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“I’ll do that when you stop running from me,” he thunders. “Literallyandfiguratively.”
I watch him storm down the hallway after me, his body somehow dwarfing the space. I fiddle with my keychain until I find the right key and push it into the lock. I throw the door open and go in, immediately turning around and shoving it closed.
“Nera?” I hear Six ask from behind me. She sounds startled, probably by the way I just crashed into the room after being AWOL for the whole weekend.
I look over my shoulder and see her sitting with Thayer and Bellamy, all three of them looking at me with expressions ranging along the scale of surprise.
“Why are you crying?” Thayer asks, concern making her stand.
I’m still looking at them when I feel Tristan’s arm catch the door before it closes.
Then he’s thrusting it open and barging through.
My mouth drops in shock, the tears momentarily giving way to disbelief.
He’s unseeing of the apartment or people in it, his heated, furious glare locking on me and me only.
“Professor Novak?” I hear Bellamy call from behind me. Total confusion rings clearly in her voice.
I don’t know if he even hears her.
“I’m furious with you, Nera, and you’re making this worse for yourself by running from me.”
“Tristan, I–”
“‘Tristan?’” Thayer and Bellamy say in unison, cutting me off.
My heart is beating so wildly, I can barely suck in a breath. I feel like I’m hyperventilating. The combination of being forced to see Tristan when I’m not ready, of fighting with him when I’m fresh on this betrayal, and of my worlds colliding and crashing together so unexpectedly and publicly makes me gasp for air.
“Why the hell are you calling him Tristan?” Six asks, in shock.
Without even looking at them, he grabs my elbow and pulls me with him to my bedroom. I hear Thayer’s voice before he slams the door closed behind us.
“Wait, is he the guy? IsheGary?”
And then it’s just the two of us, with no escape for me.
“I don’t even know where to start,” he growls, taking a step towards me. “Asking you where you were, who you were with, why you think you’re single or why the fuck you tried to dump me. But given I spent the last forty-two hours in my car, sleeping in the freezing cold, waiting for you to come home, I’ll start there. Where thefuckwere you?”
That’s why he looks so terrible. He’s been… waiting for me this whole time? I don’t understand but it does nothing to appease me.
“You want to know where I was?” I say, taunting him.
“Yeah, given that I’ve texted you maybe a hundred times, that’d be fucking swell,” he responds, sarcasm dripping heavily from his words.
“I was holed up in the penthouse of our hotel,alone, crying my eyes out over you for the past two days!”
He recoils, the look on his face pure confusion. I want to wipe it off, by force if need be, anything rather than having him continue the innocence act.
“What the fuck?” He exclaims. “Why?”
I scoff, rolling my eyes.
“If you’re going to pretend like you didn’t do anything, then I don’t know why you’re forcing me to talk. We have nothing to say to each other.”
He grabs my arms right above my elbow and pulls me against him.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Nera. Zero. Obviously, I did something to piss you off but I can’t apologize and make it right if I don’t know what it is I did.”
