“You’re enjoying this way too much.”
His mouth twitches.
“Doing what?”
“Acting like you don’t know exactly what this is doing to me.”
He leans back in the seat and looks at me with those dark, steady eyes that always make me feel one second from either violence or prayer.
“I know exactly what it’s doing to you.”
“Then why are you being like this?”
“Like what?”
“Controlled.”
That gets him.
A real laugh this time.
Low and rough and startled out of him.
“Oh,” he says. “That’s the complaint?”
“Yes.”
The plane lifts, pressure changing in my ears, California shrinking below us in clean, sunlit lines.
I twist more fully toward him.
His gaze drops.
Lingers.
Returns to my face.
Every line in his body goes still.
Not relaxed.
Still.
A different thing entirely.
I lean in until my mouth is just shy of his.
“Do something,” I whisper.
His jaw flexes.
“Seatbelt sign is still on.”
I stare at him for one incredulous beat.
Then I laugh because that is such a deeply Tristan answer that it almost kills me.
“Are you serious?”
