After the Storm

by Katy Ames

  “No!” Tristan was across the room in a flash, his grip powerful around Tessa’s upper arms. She recognized the wild look in his eyes. It was the same one he’d had when he’d dragged her out of the hurricane. “No.” He emphasized the word with a squeeze. “Do not go up against him, Tessa. That’s not want I want. Not ever. You will not win that fight. Whatever else happens, please, don’t try.”

  Whatever else happens…. Tessa stopped breathing for a second, hating the implication of those three little words. Then the fear he felt on her behalf sank in.

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  “You don’t know what kind of man Dexter is.” His eyes searched her face, protectiveness raging. “You don’t know what kind of men they are.”

  “Tell me.” Tessa wanted to scream it, to shake him and get him to open up. To help her understand the damaged look he tried so hard to hide. “Please. Just tell me.”

  Tristan released her and he stepped away. Tessa was sure he wasn’t going to answer. That she’d lost him again.

  But, quietly, “He’s unscrupulous. Violent. Dangerous.”

  “How do you know that?’

  “Because I know the man who made him that way.”

  Tessa didn’t want to ask. The question was stuck in her throat, her eyes stinging with the agony of it. But it was too late. She couldn't go back now. “Who?”

  Tristan stilled, his gaze running across her face. Like he was committing it to memory. Like he was trying to form a picture he could take with him. But the pain Tessa felt when she recognized the look, and the meaning behind it, was nothing compared to what she felt when he finally answered, “The man who did this.”

  He turned, showing her his back and the massive scar she knew was embedded there. Tessa reached out, lightly skimming one of the lines that ended just shy of his spine. When he didn’t move, she pressed both palms to his warm skin. Tristan sighed, his head falling forward. It was enough. A sign of acceptance. Tessa took it, resting her forehead between his shoulder blades.

  “Tell me,” she repeated, the words a feather-light kiss. “Please.”

  Her rapid heartbeat measured the seconds he stayed silent. Then, he started. “I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was supposed to stay at Mark’s that night. But I forgot my cleats and I needed them for the next day. I had a soccer match. I didn’t want to make a separate trip in the morning. So I went home. I was headed up to my room when I heard them.”

  Tessa felt the muscle and bone of his torso expand on a deep, shaky breath. “They were in my dad’s office. Which was weird ’cause Mom never went in there. But something had happened. Because they were there, and Max was screaming. I’d heard my dad get mad before. I was a little shit as a teenager. Always getting into trouble. Thinking I was God’s gift. And Mark and I got into a ton of trouble together. So it’s not like I wasn’t used to him having a good vent every once in a while. But that…it was something else entirely.

  “He was furious. Shouting. But not a proper scream.” Tristan shivered; Tessa pressed her cheek against him, hoping the added warmth would help. “It was…cold. Lacked…I don’t know, depth. He wasn’t moving around, waving at her, grabbing her. He was at his desk just hurling these words at her. So fucking precisely. Like he hoped they’d cut. Like he wanted to take her down without even touching her. And my mom—”

  Tristan stopped, his voice strained. His hands clenched at his sides. Tessa saw his arms tightening, knew what he wanted to do. She laced their fingers together, anchoring him.

  “My mom,” he continued, “is not a timid woman. She’s fierce. A force to be reckoned with. A lot like you, actually.” He gave one hand a small squeeze. “She was the real disciplinarian in the house. If I did something that warranted a verbal lashing from Tamsin, I knew I’d fucked up bad. Which is why”—he shook his head, fortifying himself—“which is why I didn’t understand. She was just standing there. Not saying a word. She let him yell and say these awful things to her. Insults. Foul, foul things. She let him rage and didn’t say anything. She just stared. Silent. Resigned. Waiting….

  “I think that’s why he did it, actually. I think her lack of reaction drove him over the edge. I’ve learned since that it doesn’t take much. But maybe that was the moment that tipped the scales forever. The thing that cracked whatever restraint he had, weakening it indefinitely. Who knows. But Mom just stood there and watched—Tessa, she fucking watched—him pick up a glass from the sideboard. One of those big crystal fuckers. Ancient, heavy. With the bottom an inch thick. She watched him pick it up and stood there, waiting for him to throw it at her. And I couldn’t—

  “You couldn’t let him do it.”

  “I couldn’t let him do it,” Tristan repeated, his devastation heartrending. “I was too far away to stop him. So I jumped in front of her.”

  Tristan fell silent, his back twitching as he relived the memory. Tessa felt dampness against her lips, a thin line of sweat marking his spine.

  “The glass bounced off.” Tristan half-laughed, half-choked, like it was still a surprise. “None of us expected that, I’m pretty sure. But it bounced off my back and fell to the ground. Didn’t even break, the carpet was so thick. But that—that’s what really sent him over the edge. Me, standing in front of my mom, and that stupid fucking glass rolling across the floor.

  “Max lost it. Completely. That cold rage was gone and in its place burned hot fucking fury. I heard the shatter before I felt anything. We were trying to get to the door, Mom and me. And I had my back to the room, just in case. It was spring. I had a lightweight shirt on. Nothing that offered any real protection. Mom was shell-shocked, not moving very fast. And I kept getting caught against her legs, then the furniture. Gangly fucking teenage legs, you know? I’d grown six inches in what felt like a week, was still trying to figure how to use them. I was not the star of the soccer team, let’s just put it that way.”

  Tristan released a shaky laugh and Tessa held his hands tighter, feeling the moment of nervous humor pass and the muscles beneath her face lock up.

  “It couldn’t have lasted very long. But it felt like ages. One after another. He learned fast, though. Broke the glasses before he threw them. So they were already sharp. Pieces stuck, some cut pretty deep. The last one…well, he’d gotten pretty close by then. We were almost out the door, but not quite. And he didn’t throw it. He pushed it. Jagged edge first. Took a huge hunk of skin out.”

  Tessa knew the spot, exactly. The imperfect, deep circle in the center of the sun. Where Tristan’s father had practically cut the muscle from the bone. She kissed him there. Soft. Chaste. It broke whatever trance he’d fallen into. He slipped free, found his shirt, and pulled it over his head.

  “Why the tattoo?” She wasn’t sure she had the right to ask, but she needed to know.

  “Simple. It’s much sexier than the shredded skin beneath it. Ladies always love a tattoo.”

  “No,” Tessa pushed, ignoring his intentional dodge. “Why the sun, shattered and eyes closed?”

  Tristan was collecting the rest of his things. His phone from the nightstand. His belt from the floor. He sat on the bed and was slipping on his socks when he finally answered. “The Hurst family crest. In the center is a sun. The same one I have, except not cracked. And eyes open.”

  Tessa stood in front of him, her sheet-clad abdomen directly in front of his face. She waited, bracing for the rest.

  “I didn’t hear much, when he was screaming and throwing broken glass at me. But the one thing that stands out—that I will never forget as long as I live—is him screaming that I was—am—a disgrace. Unworthy. That I shame the name. The tattoo, it’s proof I was listening. I am a Hurst by name, by blood, but by nothing else. A broken sun for a broken son.”

  “Tristan….” All of Tessa’s anguish and remorse was clear in that single word. And it had him off the bed in an instant.

  “Don’t. Stop. I didn’t tell you so you’d feel sorry for me. I don’t want to sit here and psychoanal
yze how being attacked by my father and hidden away by my mother fucked me up so hard, for so long, that I’ve spent the past twenty years avoiding every emotion because I knew that when I started with one, however good, the rest would be close behind, all of them bad….”

  Tristan’s eyes were red-rimmed, his jaw trembling as he left the bedroom. “I don’t want to explain why I run, why I always fucking run, because that’s what Tamsin told me to do. That she taught me that if I just kept running he’d never be able to get me. And that, even when I worked at Hurst, I was so fucking far away. Here”—he pressed his hand to his head—“and here.” His heart.

  “And I don’t want to talk and talk and talk about how it fucking broke me.” Tristan swiped at his face and Tessa looked away, not wanting him to see her stare. Not wanting him to realize she guessed it was tears, not sweat, dampening his cheeks.

  “I don’t want to talk about how we never recovered. About how he became so cruel, so cold, after that. About how my mom left for Europe the second I went to college and hasn’t been home since. Or about how Max held her inheritance from her family, the money that enables her to stay away, hostage until I agreed to work at Hurst and nowhere else. I don’t want to talk about how I worked and worked and never lived for all the years I was in New York, just to make sure I had enough money to keep her away. Or that I never had a single serious relationship because I couldn’t imagine asking anyone to become a part of my crazy, fucked-up family.

  “I don’t want to talk, Tessa,” he heaved, “about how I spent so much time alone I forgot what it’s like to feel love from someone. Anyone. I forgot it was possible that someone could love me because I’m me. Not for my family name, not for my money, not for any other fucked-up reason that makes people pretend to care when they don’t.

  “I don’t want to talk about how Max almost destroyed my cousin’s company, or how he paid someone to attack Mark—my best friend in the world—and his girlfriend. Or about how they could have died because of my father. I don’t want to talk about how Mark risked so much just to be able to offer me a place here, a fresh start.” Those red-rimmed eyes couldn’t contain the tears tumbling from the sides.

  “I don’t want to talk about how hard it was for me to fall back into friendship with Mark. To remember to speak, instead of just sitting and staring into space. To remember how to take the thoughts out of my head and find the words that could attempt to describe the years’ and years’ worth of secrets and dreams I’ve stored up, knowing no one wanted to hear them. Knowing no one would even listen.

  “I don’t want to have to explain to you how I still wake up forgetting that I’m different, forgetting that I’m free. Forgetting that I don’t have to drown out the guilty voice in my head that insists it was my fault he lost his mind, my fault he went crazy and shouted at my mom and tore my back to shreds. That I wake up forgetting I don’t need the punishing weight of the ocean to remind me to keep breathing.”

  Tristan was at the door. His hands were limp at his sides. The energy that wound him so tight, the emotion that drove him to claw at his scar, was bleeding from him with everything he didn’t want to talk about, and all the words he couldn’t stop saying.

  “But of everything, Tessa, do you know what I really, truly don’t want to talk about?”

  He waited, eyes bleak, until she nodded. And her own tears fell to the floor in silence.

  “I really, truly don’t want to talk about how I’ve fallen in love with a woman and that she’s the only person in this entire world who has ever, ever made me feel this way. That she makes me feel so alive, so present, so fucking here, that I’ll take every bad memory, every past pain, every terrified moment I spent in that lonely fucking cabin for two months, every guilty thought and regret, every single feeling I’ve been running from since I was sixteen—I’ll take them all, just to have this crazy, wild thing with her. The woman I love.

  “The woman whose actions have potentially ruined the one chance Mark and Jack and I have to destroy the man who has terrorized our lives.

  “The woman who, without even realizing it, has been helping the man who broke me as a child. That is the thing, Tessa, that I really, truly don’t want to talk about. Not now. Not ever.”

  22

  Tessa was late to work for the first time in her life. She’d stood in her apartment in nothing but a sheet for at least an hour, tears falling blindly, sobbing silently, staring at the door that Tristan had closed so quietly.

  She didn’t get to the kitchen in time to make croissants. The bread turned black in the oven. Caleb had to ask her four times before she answered his question about chocolate pots de crème. She ruined her pants with fresh berry juice. And her right hand was sporting three—no, make that four—Band-Aids.

  By the time Grace showed up at noon, Tessa was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

  “Hey, friend.” Grace swept in, her sleek blonde hair wrapped in a bun at the base of her neck, her light blue sheath dress accentuating her long, toned legs. She looked happy, radiant. And while Tessa was delighted for her friend, the contrast to how she knew she looked made her feel so much worse.

  ‘Hi.”

  Grace glanced around the kitchen, taking in the general chaos before landing on Tessa’s bandaged hand. “Things go okay after you left last night?”

  “Umm. Yes?” Tessa’s bottom lip wobbled. “No.”

  “Oh, Tessa.” Grace pulled her into a big hug, not caring about the flour that got all over her dress. “What’s going on? Do I need to track down that beautiful, grumpy man and threaten him with dishwashing duty for the next month?”

  “N-n-no,” Tessa stuttered, her hands trembling. “He’s not grumpy. And I don’t think he minds doing dishes.” Tessa’s face fell, a small cry slipping out. “Unless you force him to do them within a mile of me.”

  A pot on the stove top boiled over, sending an explosion of steam and burnt sugar into the air. “Shit, shit, shit!” Tessa screamed. She grabbed it, forgetting the pot holder, and burning her palm on the edge. With another yelp, she dropped the entire thing on the floor, waving Grace away before they both ended up doused in scalding caramel.

  “Jesus. Tessa! Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Fine. No real damage.” She held up her palms, ignoring the semi-circular burn already puckering.

  “You aren’t. You’re a mess. What the hell is going on?”

  The combination of the ache in her hand and the sympathy and concern on her friend’s face sent her straight over the edge. Before Tessa knew what was happening, she was sobbing into a kitchen towel, rubbing streaks of chocolate cream across her forehead.

  The words came with the tears. She told Grace about her conversation with Tristan after dinner. She explained that by the time they’d gone to bed she was so ridiculously happy, so totally in love she could barely remember what had upset her in the first place. She told Grace about the call, about her dad, about finding out he worked for Tristan’s father. About what Dexter had told her to do, and why she’d done it. About how Tristan got the scar on his back.

  Grace was gripping her wrists by the end, careful to avoid all the cuts and burns. Her face was just as ashen as Tessa’s.

  “Oh, God. Tessa. I had no idea. I don’t even think Mark knows.”

  “I don’t think he does,” Tessa agreed weakly. “I don’t think anyone does, other than Tristan’s parents. Grace, it was horrific. Tristan couldn’t stop. He kept baring one awful secret after another. About how what happened hurt him so deeply, how his family never recovered. How his father more or less disowned him, and then tortured him by making him stay.”

  “Christ,” Grace whispered. “How fucking awful. But what’s even worse is that it makes sense. Mark says things have been off in Tristan’s family for years. That it started when he was away at college, which is when it sounds like this happened. Max is a horrible person, don’t get me wrong, but I had no idea he attacked both Tristan and his mom.”

  “Grace.” Tes
sa studied the red line bisecting her palm. “The rest of it. The thing with my dad. And the information, the key, the room. I am sorry. So incredibly sorry. I never wanted to betray you. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you or Mark. Or Tristan,” she sobbed, mortified. “I didn’t think I had a choice. Not at the time. But, now…. I should’ve said no. Should’ve tried harder to find a different solution. I can’t say how sorry I am. About everything. Keeping secrets from you. God, keeping secrets from Tristan. I understand if you want me to leave. I can be gone by the end of the day.”

  Grace was quiet for a second before responding, “I don’t know much about your dad. Or about what he—or Max’s goon—said to convince you to spy for them. But, Tessa?” She waited until her friend met her eyes. “I do know what Max is like. Just like I know exactly what it’s like to get stuck between him and the thing he wants, and how painful that can be. Maxwell Hurst has an uncanny ability to fuck everything up for the people unfortunate enough to cross his path. I’m very sorry that now includes you. But doing a few stupid things to protect someone you care about?” Grace shook her head, a smile softening her eyes. “Well, that’s not a fireable offense. Not in my book. Good thing, too, otherwise Mark and I would both be out of a job.”

  “I can stay?” Tessa held her breath, sure that what she was hearing was too good to be true.

  “Damn straight, you can stay.” Grace smiled. “I hired you for a reason, Tessa. Not just because you’re my friend. You are the finest pastry chef I’ve ever met. And this baby”—Grace patted the countertop—“deserves the best. Only you, Chef Armstrong, will do.” Grace shrugged. “Besides, I can’t live without your chocolate desserts now. They have become a seriously integral part of my love life.”