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I grabbed the wall nearest me and stared at him. He was gripping the counter near the sink, as if he needed the support as much as I did. “You made that clear.” My stomach twisted thinking of that night. The night my world got turned upside down.
“I lied,” he adamantly stated. “You saw my back. I never forgot about you.”
I pressed my lips together, not wanting to believe a word he said. Not after all these years and the heartache. “Please, stop. I was just a bad habit for you. You said so yourself.”
“No. Damn it. I didn’t mean it.”
That lit a fire under me. I gripped the wall tighter. “You sure as hell better have meant it. You don’t say things like that and not mean them, Tristan. Not to someone you say you love,” I cried, hating myself for it.
He hung his head. “Calista,” he said my name so affectionately, “I’ve regretted those words since the moment they came out of mouth.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” I said flatly. “I hope you feel better now.” I knew I didn’t.
He lifted his head, his pale-blue eyes immediately penetrating my own. “I don’t think I’ve felt right for thirteen years. How about you?”
I shook my head. We were so not having this conversation. I was just fine until I came back to this stupid town. Until I broke my vow. “I really hate you right now.”
“You keep saying that, but your eyes say something entirely different.”
I was pretty sure my eyes had been giving off the I-loathe-you vibe. “Oh yeah? What do they say?”
“They say …” He hesitated for a moment, like he was unsure if he should proceed. “They say you’re home,” he blurted.
I lowered my head, denying him access to my apparently lying eyes. Once upon a time he had been home to me, but he’d slammed the door to the house, locked it, and then burned it down. “If you mean a haunted house, sure,” I scoffed, unwilling to let him think for a second he was right. Although my heart was screaming that it was me who might not be seeing things clearly. Except, it truly felt like since I’d come back to Aspen Lake, I was walking through a haunted house, just waiting for the next unpleasant thing to pop out at me.
“You do haunt me,” he admitted.
I snapped my head up. “What does that mean?”
“It’s like the Ghost of Christmas Past has appeared to show me all my old mistakes, with leaving you being the worst mistake of all.”
“Stop saying things like that,” I demanded.
“Why? Because you’re afraid what I’m saying is true?”
“No.” My lower lip trembled while tears threatened to appear. “I know you’re lying now, because the man I thought I knew wouldn’t have told me I was a bad habit he needed to quit unless he really meant it. He wouldn’t hurt me for no reason.”
His face paled so much he looked as if he’d stopped breathing. “I had my reasons,” he said quietly. “They weren’t good, but I had them.”
“And what were those reasons?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I’d wondered for thirteen years why things had changed so suddenly for him.
“Cal,” he whispered, working up the nerve to tell me. “The truth is, I was a coward. I didn’t want to let go of my lifestyle and sometimes … you were a lot,” he mumbled. “I worried, and my parents worried, what it would do to our business. And I liked the money and everything that came with it. I didn’t think I could walk away from it, so I walked away from you instead,” he said, ashamed.
I snuggled Poppy against my pounding heart. It felt as if Tristan had taken the knife he’d stabbed me with thirteen years ago and twisted it for good measure. I knew I could be a lot to handle, but I thought it was one of the things he’d loved about me. You know, except for the whole getting arrested thing. And if he’d wanted to keep working for his parents, he could have told me so. I never demanded he quit. He’d made me believe he wanted a different life. A life with me.
I stared blankly at Tristan, trying to decide how I should respond—or if I should even respond at all. The only thought that came to me was, “I was right; you never really loved me.” The thought killed, yet in a way it helped me make sense of the pain. Truth has a way of doing that.
His jaw dropped.
“If you really loved me, you would have told me the truth. You would have at the very least given me the choice to not be too much, as you say. But you didn’t do any of that. Because you wanted to quit me.” I spun on my heels, no longer able to look at him. All I wanted was to be by myself.
“Calista,” his voice broke unnaturally. “I understand why you feel that way, but it’s not that simple.”
“Sounds pretty simple to me.” I marched off.
“Except I never stopped loving you,” he called out.
I didn’t bother to turn around. He was clearly delusional to say such a thing, especially after admitting why he’d really broken up with me. If he thought the Ghost of Christmas Past was really haunting him, I would leave him with some of Belle’s parting words to Scrooge. I knew he would understand the reference, as I’d made him watch every version of A Christmas Carol available when we were together. “May you be happy in the life you have chosen.” It was his choice, after all.
