“Why do you care?”
“Because I’m trying to keep you safe.” He yanks the door shut tightly and leans back, putting space between us again. “If I’d known you had a death wish, I would have kept you tied to the bed or—”
“Or what?”
“Never mind.”
My heart thunders in my chest. Something in his voice changes when he talks about keeping me safe. Something that niggles at my instincts. I still love him, even if it’s just the memory of him. But the more time we spend together, the less I trust the man beside me.
“What. Do. You. Want?”
He turns off the ignition, letting silence settle around us.
“Tristan—”
“My mother. Just…” He closes his eyes and swallows. “Just start there, okay? It’s the most vivid memory I have.”
A few minutes pass between us. Our breathing slows. Gradually, the fury between us turns into something else.
“Her name was Grace. She worked as a nurse in Baltimore. She was coming off the night shift at the hospital when it happened.” I hesitate, reliving the sadness. “It was awful. The police had a couple leads but never caught the guy who did it. I often wondered if they had, if things would have been different.”
He looks up at me, silently asking for more.
“You changed,” I say quietly.
“How?”
I exhale slowly, taking myself back to that time. The tragedy had changed us both.
“Something went dark inside you. At first, I didn’t think it would change us, because we were closer than ever. Unshakable. But plans we’d made began to shift little by little. When we were together, sometimes it felt like you were somewhere else. I worried that you’d never make peace with it.”
“And then I left.”
I nod. “We’d both applied to a few schools. I got acceptances from some Ivy League schools, so my parents were obviously breathing down my neck about that. But we both got into UCLA. It was kind of like our little escape plan. You wanted to get away from your past. I wanted to get out of DC.”
“Let me guess. The plan changed.”
“We were ready to send in our acceptance letters when you changed your mind. An army recruiter reached out to you right around then and started filling your head with all the possibilities.”
“Then what happened?”
“I ended up staying close to home for school. I felt tethered to DC, like if I went too far I’d never see you again. Didn’t end up mattering, I guess. You left for basic training. I remember you kept saying, ‘I’ve got to do this. It’s the right thing to do.’” I close my eyes. “If you want to know the truth, I think you needed to take your revenge out on someone, and it didn’t matter if it was your enemy or someone else’s.”
My thoughts spiral down into the agony that followed. The long months apart. The calls that came less often. Then the letter that ended everything.
Why couldn’t I let him go? Why couldn’t I move on and live a normal life? Have friends. Be happy. Be with someone like Kolt, who’s probably wondering where I am now, along with my students and the staff at the school. I’ve been missing for close to twenty-four hours.
I exhale a rough sigh.
“I just couldn’t let you go when there was still a sliver of hope that you’d come home. I tried to move on. I came here…”
“You came to Rio to forget me.”
“I wasn’t in a good place for a long time. I needed a change. Something big. Something…dangerous.”
“You came to the right place.”
“I suppose I did,” I say, gazing out the window.
The sound of the engine revving back to life brings me back to the present. Tristan is eerily silent as he drives us back the rest of the way. We pass through the gates under the watchful eyes of the guards, climb the white stone steps of Mateus’s home, and I excuse myself to get cleaned up.
I take my time in the shower, eager to let go of some of the tension and uncertainty that’s taken hold of me. I towel dry my hair and put on a white sundress I packed, my thoughts tripping over our earlier conversation and his odd behavior at the church.
Maybe it’ll all be worth it in the end, when Tristan can find the truth I’m still not convinced he wants to know. Maybe the people who want me dead will give up, and I can have a normal life again. A normal life. I didn’t come to Rio to have normal. I came to shock myself out of my own malaise, brought on by missing Tristan to the point of inescapable daily pain.
I gaze up into the mirror and judge my reflection. My eyes are tired, my hair leaves much to be desired, and the dress still holds faint wrinkles from being jammed in my bag. What will Tristan see? I don’t know whether to trust that our kiss was a ploy to get me to leave Rio with him. I can hardly believe that the passion crackling between us when we touch is only mine.
Venturing beyond the room Tristan and I share, I follow the sound of voices murmuring in the kitchen. I’m hit with the most amazing cooking smells, and then the sight of Karina with Mateus’s arms wrapped around her waist as they whisper and laugh.
I hesitate in the doorway—hoping I can step away unnoticed—when Mateus turns to me.
“Isabel.” He smiles warmly.
“Sorry. I thought Tristan might be in here.”
“He’s in the den. We were just getting things ready for dinner.”
“It smells delicious. Can I help with anything?”
“Actually, if you could help Karina, I need to attend to a few things.”
“Go. I can finish up,” Karina says, nudging him away with a coy smile.
He shoots her a heated look before leaving us alone.
Karina dices what look to be fresh chives from the garden. “Mateus says you went into town today. How was it?”
I open my mouth to speak and realize there’s nothing I can say about today that doesn’t sound completely crazy. I snap it shut and shrug with a smile.
She huffs out a little laugh. “I was wondering if Tristan was any different with you. I suppose not.”
Her familiarity with Tristan sparks my curiosity. Karina is more than the household staff. She’s obviously Mateus’s lover, and she may know the new Tristan better than I do.
“You know him well?”
She sprinkles the chives into a large pot and bangs the wooden spoon on the edge a few times. “Not well. He’s Mateus’s friend. He doesn’t pay anyone else much attention.”
Even though I’ve just witnessed her and Mateus’s embrace, a little prickle of jealousy edges its way into my thoughts. Why would she desire more of Tristan’s attention?
“He doesn’t seem to want many friends,” I finally say.
She cocks her head. “That’s probably true.”
“How did he and Mateus meet?”
She shoots me a suspicious look but covers it up quickly by turning her attention to the oven.
“I don’t know all the details. I don’t expect I ever will. All I can say is that Mateus is in his debt. Not that he minds. Tristan is always welcome here.”
Karina pulls out a tray of nicely browned empadas from the oven and rests it on the granite counter. Only now do I realize how little I’ve eaten since leaving Rio. I’m starving, and for the first time, I feel relaxed enough to eat.
“Can I help?” I’m willing to do anything to expedite dinner or steal a bite.
Mateus returns just then. “Isabel. Come. Tristan is waiting for you.”
I sigh and follow him deeper into the house until we reach the den. Tristan halts mid-pace and looks me over, his expression unreadable. I glance down and tug at the sides of my dress.
“Sorry. I didn’t pack much.”
He comes toward me. “You look fine.”
I try not to cringe at the word fine. Even though it perfectly describes Tristan. Now that he’s not dragging me from one place to another and I’m not trying to leap out of a moving vehicle, I can actually appreciate the physical man. His corded neck and arms that test the fibers of his black T-shirt. His narrow hips and muscular thighs. His fearless stance before me, close enough to touch.
I lift my wandering stare, only to get lost in the cool assessing eyes that have seen more than I can possibly know.