“Um... can we reschedule?” I whispered. “S-Something came up...”
Tristian was like a wall. “Why did you hang up before?”
“I—my data—”
“Your data didn’t drop,” he said calmly, though I could see the anger in his eyes. “I saw you reach for the phone to hang up.”
My lip trembled. “Just a quick family emergency, that’s all...”
The silence that stretched was long and suffocating.
Against my better judgment, I asked, “Can I see you tomorrow?”
I still had to see him. I was still “assigned” to handle him. I still had to maintain the pretense of the business arrangement. But mostly…I just wanted him.Needed him like air.
But I knew I probably shouldn’t, especially not in this state. I was going to have to do some serious work with my makeup to hide what Papa had done to me just now. But despite his rage, I hadn’t been told not to cut Tristian out completely, just to limit our time together…
But Tristian’s face was suddenly a mask.“I’m going to be busy all day,”he said, flat.
The rejection stung worse than the bruises, hit harder than the fall, sharper than the pain in my scalp. Tears welled up again. “I-I can come with you, right?”
A heavy sigh crackled through the speaker. “I don’t know. I’ll call you and let you know, Ingrid.”
“Tristian...”
“I have to go.”
Then the image of him vanished.
I sat there, the phone still clutched in my grip, staring at the home screen until it dimmed and then turned black, leaving me all alone.
Chapter twenty-nine
Ingrid
Curled in the corner of the coffee shop, the late afternoon light bled across the pages of my book, though I hadn’t processed a single sentence in an hour. My mind was a repetitive loop of numbers: fifty missed calls, a hundred unanswered texts, days and days of complete silence once again. My fingers twitched, an addict’s itch to reach for my phone again, but the phantom sting on my cheek kept my hand anchored to the table.
I’d spent the night drowning in tears, only to be met with my father’s anger in the morning once again. The slap across my face had been ear-wrenching, a punishment for a missed online assignment that felt like a lifetime ago.
I was unraveling. Even the updates from Mr. Noah offered no comfort. Tristian was pulling back, disappearing again—spending more time with his mother, not answering his father, not going to the gym, not even the tattoo parlor. It felt like he was phasing me out of his day-to-day existence.
The bell above the door chimed, a sharp, cheerful sound.
“Hi. How can I help you?” the cashier asked.
I kept my head down, turning a page I hadn’t read, but my spine stiffened instinctively at the sound of the newcomer’s voice.
“I’ll take a coffee, black,” he said in an Irish twang.
My pulse spiked, my palms turning clammy against the paper. I didn’t look up, but I tracked Darragh’s movement by the steady, predatory rhythm of his footsteps. When he came into the edge of my vision, I caught the glint of that polished belt buckle, saw the curve of the design pressed into the leather: a dragon, serpentine, its mouth open to a gasp of flame.
He pulled out the chair across from me and sank into it with a casualness that made my skin crawl.
“Hello, sweetness...”
I carefully closed my book, marking my place with trembling fingers, keeping my gaze fixed on the wood grain of the table. I couldn’t even look at him.
“Oh, don’t be like that. You should be excited to see me, eh?” He chuckled. I saw him fold his hands in my peripheral vision—steady, relaxed, dangerous. The barista set his coffee down, and he offered her a charming, flirtatious smile. “Thank you.” He took a sip. “Ahh, delicious. You’ve well and truly warmed this Irishman on an otherwise cold autumn day. I’m most grateful, I am.” His voice was a poisonous honey.
