I pull back from him, anger surging through me once more. “When will be the right time?” I say, raising my voice. “Because you always seem like you want to tell me something important, something that might bring us closer, but then you never do.”
Tristan hangs his head and I feel bad again. He’s been so calm and patient with me, and I’m throwing a tantrum. “Look, I—I just want to know you better,” I say.
He shoots me a troubled stare. “That’s kind of hard to do when you’re acting like you don’t want to be with me anymore.”
Good point. “It’s not that I don’t want to be with you, it’s just that something brought us together, and I don’t know how much of it was real and how much wasn’t. Every time I think that someone’s been messing with my life, I get so angry.”
“Our lives,” Tristan says, and I tilt my head to the side in confusion. “You said ‘my life,’ but it’s both of our lives that are being messed with,” he explains.
“I know, Tristan, it’s not your fault, but when I fell for you so hard—I mean, you’re the first person I’ve really ever liked like this—I really wasn’t prepared for it.” My voice is shaking as my emotions spiral out of control, and I worry the tears might start falling soon. I pause, take a deep breath, try to get control, wait for Tristan to reply.
“What did Roc think?” Tristan asks, making me glance up at him.
“Roc?”
“Yeah, you talked to him about it, didn’t you? That’s why you were so weird when I interrupted your conversation. Roc’s usually right about things. I don’t know how and sometimes I hate to admit it, but he has really good instincts. I trust his opinion.”
“Well, after discussing all the facts, he thinks it’s possible our relationship is a sham,” I say bluntly.
“He said that, did he?” Tristan says, his lips curling into a one-dimpled smile that takes my breath away. “‘Sham’ just isn’t a word I would expect him to use.”
I find myself smiling back, taking yet another strange twist on the endless emotional miner’s cart ride I seem to always find myself on. “Okay, maybe not sham, but definitely fraud.”
“Mm-huh,” Tristan murmurs, not trying to hide his disbelief.
“Okay, okay. Technically he didn’t say that either. He just said ‘I don’t know.’”
Tristan grins again. “That alone is enough to scare me,” he says. “Roc usually always has an opinion.”
“So now you’re worried too?” I raise an eyebrow.
“Nope. Because I trust my feelings for you. They’re as strong as they’ve ever been. When I’m near you, when I touch you, when I just think about you, I just feel good. That’s enough truth for me.” Tristan’s cheeky grin is gone, replaced by big earnest eyes and a serious mouth.
The desire to kiss him wells up like hot lava bubbling from a crevasse, and I can’t stop from leaning into him and doing just that, crushing my lips to his. His hand burrows into the hair on the back of my head, running through it to my scalp. He leans back, pulling me on top of him as we move our lips back and forth and up and down hungrily. My want—my need!—to be close to him is so strong that I’m losing control of myself, running my hands along his bare chest and sides, feeling his hard muscles tighten and contract as we enjoy each other. Our tongues find each other’s, moving across and around. Before Tristan, I’d never kissed a guy. And before now, I’d never kissed Tristan like this. It feels amazing and I want it to go on forever, but then Tristan laughs mid-kiss.
“What?” I say, frowning and staring down at him, while he continues laughing to himself, as if at some inside joke. “Am I doing it wrong?” I ask, suddenly concerned that in my zealousness I’ve made some grievous kissing mistake due to my naivety.
“No, no, sorry,” Tristan says, still cracking up. “Trust me, you’re doing everything right.”
My concern dissipates and I look at him curiously. “Then why the laughter?”
“Because as we were making out I had a funny thought.”
“You mean you weren’t thinking solely of me while we kissed?” I joke, punching him lightly in the stomach.
“Oh, I most certainly was. The funny thought was about you,” he says, laughing again.
Oh great, so I’m some big joke. “Would you mind sharing with the group?” I say, wanting to know what it is about me that’s so freakin’ funny.
“I was just thinking that a few minutes ago you seemed ready to kill me—literally—and now you’re all over me. It just made me laugh.”
My face flushes because he’s right. I’ve been acting ridiculous, like I’m made up of nothing but mind-controlling emotions and crazy hormones. Not my usual, logical self, willing to discuss the facts, and figure out a solution to a problem. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“You already said that,” Tristan says. “But please tell me that we’re okay.”
Like Roc, I really don’t know. “I can’t,” I say. “Look, Tristan, I still have feelings for you, but how do I know that it’s not just someone controlling me?”
“Your mom said it was no accident that we met, right?” I nod. “That could mean anything. And she might not even have all the facts straight.”
“But there are other signs,” I argue. “You yourself said that you noticed a change when we were near each other. You didn’t feel the same pull that you did before.”
“No, that’s not right. I still feel a pull toward you, an attraction. It’s just different, more natural. Are you saying you’re not attracted to me anymore?” His lips are so close to mine I could reach them just by inching forward a little.
“Obviously, I am,” I say, kissing the dimple in his cheek. “What about your fainting?” I say, raising a finger in the air.
“In the past,” he says, shaking his head. “I haven’t felt that way in a long time, plus it has no bearing on how I feel right now.”
“And how is that?” I ask, flirtatiously running a finger from his shoulder to his chest.
“Like I’m in lust with you,” he says, cracking up again.
“Jerk,” I say, slapping him playfully on the cheek.
“You asked.”
An image of Tristan’s scar pops into my head. I have to tell him. “You have a scar,” I say.
“Umm…what?”
“You have a scar on your back—I saw it when we bandaged your wounds after the fight with Rivet.”
“I have lots of scars, so what?”
“But this one is different. It’s crescent-shaped, but that’s not the interesting thing...” My heart is pounding as I know this is the truth we’ve been missing, a clue to how a moon dweller girl and a sun dweller guy happened to be brought together at the most critical of times for the Tri-Realms.
“What, Adele?” Tristan says, rubbing my back softly.
“I have the same scar, in the same place.”
I expect Tristan to say I’m acting crazy again, that he has a lot of scars from years of training, that any resemblance between our scars is merely coincidence. But he doesn’t say any of that. “Show me,” he says.
Chapter Ten
Tristan
She turns away from me, sliding in between my legs. As she lifts the back of her shirt, I feel a certain lightness, a thrill, as if I’m discovering something new about Adele. Which I am, I suppose. Her pale skin is marked by circles of dark bruising, fresh, likely from when I tackled her to the hard ground during our fight. Despite the imperfections, her back is smooth and beautiful to me. When she gets partway up, she can’t lift the fabric any further herself, so I take over, gently tugging the thick battle tunic up toward her neck.
A little past halfway I see it. A small scar, slightly raised, crescent-shaped. As the tips of my fingers graze over it, Adele shivers beneath me. “Where’d you get this?” I ask.