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The man, who’d been inspecting the clipboard in his hand, met Trystan’s eyes in a long, uncomfortable stare.
“Why did you come here?” Blunt. Trystan liked that.
“To beg Iris to take me back.” The older man’s eyes narrowed on his face. It was evident that he wasn’t remotely impressed by Trystan’s words.
“And why should she do that? After what happened the last time?”
“She probably shouldn’t,” Trystan admitted. Jason Hughes’s gray eyes flared in surprise at Trystan’s words. “She deserves better than a foolish arsehole like me. But I believe that she loves me… and if she’s been even half as miserable as I have without her these last few weeks, then she’s in a lot of pain. We’re stronger together and happier together, but we didn’t get a fair shot at making a success of our relationship. I just wanted—hoped for—another chance.”
“From what I gather it won’t be the first time you’ve needed another chance. What makes this time different?”
“What I had with Iris always seemed too good to be true… and I reckon I—subconsciously—was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I should have known better., I should’ve trusted her, but after everything I’d just been through with the press after Trish’s death—” He scrubbed a hand over his face and shook his head. “It felt inevitable. Like I’d been waiting for the betrayal since day one. I have the same fears and doubts and insecurities as every other man, and I succumbed to my fear in that moment. My fear of being hurt and betrayed. I went on the defensive and I said and did the most unforgivable things.”
“And yet you expect to be forgiven?” the man said, his face unreadable.
“It’s not expectation. It’s hope.”
Jason Hughes’s eyes drifted away from Trystan’s face and a gentle smile tilted the corners of his lips as he nodded at whomever was behind Trystan.
“Iris, why don’t you and Trystan go someplace private to talk? We can manage here. There’s not much more left to do.”
Trystan spun around and found Iris standing a few feet behind him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. The sight of those tears tore at his heart and he stumbled toward her, hand outstretched—his instinct to comfort her—before he came to an uncertain halt. Knowing that he didn’t have that right.
Instead, he stood before her, shoulders hunched, hands hanging limply by his sides, as he waited.
“Are you sure?” For a second Trystan was almost certain her question was for him, until she averted her gaze to her father’s face.
“I’m sure. Between the gawking and the eavesdropping, this lot isn’t going to be much use to me unless you and Trystan get out of sight while you talk.”
Iris nodded and turned those beautiful, bright eyes back to Trystan. It was like being brushed by the sun, and he could bask in her gaze all day long.
“Follow me,” she said, and turned away from him, her movements tight, the line of her narrow shoulders taut and tense. He meekly followed her slender body as she weaved through the silently staring crowd. Chance, who’d been watching while wolfing down some pretty tasty-looking Greek food, sat upright as they passed him.
“Relax, Chance,” Trystan heard Iris murmur. “We’re just going to the pantry.”
Great, his entire future was about to be decided in a banquet hall pantry of all places.
Well, at least it was private, he noted as he stepped into the quiet, gloomy interior of a mid-sized pantry. It was unstocked save for a few crates of alcohol and several discarded cardboard boxes that still retained the aroma of the fresh fruits and vegetables they had transported.
Iris shut the door behind them, and switched on the overhead light. The fluorescent tube buzzed and flared to life, producing a stuttering flicker that surged and waned without any kind of predictability. Iris turned toward him and Trystan took a step back, to give her some room, and waited for her to speak.
“I heard what you said,” she began, after a few moments of pensive silence. “To my dad.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Trystan nodded gravely, shoving his hands into his pockets to prevent himself from reaching for her.
“You were afraid of being hurt?” The lilting intonation in Iris’s voice made the statement a question.
“Of course I was, Iris,” he admitted, his hands bunching into fists in his pockets. “I’d just served my heart up to you on a silver platter. I’d never been more vulnerable in my life. I was terrified.”
“So when the article came out?—”
“All my deepest, darkest fears came to life in that one moment. I was so fucking blindsided by the sweeping pain, the panic and the fear of even more hurt to follow that I lost all ability to think rationally. I lashed out at you—the one I mistakenly believed was the source of all that pain—it was a nuclear response based wholly on emotion. I wanted to punish you. I wanted you to feel what I’d felt… and after that I retreated into myself. I functioned on autopilot. I refused to think about you, refused to consider how you must have felt, what you were going through. It was only at the first interview with Mike Holmes-- when he dared ask me about you—that I finally started to come out of that daze and began to think clearly again. Before that, I’d managed to sanitize my surroundings, my interviews, of your presence—having him ask about you was like having a bucket of ice water tossed directly into my face.
“It was brutal and my reaction was visceral, instinctive. I walked out because I was physically unable to talk about you. It hurt too much. But after that, you were all I could think about… More and more I had the uneasy feeling that I had things completely wrong. That feeling grew and grew until it consumed me and I was asphyxiated by my own stupidity. I started hearing about what you were going through. And that’s when the repercussions of my scorched-earth reaction in the car that day truly hit me.” He choked up and bowed his head to stare at the polished floor between his feet, fighting for control. “I’d abandoned you. I promised you I’d be there for you and then I wasn’t. Iris, I can’t…”
He lost his battle with the sob that forced its way up past the blockage in his throat and out on a guttural moan.
