I chuckle. “I picked based on what seemed easy and if there were hot girls taking it.”
She pokes me in the side but she’s laughing now.
“I would have totally hit on you in college.”
She snorts. “Unlikely. You know how many girls have checked you out since we got here?”
I raise my brows. “Probably about as many as guys who’ve nearly asked for your number.”
Her mismatched eyes widen. “No way.”
“Yes, Bailey.” I press a hard kiss to her lips. “If you go here, I’m going to be your bodyguard. I’ll come to all your classes, and any guy who asks for your number will get a stern talking to.”
She rolls her eyes, but I can tell she’s pleased. “It’s so bad, but—I like belonging to you.” She fiddles with the edge of the course guide, her cheeks pink, her frame swallowed by my old sweatshirt.
I like it so much. I love it. I love her. And I’ll do anything to make her happy. I press another kiss to her lips, enjoying the way she sighs and melts. I want to kiss her until she forgets we’ve ever been anything but made for each other.
“Been waiting for you to catch up, Katie, baby.”
We’re nearly backat the estate, and my stomach is jumping with nerves. I clear my throat. Katie is paging through a Brown course catalog and carefully dog-earing the pages with courses she likes. She’s creased nearly every page, and I barely contain my laughter.
I clear my throat again, and she blinks up at me. “Sorry. What?”
“I need you to change when we get home.” I tip my head toward the outfits in the car. She flicks them a glance before her mouth parts. “What are you doing, Tristan?”
My hands tighten on the wheel. “Something I should have done long ago.”
64
KATIE
I’m not sure what Tristan is playing at, but these outfits are the exact outfits we wore on the first day we met. Tristan’s bathing suit shorts are as eye-wateringly pink as I remember. His shirt is slightly more faded. My black-on-black ensemble is the one I wore nearly every day when I started.
Matters become clearer as we traipse across the grass to the northeast corner of the property where the security cameras always seem to have trouble. Must be the salt air or something, but I’ve fixed them once every six months since the first day I started. There’s a ladder there and a toolbox at the top, and my heart is in my throat. My fingers spasm around his.
“Up you go.”
He helps me up onto the ladder, steadying it with his hands, before he lets go. My fingers trace the contours of the dusty toolbox.
“Same toolbox?” I ask huskily.
He nods. “Focus, Bailey. The security camera needs fixing.”
I see that it’s hanging from a wire, just the way it was on that first day. Suddenly, it’s three years ago and I feel that same pit in my stomach, that same emptiness in my heart. I’m a girl who has just lost everything, except her guns and her clothes, and is desperate to make a fresh start.
Suddenly, I’m crying.
The breeze lifts my hair and I tip my face up to the trees. The birds are quiet in the thick afternoon heat, not like they were that morning. I tipped my face up exactly like I am now, marveling at the beauty of Crownhaven. The stillness. I wanted so badly for it to become my home.
And just like back then, a scrape of a shoe on the path alerts me to his presence. I freeze, then turn. He’s below me in a few quick steps, steadying the ladder with one broad hand.
My breath empties from my lungs, like it did that day three years ago. My gaze goes immediately to the hole in his shirt. It’s bigger now, revealing a tantalizingly smooth circle of tan skin.
Back then, he was looking at me curiously, like I was a new, interesting species that had appeared on his doorstep.
When I finally meet his eyes, they’re simmering with something I can’t name. Tristan is ten steps ahead, again, weaving a web to ensnare me, and I want it so much that it makes me choke on my own breath.
“Say it,” I whisper.
