When Tristian finally walked in, he pressed a blood-soaked rag to his nose. I was on my feet in an instant, my fear forgotten in the face of his injury.
“Tristian…” James sighed.
“That fucker doesn’t know when to shut up,” Tristian muttered, sitting heavily on the bench. “Don’t worry, he looks worse than I do.”
James left to grab a first-aid kit, leaving us in a heavy silence. I sat beside Tristian, gently taking his bruised, bloodied hand in mine.
“I don’t like it when you’re hurt,” I whispered.
“You might have to get used to it, doll,” he said softly.
When James returned with the kit and left again, I took over, cleaning the cuts on the bridge of his nose and cheek. He didn’t move as he watched me with dark intensity.
“Who helped you before me?” I asked, trying to distract myself from the feeling of his hands beginning to graze my thighs.
“Nature,” he grunted. “If it healed, it healed. Otherwise, Kane or James would eventually drag me to a doctor.”
“That’s irresponsible,” I murmured, focusing on a cut near his lip.
“I know.”
He leaned in, his breath warm against my skin. “Thank you, doll.”
He kissed me then—a soft, tentative pressure that tasted like copper and heat. I melted against him, my hands finding his shoulders. But when I squeezed, he hissed in pain.
“Your shoulder,” I realized, pulling back. “Take off your shirt.”
He smirked, that dark, playful glint returning to his eyes. “I’ll be fine. I want to be with you.”
“We can be together while I ice your shoulder.”
He relented, pulling the longsleeve over his head. I tried not to stare at the landscape of his muscles and ink as I applied the ice pack. He never showed his tattoos much apart from his forearms but that wasn’t my main focus. Later? Maybe…
He leaned into my shoulder, a sudden, jarring vulnerability in his posture.
“You’re the only person I’d let boss me around,” he whispered. “You… and my mother.”
The air in the locker room suddenly felt thin as his guard began to crumble. I was still focused on his bruised shoulder, the ice pack a stark contrast to the heat radiating from his skin, but I could feel the shift in him. His muscles, usually like coiled steel, went strangely calm.
“Your mother?” I asked him softly, the question barely a breath.
He looked away from me, his gaze fixing on a shadowed corner of the room. I watched his profile—the sharp line of his jaw, the way his throat moved as he swallowed hard. The silence that followed was heavy with years of unspoken grief.
“She’s paralyzed, in the hospital. Sometimes, I visit her, wanting advice or… or a hug… and she just lays there… motionless. As if she doesn’t even know her own son…”
My heart ached. I looked at this man—the man who fought with such brutal precision, who commanded fear in everyone he met—and all I could see was the boy standing by a hospital bed, begging for a recognition that never came. I stayed silent, my hand trembling slightly against his skin, terrified that even a single word might make him retreat back into his shell.
He took a jagged breath, his voice dropping into a hollow register that made my eyes prick with tears.
“And Noah—that bastard is not a father or a husband. Whenever I couldn’t handle him, I’d go to the hospital room and just let her have it. All of my frustrations, anger, and resentment… but she doesn’t deserve it. She and I both know that…”
For a second, the mask was entirely gone. I saw the guilt eating him alive—the burden of a son who used his mother’s silence as an outlet for his rage because he had nowhere else to put it. It was a dark kind of honesty that broke me. I wanted to pull him into me, to shield him from the memory of that sterile room and the father who had failed them both.
“She’d adore you,” he said, looking into my eyes.
But before I could respond, his phone buzzed. His face closed off instantly as he checked it. And just like that, the walls were back up.
After our time in the gym, we made our way to the tattoo parlor. The hum of tattoo machines provided a light rhythm to the room. Kane looked up, a bright, knowing grin spreading across his face as he caught my eye.
