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“Leave me alone!” she shouts back, but all that does is cause me to move faster.
“If I’m not running anymore, then I’m sure as hell not letting you.”
She spins around, mouth opening and closing as she tries to find what she wants to say until she straightens and pulls back her shoulders. “What, Tris? What was so important that you had to bring me here?”
I’m two steps away from her now, and I can see every single emotion that she’s feeling run across her face and in the depths of her eyes. “That day—”
“That day you left me!”
“I never wanted to leave!” I scream, backing her against the tree, pushing my face into hers. “Did you really not know me at all? Could you not see that it was a front?” I place my hands on either side of her head, the rough bark of the tree digging into the pads of my fingers before I slap my palm against it. “I loved you with every fiber of my being!” Her wide eyes stare at me as I lower my voice, the gravely tone wrapping around us. “I did it… for you.”
“You… you tore my heart out and trampled on it while you went.”
“I know, dammit—”
She continues, not hearing a word I’ve said. “I always said you weren’t a good liar, but you seem pretty convincing right now. In fact, come to think of it, you were really fucking convincing back then too. So, which is it, Tris? Which time were you lying?”
“Fuck!” I clench my teeth, a muscle in my jaw ticking as I stare at her. “I spent seven days straight practicing that fucked-up speech that I made.” I move my hand away from the tree, placing it on the side of her face but she flinches, trying to pull away—not that she gets very far because I have her trapped. “I had to make you believe me; I had to make sure you wouldn’t come after me.” A tear tracks down her soft cheek and she wipes it away angrily. “It was all one big goddamn fucked-up lie; a lie that was meant to protect you.”
Her eyes flit between mine, a glimpse of uncertainty rising to the surface before she shuts me down. “No. Don’t try to wipe the slate clean after all of this time and label it heroic.” She tries to wriggle out of my grasp but I don’t let her leave. “Tristan, let me go!”
“No,” I growl. “It was to fucking protect you. My dad said he’d get you thrown out of college; he threatened to rip apart your mom and dad’s lives.” I grip my hair in my hand, pulling at it painfully. “He had power then, Harm, power I had no strength against. I walked away, for you!”
The gravity of what he’s saying hits me like a ten-ton truck. “You could’ve talked to me!”
“And if I had?” He raises a brow at me, his eyes swirling with anger as he pins me to the tree with his hips. “You forget that I knew you so well back then. You would have come up with a solution to keep us together.”
“Because that’s such an awful thing to happen, isn’t it? Were you that embarrassed by me?”
“Fuck me, you’re insufferable.” His words don’t match the look in his eyes as they sparkle in the sunlight that shines around us. “He wouldn’t have stopped at anything to get me to marry Natalia and join our families together.” He shakes his head. “We didn’t have a goddamn choice.?
?
“You had a choice, Tristan, there’s always a choice,” I breathe out. “And am I honestly supposed to believe that you married and had two children with someone because you were forced to?”
“Jesus Christ!” He pushes away from me, severing our connection as he spins around, his head in his hands as he looks up at the blue sky. “Once we were married, I tried my best to make it work; we both did.” I hear him puff out a breath. “I won’t stand here and tell you that I didn’t love her, because I did.” He spins back around to face me. “But it was never like it was with you.”
“Then why—”
“Because he would have ruined everything you ever wanted!”
“He did ruin everything!” I roar, making him flinch. “He did ruin everything,” I repeat, quieter this time.
“But, don’t you see?” he asks. “He didn’t. Look at where we are now.” He opens his arms wide, his muscles rippling with the movement. “We’re back in the very same spot… together. He can’t come between us now.” He pauses. “Unless you let him.”
My heart wants to forget about everything that’s ever happened and walk right into his arms, but my head is telling me to not be so stupid. He could be saying all of this to—no, that’s not Tristan, it never has been.
My back presses against the tree as I stumble, hit with the realization that he’s telling me the truth. “All of this time.” I shake my head. “We’ve wasted all of this time because of some stupid power trip.”
He takes three giant leaps for steps, clutching the sides of my face as he comes within inches of me. He places his legs on either side of mine, his whole body caging me in. “None of that matters now, sunshine. I’ve been in love with all of your crazy colorfulness from the moment that you covered me in paint and I looked into your beautiful eyes.”
“I—” His thumb swipes across my lips, stopping me from talking.
“I love you with every single piece of my broken and battered heart, there’s never been a doubt about that. I’ll never stop loving you; not even when I take my last breath.”
A tearless sob escapes me and the truth behind those words stirs something inside. “But... you said you never loved me.”
“That was the biggest lie of all,” he breathes out, right before his lips slam down onto mine with ten years’ worth of longing behind them.
