A peal of laughter rolls out of my mouth. Only him, I swear.
I tilt my head, wishing to uproot the actual issue. “Tell me what you thought when you saw me.”
He crosses his arms over his chest, a clear sign to keep me out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His rigidity triggers mine, and I point a finger toward the door. “Don’t come to my bed tonight. Tonight, you chose your mistress. Be with your demons.”
He storms off, and I prepare for bed, switching from staring at the ceiling, out the window, to the door.
I force my eyes shut when he tiptoes inside. “There was a stray cat that would always paw at my window. Night after night, I would feed it, and it would keep me company. Until one night when my father found out and he?—”
The raw agony in his voice coils around me like poisonous talons, suffocating me.
“How old were you?” I whisper in the night, my heart breaking for him, for everything he must have endured. No child should experience such a horrific upbringing.
His Adam’s apple bobs, his features cast in a haunted expression. “Seven. It was my fault anyway for caring for it. I thought he’d let me have it after my mother left us. Instead, he put a gun to my head, told me love is weakness. My life or the cat’s. I kept quiet, so he shot it.”
I scoot up, and he notices my tears.
“I don’t fucking want your pity,” he grits out.
I palm his face, forcing him to keep eye contact. “I don’t cry for you the man, but you the child, Tristan, and you can’t tell me how to deal with my feelings.”
In a peace offering, I pull the sheet up in invitation, and he slips under. “It wasn’t your fault. Parents should protect their children.”
We’re quiet for long minutes when he says, “My story is ugly, Viviana. You think you know what ugliness is. You don’t.”
“That’s up to me to decide.”
“Tonight, you got your wish.” He sounds lost, as if thinking I am enjoying his distress.
I can’t have that, so I erase the inches between us, and I brush his cheek with my palm. “I know it hurts, but I need this. Let me in. Please, baby.”
His silence only confirms that he understands what I mean without words.
26
TRISTAN
What she asks from me—exposing those memories—induces raw torment, like I am peeling the skin from my bones, skinning me alive. I’ve buried those experiences so deep in my mind and closed the casket that I forgot the corpse it hides inside—the child that never got to feel safe or loved.
It’s opening up or she’ll keep me out when all I fucking want is in.
That’s the only way.
She will understand why I don’t want children.
And at the end of the ordeal, I’ll have her.
Let her in, and she’ll let me back in.
I know it.
She knows it.
I pull her close and she stays, unlike the first night, cuddling into me in a silent promise of more.
I crave her like no other woman. It was idiotic to presume she wouldn’t want to know all of me, including the hidden parts.
