Pride and Pancakes

by Ellen Mint

  Beth snickered at the man owning himself, but he didn’t blink. No, he seemed to want an answer. To demand more from her when he couldn’t bother to give her the barest courtesy of the same. Very well.

  Snapping her notebook shut fast, she shot to her feet. Alarms rose in Tristan’s face, the man standing as well. While Beth teetered a moment, her head swimming from the knock to it, her sights were set fully upon him. “I am a ‘glorified blogger’ because that’s the job I can get. Because when I graduated J-school, I stepped out into a world that was obliterating every proper reporter job it could. A world where the news came from some kid’s Twitter account and no one bothered with sources or in-depth reporting.”

  A snort rolled down the musician’s nose as if he hadn’t expected her to respond. Bouncing his leg, Tristan finally asked, “So you settled for less than?”

  “Yes, because I have to eat. It’s not what I want, but it keeps me off the streets and it’s writing. And, unlike you, all I have to fall back on are my student loans!”

  “So that, that unfair world, that ever-shifting climate, is why you’re in the position you are. Why you’re wasted chasing after minor musicians and reality stars pimping their diet water brands.” He snapped as if angry at her for failing in her potential. As if he had any right, any notion how hard she’d worked to get where she was! As if he was her goddamn father!

  “How dare you,” Beth said, stepping closer to the man hiding away in the kitchen like a coward. No, she wasn’t letting him loose now. He was answering every one of her questions, she was writing a fucking article about him then she was purging Tristan Harty from her memory forever!

  “How dare I?” he mocked, laying a hand to his chest as if she’d wounded him. “‘How dare I, you say, when you were the one to ambush me about her.”

  “Her?” Beth scowled, “Her who?” His mother? She hadn’t asked much beyond a few Christmas tales. What is he…?

  The fury and thunder faded to a crackle as Tristan dipped his head. When he spoke, his voice barely raised a breath. “Sasha.”

  Sasha. No last name needed. A rising star on the music scene, burning brighter even than her fiancé, one Tristan Harty. Her life had been tragically cut short at the age of twenty-six by overdose. After that, he’d vanished from the spotlight, leaving behind many questions and no answers.

  “You wish to know of her. Of what happened. Of why I…” He pulled in a breath, tears rising. The emotion was so overwhelming that Beth became winded, her hand shaking as she dug for a pen.

  With a shudder, Tristan faced the kitchen, unable to look at her. His hands slapped to the counter and he said, “It was my fault. All of it.”

  God! People whispered conspiracy theories about the less-famous boyfriend growing jealous. She had died in his house, though it was technically shared between them. Most had been sympathetic to his loss, the world’s loss, until the pictures had hit the papers. Until he had begun to lash out.

  “We’d…we’d been broken up then. Three months, maybe four.”

  “She still lived with you?” Beth asked slowly.

  Tristan’s head dangled lower, his fingers knocking a beat against the counter. “I’d loved her since I was eighteen. I did still love her, but I couldn’t… I wasn’t enough for her. I couldn’t save her. So she stayed in the house, I found an apartment to rent because it was easiest. And we carried on always saying one day we’d figure out how to end it all. To unravel it all. Then the paparazzi happened.”

  His voice roughened from its natural honeyed state. “There were pictures of me cozy with a backup singer, and since we didn’t announce the breakup, they were going to publish them as proof of my infidelity. Sash and I…” A choked sob escaped after her loving nickname. “We wrote a press release from both of us. All formal and official to tell the world that we were parting ways, it was mutual, give us space. So on and so forth.”

  Tristan paused in his story, taking a hand from its grip on the counter to swipe over his eyes. “I was always there for her. When we knew bad news was coming. Bad reviews. Flops in album sales. Just the press…being assholes. I knew I had to be there. To sit with her. To keep her…”

  Clean.

  “Occupied. But that night I didn’t. I thought, ‘This is it. This has to be the clean break.’ I couldn’t keep going back to her, to babysit her. What were a few beers out with my friends?”

  The man shattering from old heartbreak turned from his vigil upon the stove. He wanted her to answer, to explain for God or death why it had to happen. Like a coward, she buried her face in her notebook, pretending to write even as her heart leaped into her throat.

  “I found her,” Tristan confessed.

  “But you’re not…” Beth began before wincing.

  He picked up on her macabre train of thought. “Not listed in the police report. I know. That was Barry’s doing, or the studio’s, or whoever didn’t want to lose all the money with both of us wrapped up in that mess. I sat in that bathroom for what felt like an eternity with her. Screaming at her to wake up, promising her whatever she wanted, begging for her to breathe. But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t save her.”

  Jesus Christ. Beth had seen death up close. Not the polished-up, rose-scented formaldehyde and sewn-shut eyelids of a funeral parlor death. The ripped-off flesh, the joints and bones cracked at horrific angles, the eternal unseeing gaze of death. It had sent her scampering under her bed for days and she didn’t even know the people caught in the middle of two bureaucrats’ war.

  “Tristan.” She reached out a hand for him.

  “I should have been there. Why wasn’t I there? I was always there for her. I knew I kept her clean, at least stable. Sober most days. It’s my fault.”

  “No.” Beth shook her head, shocked she was stepping into this. He glared at her invading his painful past, but she couldn’t stop. “No, it isn’t.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “I know you can’t save people with love. I know you can’t… You can’t love them enough to get them help. To get them to stop hurting you, hurting themselves. It has to be them. Their choice. Love won’t bring them back unless they want to!”

  Oh, God. Beth tried to slide away, her heart thundering. Images flitted through her mind, barely developed photographs of a woman skipping out on phone calls, meetings, just taking her sick daughter to a doctor’s appointment. Her father insisting that one day she’d come home, one day she’d realize what she was missing out on. One day she’d magically get better.

  A warm hand wrapped around hers, Tristan spinning to face her as he held Beth in place. Slowly, he drew his thumb to her cheek. She held her breath, uncertain what he was doing until she felt the cool slick on her skin as he wiped her tears away.

  “It’s my fault you fell,” he breathed, his hand not falling from her cheek. It remained, the thumb folding into her laugh line as he held her safe.

  “No, it’s my clumsy body’s fault.”

  “I took you out there. I didn’t test the ice. I…”

  Beth reached out with her finger, placing it tight to Tristan’s lips. The ones that’d serenaded countless teenagers across the years, the ones that’d pursed and sneered at her, the ones trembling to hold in his tears. “It’s not your fault,” she repeated.

  Slowly, he swallowed down the unending insistence that it was his duty and doing. She waited to make certain before sliding her finger off his lips. Just before it left the scruff of his chin, Tristan said, “It’s not yours either.”

  They weren’t talking about the ice. They’d never been talking about the ice and they both knew it. “I know,” Beth said slowly, “but I forget too.”

  She watched the pain soften, his gaze caressing down her face until he reached her cheek. In an instant, the panic returned and he yanked his hand away.

  “I’m sorry, I got…” Tristan babbled as Beth drew her fingers to find a drop of blood lingering upon her cheek. Flexing his palm, he stared at the wrathful line gouged i
nto his flesh. “I must have opened it up on accident.”

  “Here.” She cupped her hand under his and pulled it closer. From the one pocket in her pants, she unraveled a tissue and pressed it to the dribbling wound. “It must hurt terribly.”

  Tristan gulped, his voice as soft as a whisper as he watched her tend to him. “Not as much, no.”

  “And it damaged you, your…you need your hand to play. For all those concerts and…” Why did she care? Why was her mind flashing with headlines about how his career had stalled out on relaunch because of her? All because of her inability to stay upright.

  “Hey.” He swept his other palm to her cheek. The cold, indifferent veneer was shattered. Only warmth pressed to her skin, kindness radiating in his sapphire blues. “I’m all right. It will heal. I’ve done worse in the past.”

  Beth began to shake her head but paused as she didn’t want to pull away from his hold. “Why? Why risk it for…for me?”

  The pursed lips fell apart, Tristan blowing a breath softly between them as her question whipped about in the cabin. Only the howl of the storm filled in the silence and it bore no answers.

  “Because,” Tristan whispered as he bent to her. He gently caressed the bare edge of her lips with his as if he was prepared to turn it chaste should she react poorly. Closing her eyes tight, Beth launched up on her toes until she and Tristan were ensnared in a proper kiss.

  Warm as a mug of hot cocoa, softer than a down blanket, the taste and temptation of his lips sent shivers dancing down her spine. Beth gasped at the thrill invigorating her skin, but the noise caused Tristan to break off. Not far, the tip of his sharp nose crested against her cheek as he moved to lean back.

  Reporter. Her job was to interview him. Not get close to him. To learn of his past, yes, to know his wants and hopes in life, but not discover that he smelled of juniper berries and tasted of heart-racing sunshine. This wasn’t right. This should never happen.

  Beth drew her hand back through his hair, the copper strands knotting around her fingers as she pulled him down into the abyss with her. The calm heat of the first kiss rampaged to a forest fire, Tristan parting his lips for a meeting of tongues. His was amenable, even gentle as it touched Beth’s in a greeting of familiarity. Feeling as if her belly was on fire, she tasted deeply of him and tugged his lip into her mouth.

  The wounded paw slipped from hers to grab her hip and haul her deeper into his kiss. She moaned at the thought of it rolling across her naked curves, tugging free her panties and nestling between her thighs. Beth flitted her tongue with the edge of the soul patch sprouting below his lip, tousling the sharp hairs to cause him to groan. As Tristan gasped, he tipped his head back as though he wanted her to nuzzle and kiss up and down his neck. She slid her hand along his thin hips. Slowly, she trailed her fingers to his belt, about to send herself and Tristan down a path they could never come back from.

  A clicking noise struck twice through the whole cabin. The lovers paused, both glancing up to watch as a final thud brought the cabin’s generator down. Like snuffing a candle, the lights and power failed, leaving the two of them illuminated only by the storm.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Well.

  Tristan’s hands remained enveloped around her, his senses aware of perfect breasts pressing to him, the roots of his hair tingling from her tousling. But the numbness in his brain could focus only on the lightbulb above their heads and its impotent state.

  Growing aware of a tight pinch rising in his jeans, he flinched. Perhaps impotent was not the best choice of words at the moment.

  Slivers of light rolled from the windows to let them view a gray-scale version of each other, but it couldn’t pierce deep inside. Only the lingering tufts of fire gave them any real color, and the flames had been on a downward slope.

  He was focusing on the light in the room to keep himself from the real truth. You kissed her. You, foolish man, kissed the woman you were explicitly told not to. By many people including yourself.

  Those big, soul-touching eyes met his and he ached to kiss her again. Beth seemed to have a better grasp on her hormones as she turned to business. “Do you think this outage will last?”

  “Hard to say. It could pass with the storm moving on,” he began. At the same moment, they stepped away from each other. It was a clean cut and it unnerved him how empty his arms felt without her.

  “We need… Ah!” She dashed from his side to her laptop and quickly powered it down. “Best to save all the battery life we can. Oh, and my phone.” He set his to airplane mode to conserve the limited juice at the same time as she did hers.

  “Wood,” Tristan threw out. When her gaze snagged his, he winced and spun around to stare out of the tiny kitchen window. A sea of white waited for them outside, a reminder that it was going to get much colder soon. “Firewood, I mean. Logs. Kindling.”

  “There’s some left on the porch under the tarp. I can bring it in.” She began to inch toward the door.

  His manners rose from their stomped-down depths. “I should be the one.”

  “Not with your wounded hand,” was her answer, Beth slipping out into the storm.

  Tristan marched into the kitchen, bent over and banged his forehead on the Formica. What. Were. You. Thinking?

  How sweet her lips looked parted in concern. How tender her words were to him. How she cut to his quick without a second’s hesitation and pulled him back to his metaphorical feet. He saw it in her beautiful face, the same unending tug of wanting to fix someone and failing endlessly.

  So he’d kissed her. As thanks. A gratitude for her mercy.

  And God it was good. Great. Perfect. No knocking of the teeth, no slobbering tongue. A harmonious melding of lips that soothed his ache and opened up a hunger he feared would never be filled.

  What now?

  The door knocked open, Beth’s black hair coated in snow as she stumbled in with her arms full. “This should keep us for a while,” she announced, letting the logs fall on the stone slats before the fireplace. Slowly, she picked each one up, placing them one at a time on the log holder, as if she too needed time to think. To weigh whether to lock herself back up in the bathroom to keep away from his advances or…

  Why do you think there’s an or?

  “A flashlight,” Tristan babbled. “I saw a flashlight in, uh…” He scrambled through the drawers, trying to remember what held nothing, what was silverware, and where was the… Yes!

  A beam of yellow light streaked across the floor. Beth smiled as if he’d performed heart surgery. “Well, that should help some when night falls.”

  “Hm.” Tristan placed the flashlight upon the counter and pulled on the handle. It tugged upward, revealing that the light could also double as a lantern. A haze of comforting yellow formed a corona around him. All the while, the second of a seeming cascade of winter storms raged outside.

  Beth rose while trying to pat her pants clean with snowy hands. She was beautiful. As hard as he tried to deny it, to hide it under exceptions and excuses, her face was inviting, her smile warm, and her body… Stop thinking about her body unless you want to make it worse for her.

  Absently, he knocked his folded-in knuckle to the counter. It kept beating against the Formica as if he could force all the wanton lust from his body that way. Didn’t work in your teens. Why would it work now?

  Clearly hoping to cling to the light, Beth stepped over his guitar and past the now dead Christmas tree. Odd, he’d stopped seeing the twinkling lights before, but there seemed to be a hole in the cabin without them. And Tristan was staring contemplatively at the tree because he had no idea what to say to her.

  I’m sorry that I took you in my arms and forced my affections upon you?

  It was an accident, a moment of confounding weakness?

  It will not happen again?

  Or do you want it to happen again?

  Of course she doesn’t. She’d made it perfectly clear from their first meeting that she found him pompous and concei
ted. Why would that have changed in any way now? Even knowing he was on the thinner side of being a man, Tristan was no fool either. He tried to hunch down and make himself look smaller, less intimidating to the woman trapped in a cabin with no heat, no electricity and the man who had kissed her.

  “So,” Beth said, rolling the tips of her fingers over the counter. “Power’s out.”

  “Seems to be. Since it’s not a hiccup, I’m fearing a downed line or worse.” He could focus on the dire news, barely flinching at the fear of potentially freezing to death if they weren’t found in time. The other option was to watch the woman lit by firelight, her cheeks tinged pink from her jaunt into the snow. And the latter was no help.

  She twisted her chin to the fridge. “That should be fine, no perishables inside it and the freezer as well.”

  “No stove though,” Tristan whispered as if he’d had plans to whip her up a five-star dinner as recompense.

  Beth shrugged, seeming rather accepting of the whole mess. Her fingers skirted across the counter, Tristan watching them as if they were fish on a coral reef. Beautiful, exotic and impossible to touch.

  “My concern—” she said, grazing those impossible fingers against the back of his forefinger. One after the other in a straight line, softly caressing him in a loop. “—is the shower.”

  “Shower?” He gulped, fully lost and unable to find his brain.

  “I doubt the water heater will stay hot for long in this weather, and with no electricity to reheat it…”

  What is she suggesting? What is she saying?

  No. No, it can’t be.

  Brown eyes stared so deep into his, he watched the flint strike fire. “Perhaps we should share one.”

  * * * *

  Yellow light from the makeshift lantern danced off the shower’s slate-gray tiles as Tristan placed the flashlight on the counter. There was no tub lip to trip them up, opening the entire shower so anyone could walk directly into the spray of water. No pesky doors or curtains to get in the way of anyone wanting to watch. And Beth was staring at the empty towel rack rather than coming to terms with what she’d started.