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I turn slowly, coming face to face with Tristan. He’s walking towards me from where his car is parked a couple of lanes away.
He looks awful.
His eyes are sunken in, his skin is pale. His hair looks tousled and dull. His clothes are wrinkled. He looks like how I imagine I look, like he hasn’t really slept in forty-eight hours.
And looking at him hurts. It’s pushing the blade back into the exact same wound, making the cut deeper and more jagged. Harder to heal from.
I go to turn away.
“Don’t,” he snaps.
My eyes widen and flick back to meet his. He doesn’t look angry like his tone made it seem, he looks… miserable. Chaos rages in his eyes, burning only slightly brighter than the hurt and confusion I see in them.
His gaze slides to the man behind me, his upper lip twitching with emotion. Tristan looks at me, pain flashing briefly in his irises and all the angst in the world wrapping around every syllable of his question.
“Who the fuck is he?”
I say nothing, staring back at him mutely. On the inside, I’m in shambles. My body, my stupid,stupid, brain, they both call at me to run at him and jump into his arms, even as disgust roils in my stomach knowing he was with someone else last night. Anger lances through me that he has the gall to look as hurt as me whenhecaused all this.
“I’m just her Uber driver, man. That’s it,” he says, putting his hands up innocently and backing away. “I’ll leave you two to it.”
I stomp towards my building’s front door. We’re not going to have this conversation. If he can’t put two and two together on why I ended things, then that’s on him.
I don’t owe him an explanation for his actions.
I have the key in the lock and am pulling the door open when a hand comes down on the frame from above me and slams it shut. The momentum takes me and my key with it and I fall against the door. When I turn around, I find myself pinned against the glass between Tristan’s arms.
The temperature cools fifty degrees around us as I take in his icy glare. We’re out in the open, in the middle of the largest student housing on campus, and he has me trapped. There’s no way to spin this moment to look appropriate. He’s risking his whole career just being near me like this.
“Where have you been?” He demands. His voice vibrates under the weight of his anger. “I’ve been worried out of my mind.”
“I doubt that very much,” I say with a humorless laugh. “Move aside.”
“What the hell does that mean? Have you checked your phone at all since you tried to end things with me via text?”
I clench my teeth and look away, refusing to make eye contact.
“Move aside,” I repeat, keeping my tone even.
“Answer my questions and I will.”
“If you don’t, I’ll scream. See how well you can keep me trapped here when the entire school runs over.”
He glares at me but steps back. I rip the door open and stride in, heading for the stairs instead of the elevator. I hear his heavy steps slap against the ground behind me as he follows.
“Who have you been with?” He asks as I clear the first landing. I hear the hollow echo in his voice, the one he gets when he’s jealous.
I hope it chokes him like it did me.
I take the next batch of steps two at a time, hoping to put some distance between us.
“Whoever I want,” I bite back. “Stop following me.”
I find out just how easily he’s keeping up with me when a hand closes around my elbow and he swings me around. He pulls me against him, jaw working violently as he shoots daggers at me.
“I don’t find that joke funny.”
“That’s good, because it wasn’t one.”
