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She heaved a sigh of relief and then shuddered in reaction. The thought of the ugliness of the real world intruding here, in this safe haven Trystan had found for himself, was disturbing and she hated that she’d been the one to nearly ruin it for him.
Of course, there was no guarantee that Evan wouldn’t just try to contact him from a different number. Nausea surged in the pit of her stomach and Iris actually retched at the thought, and her hand flew to her mouth as she fought back the urge to vomit.
Trystan sauntered back into the kitchen and when he saw her sitting there, pale and trembling, rushed toward her.
“What’s wrong? Iris?” She stared at him, panic and sorrow rendering her temporarily mute. Her silence alarmed Trystan. “C’mon, sugar, talk to me. Tell me what happened.”
“I th-think I messed up,” she whispered. “Evan, she…” she tried to explain but everything came out in an incoherent, jumbled mess. He seemed to get the gist of it though and made soothing noises while she spoke.
“It’s okay, sugar, my number isn’t traceable, and no unsolicited messages from strange numbers will ever make it past the firewall. Don’t worry about it. I’m so sorry about your friend, though.”
“Time to make better friends, I guess,” she whispered shakily, trying to hide her grief from him. But he knew her well enough by now to see straight through her facade, and he tugged her to her feet to enfold her in a hug.
“So, it’s official,” Trystan told her the following morning at breakfast, after checking his messages. “The road and bridge will be fully repaired by tomorrow morning. They estimate that it’ll be done by about nine a.m.”
Iris didn’t know how to react to that. What was supposed to happen now?
“I should probably contact the rental company about getting a new car,” she finally said.
Her proclamation was met with utter silence and she lifted her head to find him staring mutely at her, his eyes blazing with emotion.
“Trystan, don’t look at me like that,” she admonished. “I have to go home at some point. I can’t stay here forever.”
“You don’t have to do anything, Iris. Of course you can stay here, with me… for as long as you fucking want.”
“You have to go home at some point too. And what then? Do I just travel from place to place with you like some—I don’t know—some good luck talisman?”
“I don’t see why not.” He tried to play it off as a joke, but it fell flat.
“Trystan, I am not—nor will I ever be—an extension of you! I’m my own person, you don’t get to cart me around like a personal possession.”
“Fuck, Iris, I don’t want that. I want you to live with me, be with me. Write, edit, do whatever you want, but do it with me by your side. As my partner, my lover… even my wife. I’ll take you any way I can get you because I don’t want to lose you.”
“That wouldn’t work,” she said and he swore, the expletive loud and violent, startling Luna into lifting her head to stare at him quizzically.
“How do you know it won’t work when you won’t even give us a chance? You’re running scared about us. You’re a lot of things, Iris Hughes, but you’re not a coward… so don’t chicken out over this.”
“Trystan, what I meant by that is your vision of what a life together would be for us is flawed, and it’s doomed to fail—” She tried to reason with him, but he interrupted her.
“No, we can make it work. Iris and Trystan’s world, the two of us and no one else. I told you, I don’t have to go back to my old life. I want a new one with you. But I need you to be brave, Iris. For us. I need you to be that woman who faced a wolf and a beast in the same night and survived. No, thrived. I can’t be the only one willing to fight for what we have and for what we could build.”
She swallowed down a sob but couldn’t prevent the tear from slipping down her cheek. His tormented gaze tracked its path and he reached out to catch it on his thumb.
“I love you, Iris,” he whispered, his voice taut with pain. “And I want you to stay with me.”
Iris’s eyes memorized each beautiful feature individually, lovingly brushing over the hills and valleys of that gorgeous face. Her gaze snagged on the scar. This man. This beautiful, terrified man, who was still here hiding from his ghosts, afraid to face his future. He wasn’t even aware of what he was asking of her, what he was asking of himself, and if they were ever going to stand a chance Iris had to make him understand.
“I love you, Trystan, and I want you to come away with me.”
His breath stuttered in his lungs and halted completely. His hand crept up to the center of his chest and absently rubbed at the spot just above his heart.
“You’re hiding, Trystan,” she whispered. “You’re still hiding from the ghost of who you were. And you’re asking me to hide with you. I do want to be with you, but I refuse to hide here—or anywhere else—with you. If you want a life with me then you’ve got to be prepared to live it with me. You’ve got to forgive yourself for Trish Nesbitt. You have to fix your life and your career. And I don’t mean by becoming a carpenter, or whatever the hell else. That’s not who you are. Telling me to be brave, while you’re using me as an excuse to live a life of obscurity because you’re afraid to face your demons, is just the height of hypocrisy.
“You told my parents you have to find a way to create a safe space in your life for me. But you can’t do that while you’re hiding in places like this. It’s amazing here, it’s beautiful, private, and it feels like we’re the only two people left on the face of the earth, but it’s not home. And if we’re going to be together, we need to figure out where home will be. Because it’s not here, or any place similar to here. For us to truly know if we’ll work, we can’t be the only people on earth. We need to be out there, in the real world. Where everybody thinks they own a part of you.
“It’ll test us, but it’ll also make us stronger and if we survive all the tough times ahead, we’ll know that we’re made for each other. I do want to fight for us. But the fight is out there. Not here.”
She pushed herself up from the table and gave him a bittersweet smile.
