out he wouldn’t be able to track Tristan down.
Slowly, Charley stood up. She didn’t move from beside the log, but she lifted her chin and met his gaze. “Tristan, he wasn’t a nice man. I hope you see that.”
It was disloyal to agree. But still… “Yeah. But he’s my father.”
This time, her nod was a little rueful. “I know what you mean.” Was she thinking about her own father? “But you need to remember that you don’t owe him anything. He pushed a minor into trafficking for him! That’s…reprehensible.”
It was exactly what one of his therapists had said. Tristan didn’t have a response, other than the one he’d fallen back on for so many years. “He’s my father,” he reiterated.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and suddenly the banked anger—the distaste—in her eyes became obvious. She wasn’t angry at him…she was angry for him. She was angry at Pop, for what he’d done.
And seeing that anger, seeing her feeling so deeply for him, shook Tristan to his core. When had anyone cared so deeply for him? Probably his mother, but she’d left so long ago he couldn’t remember her. But Charley…Charley cared about the law. She cared about doing the right thing, cared about following the rules. She must look at him and see someone who stood for everything she didn’t…but she still got angry for him.
More than anything, Tristan wanted to cross the clearing, to take her in his arms. To hold her, comfort her, tell her that it was okay, and he hadn’t turned out so badly after all, did he? But that weapon on her belt, and the uniform she wore, held him back.
No matter who they’d each become, she was still a cop, and he was still a convict.
CHAPTER SIX
Charley ached for him. She’d never thought of herself as one of those—as Dad called them—“bleeding-heart cops,” being well aware that criminals made bad choices which landed them in prison. But Tristan…Tristan had been a kid. A kid who’d made a bad choice, yeah, but who’d trusted his father.
Who still trusted his father?
As far as she could see, Tristan’s only fault was severely misplaced loyalty to his father. Could he be held responsible for the crimes he’d committed as a teenager? Maybe, but he’d served his sentence already and was attempting to live a rehabilitated life. It was the shadow of his father, hanging over his life, which was still causing him problems.
Still causing her problems.
She took a step towards him. “Tristan, you do see that what he did was wrong, don’t you? I mean, cooking and selling meth to fund an anti-government sect? You know that’s not only against the law, but it’s wrong?”
He frowned slightly. “He’s my—”
“I know!” She had to interrupt him before he used that same defense again. “I know,” she repeated softer. “But…” She took a deep breath, and another step, afraid he might bolt away if she confronted him too harshly. “But I need to know, Tristan. I’m trying to make sense of this in my head—make sense of you, and my feelings for you.” Ugh, why’d I say that out loud?
At the mention that she might have feelings for him, his brows rose and his hazel eyes seemed to light up from within. He wasn’t smiling—she missed his crooked teeth—but he definitely looked more interested than he had the rest of this conversation. Charley
held her breath, wondering how she could use this.
“I was raised with a very clear difference between right and wrong. The law is right, and law-breakers are wrong. But spending time with you…” Her hands clenched into fists beside her, and she couldn’t meet his eyes. “Spending time with you doesn’t feel wrong. I think that maybe there are nuances I didn’t understand…” she muttered, trailing off.
“Like maybe your father was just as wrong as mine was?”
Her gaze whipped up to meet his, and the wry smile she’d heard in his voice was there on his lips. Lips she couldn’t help but stare at, mesmerized.
“I think…” she murmured, “you might be right.”
“Good.” He snorted. “Because I don’t think I’m a horrible person. Sounds like your father might disagree.”
“Yeah, well.” She planted her fists on her hips and cocked her head. “Sounds like your father would think I’m a terrible person. As a representative of the law.”
His grin grew and he straightened, although he kept his arms crossed. “Then it sounds like we’re even.”
She had to huff at that—not really a laugh, but he’d lightened the mood somewhat. They stood there by the shore of River’s End Lake, in her favorite spot to visit when she just needed to get away, and smiled at each other. It was what they both needed. A moment to smile.
“Why’d you bring me here?” he asked, surprising her.
“Because I didn’t want you to run away.” When he raised one brow in question, Charley hurried to explain. “I needed to understand, Tristan. I didn’t want you leaving before I could.”
“So you dragged me out here in the middle of nowhere? I was kinda hoping you just wanted some privacy with me.” The way he waggled his eyebrows left no doubt what he meant.
She forced her lips into an even line, refusing to release the laughter that threatened. “This is a serious matter, Mr. Quarles. I’m still on duty, and I needed to have some privacy for questioning you.”
“I understand.” He nodded solemnly. “You’ve gotta be able to tell your boss that’s what you were doing, huh?”