Those three final words knock the air right out of my lungs. There’s no question in them, only this soft, breathless wonder that makes my heart ache and swell.
Jerkily, I nod, swallowing hard as I try to find my voice. Even if he doesn’t need it, I have to answer him.
“I do. Tris, I should have said it before. I just—” Suddenly my reasons for waiting feel petty. Selfish. “I wanted to find the perfect way to tell you.”
Embarrassment touched with shame burns through my skin, but the grin that lights Tris’s face is dazzling. “You’re fucking ridiculous, sunshine. Don’t you get that it couldn’t not be perfect? I love you too, Jesse. So absolutely fucking much. Only,” vulnerability shines suddenly in his eyes and his voice trembles. “Would you say it to me? That you love me? Just so, you know, I know…”
My already over-full heart feels like it’s about to crack in two as elation and tenderness overwhelm me.
“I love you.” I catch his face between my hands, cupping his jaw in my palms as I hold his gaze, watching his eyes soften and fill as he takes in my words. “I’ll tell you over and over and over again. As many times as you want to hear it. Until you’resick of it.” I pull in a shuddering breath, blinking back tears of my own. “I love you, Tristan. This is it for me.Youare it. I am in love with you, and I think I have been ever since I first saw you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He laughs a watery laugh that ends in a quiet sniffle as he buries his face against my shoulder again.
“Tris, I think we should call the police. Report what happened. This wasn’t okay.”
I don’t want him to have to go through talking about tonight. Especially not to a stranger who might not even be able to do anything about it. And yet, though I wouldn’t for anything in the world say it aloud to Tris, I can’t ignore the fear that sooner or later, Josh will come back.
With a long, shaky breath, Tris nods. I can feel the tension seeping back into him, and I have to force down the irrational, emotional part of me that demands I make everything better for himnowin order to unwind my arms from him so I can go collect his phone and make the call.
An officer arrived within an hour. All through giving her his statement, Tris held it together.
Jesus, not just held it together. He was brilliant. Coherently and clearly, he’d answered every question she’d asked him.
Even so, I’d seen all the little cracks in him. The places where he really was just barely keeping from crumbling.
He’d untangled himself from me to sit on his bed, one arm wrapped around his chest in that anxious gesture of his I nowrecognize so well. It took me everything I had not to drag him back into my arms and hold him. Instead, I settled for holding his hand, squeezing softly whenever he hesitated. Whenever his voice shook so slightly, I’m not sure anyone but me could have noticed.
When she’d finished collecting my far briefer statement after Tris’s, the officer had tried to convince Tris to go to the hospital, to make sure he wasn’t injured, but he refused. He’d already shown her the purpling finger marks spanning his lower left hip where that fucking bastard grabbed him. The darkening bruise and welts circling his wrist. And there was no missing the hand-shaped purple-red mark splayed across his cheek.
“Besides my hair and the bruises, he didn’t hurt me anywhere else.” He’d tensed his arm around himself, squeezed my hand a little tighter. “Nothing happened. He didn’t actually do anything.”
I knew what Tris meant, but that didn’t stop the fresh wave of blind fury that had crashed through me. Fucking Christ, this wasn’tnothing.
Thank god the officer said it for me.
“Assault’s not nothing.” She gave a tightlipped shake of her head. “And this isn’t the first allegation against him. There are similar charges on record from two other men, back in Tucson.”
With instructions that Tris and I were to call if Josh tried to contact him again or if we saw him, the officer left. The moment she was gone, Tris slumped forward, burying his face in his hands.
“Will you take me home, sunshine?” he’d asked, not looking up as he’d leaned sideways against me. “I don’t really want tobe here. Not anymore.”
I’ve barely closed the door behind us when Tris is back in my arms, winding himself around me like he can’t stand another moment’s distance from me. Not that I feel any different.
“You’re shaking again.” I run my hands down his back, feeling his muscles shiver beneath them as he tries to burrow closer. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Just cold.”
He does feel cold. His hands are freezing against my skin where they’ve slipped up under my sweater, and when I press a kiss to his cheek, the one not reddened and bruised by Josh’s hand, it’s cool under my lips.
“I can start a bath for you. Make you some tea—”
Tris shakes his head. “Maybe just a shower? I just—” He breathes out a shuddering breath. “I can smell him still. His cologne. Like it’s all over me. I fucking hate it.”
“Anything.”
