He gave himself a mental shake and turned to Lilly. “I guess your wish just came true. She’s come to see you.” He kissed his mother’s hollowed cheek before he stood to leave. “Gotta go.”
He scuttled away and, if he were to be honest, rushed to escape Bruna’s and his mom’s words as they sounded again inside his head. His efforts were useless as the words haunted him. He refused to believe he still had feelings for Izzie or that Izzie could go back to being the free-spirited and kind woman she used to be. The one he fell in love with.
“No way!” He muttered as he backed out of the parking space, maneuvering towards the exit.
“I MISSED YOU, MUNCHKIN.” Lilly reached out her hands and Izzie squeezed them before enveloping the older woman in a tight embrace.
“It’s been too long, Auntie Lil.”
“I know you’ve been to hell and back. Tell me how you are now though.”
Izzie smiled, but couldn’t keep a weary sigh in as she sagged on the spot Tristan vacated. “Like I’ve been to hell and back. I’m trying to do the right thing, but he won’t give me the time of day.”
Lilly’s expression was kind when she reminded Izzie. “Ever thought you might’ve waited too long?”
Izzie cast her eyes on the hands she wriggled on her lap. Through the years, she got in touch with Lilly on a couple of occasions. Ten years ago, when her mom got killed in a home invasion. Then again, five years later, when her dad passed after a short battle with lung cancer. As much as he loved Izzie and Arthur, his only grandson, her dad never recovered from her mom’s brutal death. Equally painful was her only personal visit with Lilly, not long before she moved to Brazil.
“When I first started in the NA program, you were the first person I contacted for the ninth step. I wasn’t ready to make amends with Tristan. You were the next best thing.”
“Are you ready now?”
“I thought I was. He made me doubt it yesterday, but I won’t give up.”
“I never told him we talked, you know. He wasn’t ready to hear about it, anyway. Then again, it’s not like you confided any secrets to me.”
Izzie studied Lilly’s gaze and saw compassion, no judgment. “You’ve always trusted me, even though I caused Tristan so much heartache and never explained myself to you. I’m not sure I’d do the same if a girlfriend did that to Arthur.”
Lilly stroked the back of Izzie’s hand. “I don’t know how much you heard, but I told Tristan the two of you were too young and immature to make sound decisions.”
“You remember Mark King?”
“Sleazy excuse of a man. Yeah, I remember him. Never trusted the guy, but Tristan put him on a pedestal. The man couldn’t do any wrong. Tristan thought Mark had the rocker attitude he wanted to emulate. I tried to warn him, but he didn’t listen to me.”
Izzie nodded. “All that, but he also had a violent temper and hung out with a vicious crowd.”
“The Crips’ drug dealers? I thanked my stars that was the one thing Tristan did not try to copy.”
“That didn’t work that well for me, although I really just dived into the drugs after Tristan left me. I had a serious case of death wish even after I learned I was pregnant with Arthur.”
“Wait a second. You’re telling me you regretted choosing Mark over Tristan, so you started on drugs? Is that it?”
“I’m saying I did not choose Mark. At all. Period.”
Lilly’s slack-jawed expression gave Izzie pause. She waited for the older woman to process the information she just dumped on her. “What the fuck, girl?”
Her grin spreading across her face, Izzie replied, “There’s so much I need to say to you. Let me backtrack to that night Tristan walked in on me and Mark and thought we were having an affair.”
CHAPTER 4
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 stopped breathing when Tristan yanked the door open and glared at her. “I wasn’t going to open it, but 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.” 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 info 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 came 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, as his taut nipples were right in her line of sight.
Tristan 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.” 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. Too tense to enjoy a magnificent view of the shimmering waters of the North Bay, or Baía Norte as the locals called it, Izzie blurted. “Okay, I’ll cut to the chase. You’re right, I’m not going anywhere until you hear me out. I came down here because I need your help, but first I owe you the truth. I lied to you.”
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 was 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.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. When he stared into her eyes again, she read the struggle he was going through to keep his feelings in check. “That night at the party, when I caught you both 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 or whatever. And every time I asked, you said nothing was going on, but you’d get antsy. Still I didn’t suspect anything 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 rubbed his neck then his face. “Yeah, you said so then and I believed you. Even though I caught you gagging on his dick, I believed you and forgave you. 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 felt wretched remembering what he went through because of her. “A couple of months later, you ripped my heart out again saying you were pregnant with his baby and you were leaving me. What am I missing? Which part was a lie?”
“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. 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 stupid 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.”
Izzie didn’t miss those days. She nodded and resumed her story. “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.”
Tristan expression seemed haunted. “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 with 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 looked nostalgic and a reluctant smile turned the corner of his lips up. “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 turned up 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 back, 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.
TRISTAN WHISPERED, “Mark King drugged and raped 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 to revisit what came next that night. The image of a lingerie-clad Izzie blowing Mark would forever be branded in his mind. 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 part just turned out to be stupor.
The one thing that had triggered his reaction that night had been Izzie’s eyes. Instead of pouncing on Mark for suspecting him of harassing 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 witnessed before. He misread the 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 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 chose Mark over me, but you had no choice that night.”
Tristan thought his head would explode, just as his heart would burst out of his chest. Too many conflicting emotions jumbled up inside. He attempted to sort them out, but 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 of his mouth, 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?”
“Killed the motherfucker.”
“Exactly. Then, you’d either be in prison or you would have been killed by Mark’s buddies from the Crips. Plus, I was ashamed. I felt dirty. I blamed myself for what happened at that party.”
He covered her hands, pressing them against his face. He closed his eyes to better enjoy the warmth that radiated from her as it penetrated his numbness, nudging it away. He pulled her hands from his cheeks, laced their fingers together and rested the back of her hands on his thighs. Then, he pinned her with his gaze and asserted, “I wish I knew this then, so I could’ve told you there was no reason to feel dirty or ashamed. You did nothing wrong. I don’t believe what-ifs will get us anywhere, but I’ve got to say this. Had I had a chance to make the bastard die a slow, excruciating death, I would’ve happily taken it.”
Her upper lip quivered as if she was fighting a smile. “You’re saying I was right?”
“I guess I’m saying we’ll never know.” He shrugged. “We can’t change the past, but I still haven’t wrapped my head around what happened after the party. I get that he forced you, but that doesn’t change the fact you left me. For Mark. Months after that night. How could you do that after he treated you that way?”
Her cheeks beamed red and she framed Tristan’s face again, prodding his stare as if she was trying to reach his soul. With a slight sigh, she blurted, “He blackmailed me. Mark picked up on the fact I never told you what he did that night. One day he cornered me at the studio. We stayed late, alone, mixing a track. He said he knew I was terrified at the possibility you’d kill him, if I told you the truth.” He knew her too well to recognize she burst out the story before she got cold feet.
“You’re saying he forced you to sleep with him, so he wouldn’t tell me that he was fucking you? That doesn’t make sense. He wouldn’t tell me and risk getting his face smashed in.”
“That was my response to him, then I told him to fuck off.”
Tristan threw his hands up. “You’ve totally lost me here. How did he blackmail you, if that didn’t work?”
“That last tour, you didn’t come with us in the beginning because you were putting together the band, remember?”
“Yeah, Noah and I were selecting.”
“Exactly. Every morning, I’d be too late to come down for breakfast or I wouldn’t eat at all. Most of the time, I looked ashen. Mark noticed I was pregnant before I did and he knew he’d never break us up if you learned we were having a baby, so he played his last hand
. He said he’d have his Crips buddies kill you if I didn’t dump you for him.”
A loud buzz rang inside Tristan’s head and muffled Izzie’s voice. Stuck in that one piece of information that threw his life certainties upside down, his brain didn’t process her final words. Feeling like he should yell at the top of his lungs, he was surprised as he whispered, “What the fuck, Izzie? You’re saying Arthur is mine?”
She nodded and his world crumpled.
IT KILLED her inside to see the pain in Tristan’s face. He had all the right to hate her, to kick her out of the apartment, to make a scene. Yet he looked stunned, broken. She needed him whole and she was breaking him all over again. It shattered her heart as well. She waited too long and now she could only pray he’d understand her reasons.
“Fuck, Izzie. I need time to process this shit. You can’t dump this on me like that. I mean, I’ve got a son and you never told me. You knew how bad I wanted a family, how much I suffered growing up without a dad. I promised I’d never do that to a kid, but you didn’t give me a chance or a say in the matter.”
“I can’t undo what I did or erase the pain I caused. I would if I could, but I hope you see why I did what I did. Yes, I was young and stupid, but I was protecting you. I didn’t care what happened to me, as long as you were alive. I couldn’t live if they killed you.”
He shook his head and his face was blank as if he was in a daze. “Does Arthur know about me?”
“Not until recently.”
“What changed?” She could almost hear the gears in his head as he clued in. “Whatever happened to make you change your mind and tell him about me, that’s also the reason you came down here, isn’t it?”
She nodded and waited for the rest she knew was coming. She knew that face, the one Tristan wore when he was in deep concentration.
He rambled, “You married Mark, so I guess his blackmailing worked. You stayed together for what, five years? It’s a long time to stay in a marriage based on lack of trust. Then again, you were into heavy drugs, so I guess it didn’t really matter. Suddenly, you decided to get your act together. You got clean and dumped Mark. You could’ve come clean with me back then. Why didn’t you?”
Tropical Tryst: 25 All New and Exclusive Sexy Reads Page 57