by Clara Moore
Tristan heaved a deep sigh. The short solace that the heavy rain had brought him was quickly dissipating. He turned around and began the walk back to the house, fully knowing that she would be waiting for her there, and that once he was inside the door, he would have to go back to pretending to be normal.
An hour later, Sharee was climbing the walls. She had busied herself in all possible ways, even returning Sabrina’s call to let her know Tristan wouldn’t be available and he would get in touch later. But as unpleasant as that call was, it was nothing compared to the conversation with Derek Chapman.
The man was furious. This was the third time Tristan was canceling on him, something Sharee knew nothing about. Apparently, Derek had spoken directly to Tristan twice before to meet, and the man had always stood him up. Sharee instructed him to always go through her from then on.
However, they both agreed that a few—three—missed meetings were only the tip of the iceberg. The problem was that Tristan had become abrasive and unenthusiastic. In fact, Derek’s exact word had been “deadbeat”. Sharee had snapped at him not to use that term, but even she had to admit that it was becoming more and more fitting by the day. Somewhere along the way, Tristan had begun to miss deadlines. He was becoming more and more uninterested in his own work.
When Sharee told him about the death of the protagonist in the new book, Derek flipped. The first time Tristan had killed off his protagonist, it had been a bold, unexpected move that the audience had loved. The second time had been less well received and a little redundant. A third time would be suicidal.
“You have to make him change his mind, Sharee,” Derek had said. “Talk to him, today. I’ll call back in the evening.”
Sharee had tried to explain to him that she had already brought up the issue, and that it had been dismissed at record speed. Derek, however, had refused to listen.
“You talk to him,” he had insisted. “Let him know he’s throwing his whole career out the window.”
Sharee knew. She had not realized just how bad things were before, but the call with Derek had opened her eyes on a sight that well and truly pained her. Tristan’s inner flame was wasting away, not to mention his reputation, and she simply couldn’t allow it.
When she finally heard the front door open, she sat up straight and squared her shoulders, and she took a deep breath. She felt like she was readying herself for battle—which, in a way, was probably exactly what she was doing.
He walked into the studio a few minutes later, dripping water all over the Persian rug. Sharee stared at him with wide eyes.
“You’re soaked!” she cried, stating the obvious.
Tristan shrugged. “I felt like taking a walk in the rain.”
Jesus. This is worse than I thought. “Go get dry. I’ll make some coffee, and then we need to talk.”
Tristan looked at her. “Have you canceled my meeting with Derek tomorrow?”
“Yes, I have.” Sort of. “Now, please, go. I have something important to discuss with you.”
He looked at her curiously for a moment, then he nodded and walked out of the room. Ten minutes later, they were sitting at the kitchen’s table nursing mugs full of dark, warm, blissfully caffeinated liquid. Sharee watched Tristan carefully over the brim of her mug as she drank. There was a vacant, distant look in his blue eyes. She wanted nothing more than to grab him by his shoulders and shake him until he finally snapped out of it and came back to his senses.
“Derek told me something interesting,” she began carefully. “He told me this is the third time you cancel on him.”
Sharee had expected some sort of contrition, maybe even an apology, but none of it came. Instead, Tristan looked back at her blankly. “Yes,” he said simply.
“You never told me he had asked you to meet.”
Tristan shrugged.
Good God, give me patience. Sharee gritted her teeth and bit her tongue to prevent herself from yelling at him. After all, he was still her boss. “I’m your assistant,” she said. “I need to know these things.”
“You’re right,” Tristan said after a moment. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t look or sound sorry, but Sharee would take it nonetheless. “I told him about how the new book ends,” she said. “He doesn’t like it, either. He says it’s a bad move.”
“To be honest, I don’t give a fuck what Derek says.”
Tristan spoke calmly, but the sentiment was very much there. Sharee stared at him in shock. “Excuse me?”
“I like how it ends,” Tristan said. “It needs to end that way.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Sharee argued. “I’ve read the whole thing cover to cover, and it doesn’t ‘need’ to end that way. And you know it.”
“I like it,” Tristan said again. “End of discussion.”
He made to stand up, and Sharee glared sharply at him.
“Sit down,” she all but barked. She blinked, surprised at her own outburst.
Tristan was equally stunned. His eyes widened briefly, and he sat.
“We’re not done talking,” Sharee said. Her voice was less controlled now. She could hear the clipped, urgent tone in her own words. She decided not to fight it; Tristan probably needed a good shove anyway. “What’s going on with you?”
Infuriatingly, he stared at her with a confused expression on his face. “What do you mean?”
Sharee huffed, exasperated. “Don’t play dumb with me,” she said. “Both Derek and I have been noticing that you’re not the same. Your work is suffering greatly, and so will your career if you keep this up, and it’s like you don’t even care.”
To her surprise, Tristan shrugged again. “I don’t care,” he confirmed.
Sharee stared at him. It took a few moments for her to process that information. “What do you mean, you don’t care?”
“Look at this place, Sharee.” Tristan embraced the room around them with a gesture. “I’ve done very well. I could live off royalties alone.”
“I thought that was never the point with you.”
“Maybe it’s the point now. Maybe this is my last book.”
“What?”
“Look, I don’t know, all right?” Tristan finally snapped, his own frustration showing. “I’m going through some things, and I need my books to be dark in order to vent them out. If you and Derek and the whole fucking world don’t like it, then so be it. It’s not my problem.”
“It is your problem!” Sharee argued, incredulous. “Do you really want to throw it all away?”
“I want to write in peace!” he all but roared.
Sharee blinked. She stared at him, stunned by the rage she could feel radiating off of him.
“What’s it to you, anyway?” Tristan asked after a few moments of dumbfounded silence.
“What’s it to me?” Sharee repeated. She felt like this conversation was rapidly and inexorably getting out of hand. “I care about you,” she said honestly. “That’s what it is to me.”
“You care about me. That’s nice.” Tristan snorted. “I fucking love you.”
Sharee looked at him. She watched as the realization of what he had just said washed over him. His eyes widened and his skin paled. He looked like the proverbial deer caught in the highlights.
“I…” Sharee tried to talk. Her voice wouldn’t come. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”
Tristan swallowed visibly. “I think you should go,” he said after a moment.
“What?”
“Go home for the day. I think we both need to take a beat.”
“I don’t want to take a beat. I want to understand just what the hell is going on here.” There was no heat in Sharee’s voice, just utter shock.
Tristan sighed. He looked very tired all of a sudden. “Please, darlin’. Please, just leave for the day. We’ll talk more tomorrow, I promise.”
Sharee didn’t have the heart to push him any further. Besides, she was starting to feel like pressing the “pause” button on this
conversation was actually a good idea. She nodded and stood. Five minutes later, she was climbing into her car and driving away in the rain, leaving the cottage on the edge of the forest in her rearview mirror.
***
Chapter 3: Blood
They did not talk the next day, or the day after that. Tristan seemed to have gone off the grid. He didn’t take or return calls and he didn’t reply to e-mails. It was the night of the third day, and Sharee was beginning to wonder if she even had a job anymore. She resolved to driving to his place the next morning. If he wanted to fire her, he would have to say the words, and he would have to say them to her face. It was the least he could do.
“I fucking love you.”
Sharee had not been able to get his words out of her head for more than a few seconds a day. Every time she thought about what he had said, her brain short-circuited on her. It didn’t take her long to figure out that she returned his feelings. Before, she had not quite realized that her crush had turned into something more, but the more she thought about his words, the more she knew it. What she didn’t know was where she was supposed to go from there, and his going MIA certainly wasn’t helping her figure it out.
Presently, she sat on the couch in her living room with a beer she wasn’t drinking in her hand and a movie she wasn’t watching on the TV’s screen. She had popped in the first DVD that came into her hand, but even the talents of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in Revolutionary Road weren’t doing anything for her.
What was she supposed to do now? If Tristan didn’t fire her, was she supposed to quit? She couldn’t very well continue to be his assistant now that he had put his feelings on the table, could she?
Sharee sighed in frustration. Life with Tristan had never been uncomplicated—he was, after all, a genius—but it had never been like this. She had never felt utterly at a loss before. His confession had turned her world upside down. She didn’t know where was up and where was down anymore. She didn’t know where to turn. For the first time in a long time, she had no clue what to do. And to think that she prided herself in being able to handle pretty much anything.
Then again, “anything” had never involved Tristan Jacobsen professing her love for her.
“I fucking love you.”
“Yeah, Tristan,” Sharee said quietly to the empty room, “I ‘fucking love you’ too. Now, if you would only return my calls…”
The sharp, intruding sound of the buzzer nearly made her jump out of her skin. Sharee looked up at the watch that hung on the wall. It was three quarters to one in the morning. It was probably just some kids pulling a prank, but she’d better investigate anyway. She got off the couch and over to the door, and she pressed the mic’s button on the buzzer’s controls.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Tristan.”
Sharee froze. She had not expected this. She looked around in a panic, and then down at herself, and then she realized she didn’t care that she had not mopped the floors that day or that she was wearing pajama bottoms and a tank top.
“Come on up,” she said, reluctantly. She buzzed him in and unlocked the front door, and she waited.
He knocked when he got to her floor, and Sharee rolled her eyes. Sure, now he was being considerate.
“Come in,” she called.
She picked up the remote and turned off the TV, and then she finally turned around to face him. She didn’t spot it at first, but when she did, her mind drew a blank for a few seconds. And then she spurred into action.
“Oh my God!” she cried, all but flying over to him. “What happened?”
Tristan gave her a tight smile. “Hunting accident.”
“What?” Sharee stared at the blood staining his T-shirt at the height of his right shoulder.
“It’s all right,” he reassured. “The bullet went straight through. But I need the wound to be cleaned, and…well…I would really prefer not to go to a hospital.”
Sharee’s brain was working a mile a minute just to keep up. “Tristan, you don’t hunt,” she said, and then she mentally kicked herself. As if that was what mattered right then!
A somewhat bitter smirk appeared on Tristan’s face. “Oh, yes, I do.”
Sharee frowned. She decided that she would ask him about it later; right now, they had way more pressing matters to take care of.
“You’re going to a hospital,” she decided.
“I told you, I don’t—”
“Well, what’s your plan?” she snapped. “Bleed out on my floor?”
Infuriatingly enough, Tristan’s smirk widened. “No. I was hoping you could patch me up.”
“Patch you…I don’t know the first thing about ‘patching up’ bullet wounds, Tristan!”
“I do.”
Sharee opened her mouth and closed it again. Just what the hell did he mean, he did? How could he possibly know? Once again, she decided to save the questions for later.
“Please, Sharee,” he said. “I’ll guide you through the whole process. I’ll be fine, I promise.”
Sharee watched him skeptically. He really seemed to be hell bent to avoid hospitals at all costs. She figured if she didn’t help him out, he would probably run off on her and bleed to death in some alley.
“Fine,” she finally said, unable to believe her own words. “Guide me through it.
It was a slow, painful process. Sharee felt like she was in a bad movie. Following Tristan’s instructions, she cleaned and bandaged the wound, while he drank from an ancient bottle of bourbon she had found hidden away in the recesses of her kitchen’s cupboards.
“You need some painkillers,” she declared once she was done. She washed her hands in the sink and watched as water and blood went down the drain. It all felt very surreal.
“Painkillers and alcohol don’t mix, darling,” he said.
Sharee rolled her eyes. “Sure, now you decide to be careful.” She turned off the water, dried her hands, and guided him back to the living room and onto the couch. Surprisingly enough, he didn’t protest.
She sat down next to him and stared at him. “What the hell happened?”
Tristan shrugged mindlessly and instantly hissed at the movement. Sharee winced with him.
“I told you,” he said. “Hunting accident. I got too close.”
“Too close to what?”
“Never mind.”
“Never mind?” She stared at him incredulously. “You go MIA for three days, then you show up at my door in the middle of the night, bleeding. And you still have the nerve to say, ‘never mind’?”
He cringed visibly. “Put it like that, I don’t come off too well.”
“Geez, you think?”
He smiled. He took a deep breath and leaned back against the couch’s cushions. “I’m sorry, Sharee,” he said after a few moments of silence. “I really am. I behaved like an ass.”
In spite of herself, Sharee had to smile too. “You’ve been behaving like…uh…that, for a while now. I need to know what’s going on.” She waited, and when he didn’t reply she finally asked, “Do I still have a job?”
He turned his head sharply to look at her. “What are you talking about? Of course you have a job?”
Sharee shrugged. “You didn’t contact me for three days. I began to wonder.”
“Well, never wonder about that. You’ll always have a job with me, if you want it.” He stared at her. “Do you still want it?”
His eyes looked impossibly blue in the dim light of her living room. Sharee swallowed. “I want it,” she said after a moment. “But we need to set a few things straight first.”
Tristan nodded. “Fair enough.”
“Did you mean it? What you said the other day,” she clarified.
This time, Tristan didn’t ask her what she was talking about. He knew. “Yes,” he said. “I meant it. I never meant to tell you, but I meant it.”
“Why didn’t you want to tell me?”
“Well, it kind of complicates things, doesn’t it?”
Sharee smiled. “A little,” she admitted.
“Can you forget I said it?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“I can’t forget,” Sharee said, “because I love you too.”
Tristan stared at her. He sat up straighter. “You do?”
“Yes. I do.”
He looked at her like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You…uh…are you sure?”
Sharee laughed. What kind of question was that? “I’m sure,” she said.
“Well, in that case…” he began after a moment where he visibly took in the enormity of that information, “…would you mind very much if I kissed you now?”
Was he nuts? Sharee had been fantasizing about his lips for two years now. “I wouldn’t mind at all.”
As it turned out, reality was a lot better than her fantasies. Tristan’s kiss was tender and yet firm, oozing quiet strength and a protective instinct Sharee knew nothing about until he cupped her nape as though she was made of glass. He scooted closer to her on the couch, and she wrapped an arm around his waist, mindful of not jolting him too much.
Tristan’s tongue explored her mouth as though he was entering a secret world. Sharee moaned against his lips. Soon he had her pressed against the arm of the couch, their bodies so close together she could feel the heat of his skin through the thin cotton fabric of her tank top. She ran her hand on the naked skin of his back, his torn-up T-shirt having been forgotten on the bathroom floor.
Sharee could feel fire being awakened within her.
And then, just like that, he pulled back. His blue eyes were wide and his breathing was erratic, and she had the sinking feeling it had nothing to do with sexual desire.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She looked at him uncomprehendingly. “What are you sorry for?”
“I can’t. I can’t do this. I’m sorry.” He disentangled from her embrace and stood on unsteady feet.
“Tristan, where are you going?” Sharee could feel a sense of alarm coming to squeeze her stomach.
Tristan shook his head. “I’m sorry. God…I…I’m so sorry. I can’t. I just can’t.”
She watched in shock as he all but ran out of her apartment. The door slammed shut behind him. Sharee sat on the couch in her now empty home and stared at the closed door, dumbfounded. What the hell just happened?