Avow

CHAPTER 31

After knocking, Scarlet stood outside Tristan’s door and waited for him to answer as the wind picked up, blowing leaves and small purple flowers from a nearby tree into her face.

Unlike the rest of them, Tristan lived outside the city on a small piece of land with a single home in the center. Like a Tristan island.

Her stomach did flips as she heard the knob turn from the other side. Tristan opened the door. She and Tristan hadn’t spoken since the last time they’d run into each other at Nate’s. Tristan had played video games with Nate all night and afterward the three of them had eaten pancakes together. It had been a perfectly pleasant evening, but then she and Tristan had argued and he’d left. So the moment of silence they were standing in now was very awkward.

“What, uh…what are you doing here?” he asked.

His jaw was dusted with more sexy scruff. She was so getting him a razor for Christmas.

Who was she kidding? She liked the scruff.

Scarlet said, “Nate sent me here to pick up some Atari game you have?”

“Why didn’t he just come himself?”

“Because he’s in his ‘cave of concentration’ or something like that and refuses to leave the TV.”

Tristan shook his head and muttered, “I’ve created a monster.” He gestured for Scarlet to come in and she moved past him, careful not to touch.

“I meant to thank you before, for saving my mother’s brooch for me. You kept it and…” Her throat constricted with emotion. She cleared it. “And I’m very grateful for that piece of my past.”

And the drawing that was inside, whatever it was.

Tristan nodded and his eyes caught on something beside her head. “You have a…” he motioned to her head and Scarlet put a hand up to her hair.

“What?”

“There’s a flower…”

She started patting at her hair and running her hand down the strands, trying to capture said flower. “Where…?”

Stepping forward, he reached to her hair and Scarlet held her breath. She stared at his chest, now just inches from her face, as he withdrew the flower from her hair. He smelled like leather and his body heat warmed her skin and everything beneath it.

Pulling his hand back with a small purple flower trapped between his fingers, he looked down at her. Their faces hadn’t been this close in a hundred years, their breaths colliding into one another as lips parted to make passage for oxygen.

His green eyes dove into hers and her heart started to pound.

No, she thought. Don’t look at me like that. Don’t love me with your eyes. Don’t search me like I’m something you’ve lost but desperately need. Don’t love me like that. It’s not fair and it hurts.

Tristan tilted his head and for a moment, for a crazy, wonderful moment, Scarlet though he was going to kiss her and the pounding in her chest became more demanding. But then his eyes, which had fallen soft and hazy, sharpened and he stepped back, clearing is throat.

“The game is over here.” He led her into his living room, where he shuffled through a cabinet.

“I like your house,” Scarlet said, desperate to cool the heat in the air as she moved into the hallway.

“Thanks.” Finding the game, Tristan held it out to her as they started walking back for the front door. Her eyes caught on a room to her left—the contents inside making her jaw drop in appreciation.

Weapons were everywhere. Lining the walls, covering a desk, piled on the floor. Old weapons, new weapons, shiny ones, tarnished ones. Scarlet instinctively smiled at the idea of Tristan still wielding daggers.

“Look at all these,” she murmured, stepping into the room to admire the weapons on the wall. She glanced back at him. “Can I touch them?”

Was that a glint of happiness in his eyes?

He nodded, but stayed in the doorway.

Smiling, Scarlet carefully lifted a bow from the wall, examining it with a look of wonder. “This is incredible. How does it work?” she asked, running a fingertip along the bowstring.

“It’s called a compound bow. It gives you more control. That one is my personal favorite,” he said. And then he smiled—dimples and everything—and Scarlet’s heart jumped.

She placed the bow back on the wall and walked past a desk covered in weapons. An assortment of arrows was strewn about the desktop. A silver arrow, a blue-tipped arrow, an arrow with a dramatic fletch, an arrow made of bamboo. They were spilling out of a long, rectangular cardboard box.

“What’s with the sample arrows?” Scarlet asked.

He hesitated. “I’m looking for a specific kind of arrow.”

“What for?”

Certainly not to hunt.

“For my collection.” He stretched his arms over his head in a nervous act of impatience and the hem of his T-shirt came up, showing off the patch of skin where his tattoo was inked.

Scarlet’s heart stopped.

The tattoo was darker. Much darker.

Following her gaze, Tristan dropped his arms. “You should probably get back home.”

Scarlet marched up to Tristan and yanked his shirt up—curse be damned. Ripped abs, tan skin, and the dark lines of a familiar tattoo met her eyes.

He shoved his shirt down, stepping away from her with a hard expression.

“You darkened your tattoo,” she looked up at him. “The last time I saw your tattoo, it was faded. How did it get darker?” Scarlet already knew the answer.

He jutted his jaw. “You need to go.”

She meant to yell at him, but instead her voice came out in a near-whisper, “You had it redone.”

He pursed his lips.

“My design was fading, so you had it redone,” she said and the space between them became electric.

He stepped back, but it was too late. Scarlet had already seen the truth in his eyes and her heart caught fire.

He loved her. He missed her. She was still a part of him. The centuries that pushed them apart had not changed anything. She covered her mouth, trying to hide her face, though it was useless because everything within her burned with love and desire and hope for Tristan.

And he felt every single sensation.

“Stop it, Scar,” he said hoarsely.

She shook her head. “I can’t stop.”

“Please stop,” he begged.

“Don’t tell me to stop. I’m not an emotionless robot, Tristan. If you don’t like how I feel, then stop feeling me.”

He rubbed a hand over his head. “I can’t turn it off and you know it.”

“Then deal with it.”

He shook his head and muttered, “You have no idea how burdensome it is to feel you.”

“Burdensome?” All her warm feelings of love and hope turned to ice.

“Yes, Scar. Burdensome. I can never relax around you. I can never turn you off. You’re always right there, inside me, and I’m always one breath away from killing you. I have to be careful every single second of every single day. So yeah. It’s burdensome.”

Scarlet’s whole being resonated with hurt and anger and grief. She gave him a hard look. “Well, allow me to alleviate some of that miserable weight for you.”

She walked out of Tristan’s house and drove away, but she didn’t head home. She just drove and drove until the sun set.

And then she realized Tristan had done it again. He had pushed her away, and she had left.

And wasn’t that the cycle of sadness in her life?

He didn’t push her away because he didn’t want her. He pushed her away because he didn’t want to be careful.

She turned the car around and headed back to Tristan’s house.

He had been careful long enough.

Tristan felt Scarlet before he saw her. Half of him was excited. The other half was terrified. Story of his life.

He walked into the front room where Scarlet had let herself in and was standing with resolution in her soul—the most dangerous of all her emotions.

He leaned his shirtless body against the doorjamb of his bedroom and their eyes met. Love and want coursed through her, echoed in him, and made him feel like a caged animal. Pacing behind bars. Waiting.

He tried not to look at her lips. “What are you doing here?”

She moved forward, her heart pulsing against his, until she stood right in front of him. So close, if he inhaled deeply their chests would rub together.

Her eyes traveled along his face, his jaw, his throat, until they landed on the skin above his heart and, soon, her heart began to beat in time with his.

“Scar,” he said, his voice dry and graveled. “What are you doing?”

And then a wave of all the emotions he didn’t know how to ignore blew into him.

Love, want, passion, need, hope, faith, desire, love, want, want, want…

The caged animal continued to pace.

“You are so careful.” She tilted her head. “You have always been so careful. But what if I don’t want you to be careful?”

Then I will be reckless and dangerous.

She put her palm against his chest and the caged animal wanted to cry out in ecstasy. She hadn’t touched him for two hundred years and now, with her small hand on him, she had him on the verge howling.

He closed his eyes and tried to focus on something—anything—other than the bliss of her touch. And how wonderful she smelled. And how if he just leaned in…ever so slightly…he could taste her…

He swallowed. “Scar.” He opened his eyes. “You need to leave.” Against every desire the animal within him had, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and gently pulled her hand from his chest.

The animal roared in protest.

She shook her head. “No.”

He could feel his resolve crumbling and panic began to overtake him. He exhaled, wishing for a miracle to save him from touching her, killing her. “Don’t be difficult.”

He paced to the other side of the room.

“Why do you keep pushing me away?” she asked, like she didn’t already know the answer. Like she didn’t understand in great detail what his motivations were.

He strode to the door, frustrated and impatient and turned on. “I’m not having this conversation with you again.”

“Do you think pushing me away will make me stop caring about you?”

God, I hope not.

He opened the door. “You need to leave.”

“Maybe you’ve stopped loving me, but my feelings for you haven’t changed.”

Stopped loving her? She thought he’d stopped loving her?

He slammed the door, the animal clawing through the bars of his cage with delirious anger. “First of all, I couldn’t stop loving you even if I tried. And I’ve tried.” He laughed without humor, wishing his life wasn’t so screwed up. “God, how I’ve tried. But I am completely lost to you. I am lost and empty and broken—“

“My heart is broken, too—“

“My heart is not broken Scar. My heart is dead!” He didn’t mean to scream it, but he had. And the bars were breaking and his claws were bleeding and he needed her to get the hell away from him immediately. “It is a hollow black object that sits in my chest without purpose, haunting me with memories.”

He’d never said a more honest thing in his life and now, now that the words were free, he felt the sorrow he’d always tried so hard to keep at bay slam into him and wrestle with the desire that spurred on the animal. “It’s dead,” he repeated.

And then she said it. She said the thing he could not let himself hear.

“I love you.” Her eyes were big and full and he wanted to kiss the flashing blue from their depths and fall into black oblivion with her like a crazy person.

He tightened his jaw. “Loving me is reckless.”

“It’s honest.”

“It’s dangerous, Scar!”

I’m dangerous! Run away. Run away.

“So?” She threw her hands up. “Loving anyone is dangerous! There’s always going to be something at stake.”

“Your life is not just ‘something’, Scarlet.” He emphasized the ‘let’ in her name. “It’s everything.” His voice cracked.

The animal clawed and moaned and whimpered and roared.

Good God, he needed her to leave.

“So, what then? You’re just going to keep pushing me away because you’re scared?”

“I push you away to keep you safe.”

“You push me away because it’s easier!”

“Easy? Easy? Are you insane?” His heart was as restless as the feral creature inside him. “Nothing about this is easy! Do you think it’s easy to see you with Gabriel? Do you think it’s easy to watch you die over and over again?”

“I don’t know what to think, Tristan!” She fisted her hands. “You treat me like I’m a disease. You don’t talk to me. You don’t touch me—“

“Because you could die!” Now it was he who roared.

“I’ll die anyway!”

Tristan’s heart skipped a beat because he knew it was true. She would die. She would die and he hadn’t yet found a way to save her. He wanted to cry. To howl. To break free of the cage and cling to her for the remainder of her heartbeats.

She continued, “We have no cure, no fountain. I’m as good as dead no matter what. But you still barely look at me—“

“Is that what you want?” He was feverish now. No longer in control of his temper or his body. “You want me to look at you?” He marched up to her face, staring at her with angry, terrified eyes. “Well, here you go, Scar. Me looking at you. How’s this? Better? Easier?” He exhaled and felt the tremor of desire run through her and instantly knew he’d made a mistake.

He was too close. Too close.

Pain. Heartbreak. Sorrow.

“No, it’s not easier!” She yelled, lifting her chin to look up at him more fully, her lips almost brushing his. And all he saw was Scarlet in the trees. Scarlet in the forest. The sharp-tongued thief who had captured his heart and wound herself around his soul for half a millennium. He was lost. He was so lost.

“It hurts like hell,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears at all she wanted from him. Everything he’d kept from her for so long. “But it’s better than feeling like you don’t want me.”

“I do want you!” he growled, bars coming down. “I want you more than my next breath.”

“Then stop pushing me away!”

Defeat. Pressure. Love. Want. Want. Want.

“I can’t have you, Scar!”

“Too bad!” A tear fell down her face and Tristan couldn’t breathe. “I’m already yours! I was yours in the forest and I’m yours right here—“

And the caged animal broke free.

Crushing his mouth to hers, Tristan pulled her up against him and kissed her like he’d wanted to for so many years.

And she kissed him back, her emotions spilling out of her heart and falling into his soul and making him feel content and unbroken for the first time in centuries.

She was small in his arms, melting into him and letting him hold her. He’d missed this. Her body by his, her mouth in surrender, her heart pressed against his chest like it should have been their entire existence.

He kissed and kissed and demanded and kissed some more. Scarlet clawed at his shoulders as he grabbed her hips and pressed her into the wall, pushing up against her to trap her there, in his arms, where no one could take her away from him.

She had her hands in his hair and he had his hands under her shirt, feeling the soft skin of her stomach.

Scarlet exhaled as he moved his mouth to her ear, pulling shivers from her body. His mouth moved to her jaw, her throat. He couldn’t get enough of her.

He held steady to her hips, locking her in place against his body as his lips went back to hers. She was completely intoxicating.

Her hands tucked into the waist of his jeans, tracing the line of her drawing on his hip as Tristan sank his mouth into hers.

And then he felt ice-cold pain cut through Scarlet’s chest, sucking the air from her lungs as her body recoiled within.

He immediately released her, the warm haze of love and need disappearing instantaneously the moment he felt her pain.

Scarlet’s eyes were closed for a moment as the pain subsided from her chest. Tristan wanted to die.

He wanted to die a slow and painful death right that instant.

Scarlet opened her eyes and looked nervous. “Tristan, I—“

“I hurt you.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I hurt you,” he repeated.

“No,” Scarlet lied, shaking her head vehemently.

He nodded. He’d felt the pain, he’d felt what he’d done to her. And all because he couldn’t resist.

He needed to die.