15. A Time of Healing

CHAPTER 15

A Time of Healing

Roman

I didn't speak to anyone as I passed through the living room. Ever since Tristan picked up and left, the guys looked at me as if I had any answers. I didn't want to get involved. Screw this shit. Madison got the message and stopped looking. Lane frowned whenever I was around, as though on the verge of asking me a question, but he knew better. Oakley was clueless; he could not read the room. So he peppered me with his curiosity like he dissected a frog in biology.

I didn't want to talk about it. And I didn't want to meddle when Lane growled at Oakley and Oakley snapped at Lane. I let them work it out however they wanted and skipped over the awkward questions about what the hell had happened to Tristan.

I don't know , I muttered after Oakley had first asked, and the same three words roamed through my head whenever I was here .

Anger remained at a low simmer, never fully going away but never reaching the boiling temperature. Still, the steam filled the pot, and it had to go somewhere.

The night was warm when I stepped out of the building and crossed the street. Entering Neon Nights, I spotted Mama Viv. She had this unbearable and frustrating new habit of looking at me as if we shared something nobody else did. We did not. It was just the randomness of the universe. We got hurt by a hurting guy. Screw him for taking it out on us. Screw everyone. "Gimme a shot of vodka," I told Bradley.

The fucker had the nerve to cock an eyebrow at me.

"What? Am I supposed to serve myself on the one night I'm off?" The growl warned him that I wasn't kidding. And at my bristling, Mama Viv lifted herself out of the chair and carried the books to the back of the bar, slipping through the door and retreating to her apartment.

"Dude," Bradley said.

"Don't," I said tightly. "Just…don't."

But if Bradley could keep his mouth shut, Luke Whittaker couldn't. He entered with Rafael and spotted me. "Hey, Rome," he greeted, making his way straight to me.

Will everyone just leave me the fuck alone? I wanted to plea for some peace.

"Any news?" Luke asked just as Bradley moved his hand over his throat hastily, signaling to Luke to stop.

"No." My answer arrived at the same time my vodka did. I emptied the glass and sent it back to Bradley. "Another."

"Easy, cowboy," Bradley said as Rafael put an arm protectively around Luke as if I were a threat. The two retreated to the nearest table and sat down.

I glared at Bradley. "I need to get drunk, dicked, or rested. And since I can't sleep and nobody's dicking me, give me another."

Bradley rolled his eyes and kept his opinions to himself. He poured me another shot, took cash, and let me sit in silence. I turned my head around and checked out the crowd at the bar. Not a big one, I saw, but enough to notice a few new faces. There was a DJ on the stage, warming up for the night, and a few people caught the rhythm with their bopping heads.

Rafael and Luke were engaged in a heated debate. Rafael was winning. Batman was, apparently, the superior hero, no matter how you cut it.

I looked the other way and spotted a face that wasn't so unfamiliar.

He was tall and broad, and he wore a hoodie with the hood halfway over his head. Not exactly party attire. The baggy cargo pants with many pockets that he wore were faded black. He stood along the long, high table against the front window, leaning his back against it and resting his right elbow on it. I had seen him at parties before. There was no forgetting that hoodie. Or the wary look on that handsome face.

I picked up my vodka and carried it over. The rest of the long counter against the window was unoccupied. "Can I join the brooding table?" I asked.

"I'd rather if you didn't," the guy said.

I sucked my teeth. "Sharp. Straight to the gut."

"Not interested," he said .

I shook my right hand in the air as if I'd just touched glowing coals. "You don't know what I'm proposing."

The handsome stranger snorted and shook his head. His gaze avoided me fully. He scanned the room.

I inhaled a deep breath of air. I wasn't one to surrender. Especially not when someone disregarded me so easily. "You don't look like you're here for fun."

The stranger exhaled and turned to me. His eyes were green like summer grass in Central Park, and his jawline was so defined that he looked like a chiseled statue. I might get dicked after all , I thought. It would be extra fun if he stayed angry throughout. "Pardon me, but you don't exactly bring fun with you."

"You haven't seen me naked," I told him, my mouth forming a pout against my will.

"And I don't intend to," the stranger said, his frustration heating up his face. "I'm not like you."

"Everyone's a little bit like me," I said.

That got him. "Not me," he said with surprising firmness. "You should back off, buddy."

"You do realize this is a gay bar run by a drag queen, right?" I frowned. No straight boy in a gay bar was this defensive without hiding something. I liked a good fuckup. They could be a lot of fun.

"It's not your fucking business what I'm doing here," he said.

"Alright, alright. I'm not judging. I've seen you around and got the wrong impression." I shook my head. He turned me on with devastating precision. "Ever tried it with a guy to make sure?" I teased. The words felt wrong even to my ears. I was always rash and forward, but not this rash and forward.

He set his drink on the table and brought his face to mine. Minty breath mixed with the citrus from his not-so-straight cocktail. He gripped my white T-shirt and pulled me in. Now that his back was straight, I realized that he was taller by a good four or five inches. I stared up into his eyes, bristling and ready to fight him.

If only it didn't make me horny.

"You're sick," he spat, then shoved me away.

Before I could catch my breath, heat erupting into my face, the hot fuckup stormed out of Neon Nights. I smoothed my T-shirt and took a sip of my vodka. It was vile, and it only added to the burning sensation in my head.

I guess I'm not getting a piece of that , I figured quietly. A sliver of shame passed through me, if for no other reason than because I'd gone all-in and got that in return. I had already pictured us coiling in the bed. I had already felt the sweet, ruthless pain he could inflict. Pull yourself together , I snapped at myself, but it felt like I was grasping for shadows whenever I tried to take control of my thoughts.

I glanced around. Bradley stared at me with disbelief painted on his face. Luke cringed. Rafael, on the other hand, seemed upset. He got up and shook Luke's shoulder, showing him something on his phone, then hurried from the table to me.

I wasn't in the mood for a lecture, but Rafael was completely determined to round on me now. His eyebrows were arched and high, his eyes wide, and his breath shallow. "Rome, you've gotta see this," he said. "I knew he looked familiar. "

Rafael wasn't going to lecture me at all. Instead, he turned his phone around, and the ground slipped from under my feet.

Tristan

Mom and Dad forced me to join them for dinner. It was Mom's special casserole with the fluffiest mashed potatoes and savory gravy. It was such a simple recipe, yet I had never been able to recreate it. No matter how many times I'd tried to make it, following the exact steps I'd seen Mom take throughout my childhood, it never smelled as good or tasted as delicious.

The lights in the house were all on. It was bright, and extra so with all the furniture being white and cream and light gray. The dining table was covered with a white tablecloth, and Mom's dishes were all pastel.

We ate in silence, although Mom and Dad exchanged glances every now and then. They looked at me expectantly, as if they waited for me to deliver some great news of my successes and make it clear that I was putting my time to good use. I wasn't. I was wasting it left and right like I had done my whole life, and when I was gone someday, there wouldn't be a hair of difference in the world.

The last time we had spoken at any significant length, I had informed my parents that I had left college.

Since then, my parents tried to get in touch, but I knew what was best for everyone. It was better if they didn't know how I failed them every day.

"Darling," Mom said softly as I tensed my muscles to get up and carry my plate to the sink. I stayed where I was. "We're happy you're home."

I nodded and muttered my agreement.

"We really are, Tris," Dad said, his voice a little gruff.

"Yeah. Me too," I said in a low voice. I wished they would let me go to bed. I was an adult, but they acted like I was more fragile than an egg.

"I wish you'd come more often," Mom said.

Great. More guilt , I thought. "I was busy."

"I know, baby. That's not why I'm saying this," Mom explained.

"We don't want to bother you callin' all the time, Tris," Dad chimed in.

I shrugged. "It's no bother."

They exchanged that look again, and it made me hold my breath. Mom folded her hands on the table. "Tristan, you are not a child anymore, and it's not fair to treat you that way. But we're your parents. It's our job to be worried."

"Why are you worried?" I asked for the lack of anything else to say. They probably worried about my future, which was uncertain at the best of times.

Dad exhaled through his nose. "Don't you think it's odd to keep us at distance, then just show up in the middle of the night?"

"The bus broke down," I said. "I didn't plan to come so late."

"That's not the issue, darling," Mom said, the gentleness in her voice never faltering. "We're happy to have you here as much as you'd like to stay. This is your home, Tristan."

"You'll always be welcome here, son."

"But," Mom said carefully, "it worries us that you seem so…depressed, darling."

"Not depressed," I said tiredly.

"We're not tryin' to send you away, Tris," Dad said.

Mom took over. "It's only that we fear something happened to make you come back like this."

I inhaled, held my breath, and fought the oncoming tears. Damn them, they always brimmed in my eyes when I least needed them. "I…" My voice snapped, and I pressed my mouth shut, but grief contorted my muscles. Exhaling, I let a shudder pass through me before I tried to speak again. To their credit, my parents didn't overreact. They hurt for me, but they kept their hurts limited to their faces, their eyes. They didn't let them dictate their behaviors. "I failed."

Silence.

I had hoped it would have explained everything, but the word simply wasn't big enough to convey the depth of my failures.

"I…I failed at everything," I said.

"Darling," Mom said in a pained voice that she barely controlled.

"What did you fail at, Tris?" Dad asked, just as concerned but better at keeping it down.

I shook my head. "Everything, Dad. I failed at everything. College, friendships, work. Love. I…I can't win." The words tumbled out of my mouth despite my rational wish to shut up and keep it all down. "Everything I ever touched tu rned to dust. I left you guys because I couldn't make myself look you in the eyes after dropping out." Mom and Dad both pressed their mouths shut, but their heads shook a little. They didn't interrupt me, though. "I ruined my friendships and hurt the people I love and lost the one guy I thought loved me back."

"Oh, sweetheart," Mom said.

But the dam was broken, and the entire lake of admissions was starting to pour out. "I lied to him. I lied by omission, never telling him about…the accident. Keeping it hidden so he wouldn't act all sad with me. I know full well how people look at you when they know something tragic about you. I've seen it. They offer you their friendship. They offer you jobs you're not ready to take. And for what? Because something bad happened to someone you loved? Bullshit. I didn't want his pity. I wanted him to love me . But…he couldn't. Not when it cost him so much. So I ruined everything. He left, and I destroyed all my friendships like I destroyed all the chances you gave me." My tears were no longer satisfied with brimming. They spilled down my cheeks, and I wiped them away angrily. "I've made such a mess of my life. Why am I even here? I'm not ready for any of this." Then, my gaze darted through the blur of tears to the wall where my first-grade portrait was hanging. Next to it, there was Jen's. "She was smarter," I whispered, my throat closing. "She was so much smarter. Don't say she wasn't. She wouldn't have failed so bad at everything." Mom's chair scraped against the wooden floor loudly, and Dad's followed. "She would have been brilliant," I said, choking, though I couldn't tell if it was a sob that choked me or the tears. When arms wrapped around me—and I co uldn't see whose arms and where they came from—a final gasp filled my lungs. "It should have been me," I cried.

Words of comfort swirled around me, none sinking into my mind. I heard them, though I didn't memorize them. I couldn't repeat them. I could hardly reply to them. I bent forward as they held me and cried like I hadn't cried in years. I wished, with all my heart, for a window in time to open and for our places to be swapped. I wished Jen had survived instead. She had always been so brave and bright. She would have known what to do. She would have grown up to be a genius. Not like me, a dropout with mediocre cooking skills and little else.

"…son, do you hear me? You're already everythin' we…"

Mom's drowned out Dad's as she whispered into my ear. "Darling, you are amazing just the way…"

But I heard neither of them, really. Not until the sobs that rocked my body had long passed, and I remained drained of everything, empty, exhausted.

I didn't remember us moving to my room. I didn't remember going to bed. Yet when I blinked, my parents sat at the edge of my bed, and I lay on top of the comforter, still dressed in the same clothes. I hadn't slept, although I had skipped a certain amount of time.

My head hurt. My eyes stung. I was so tired that I thought I could sleep for an eternity, and it wouldn't be enough.

Mom ran her hand through my hair, and I was embarrassed to realize it had gotten sweaty. She didn't seem to notice or mind. "…and we love you," she whispered.

"I love you, too," I murmured.

Their eyebrows rose high. "Hello," Dad said .

"Was I…sleeping?" I frowned.

They brushed it off. "You're safe, baby," Mom said. She looked at Dad, who cleared his throat. "Tris," he said, "you'll get over that young man, okay? And if you don't, you'll get him back. Hearts have to be broken from time to time, or we'd all forget we had them."

Mom brushed my hair with her finger. "But you need to remember that your father and I love you. And we're proud of you, baby. You're the sweetest person. Do you know that? We couldn't be more proud of you if we tried."

Something tugged the corners of my lips down. Something else tickled my heart gently and made it rise.

"You always knew right from wrong," Dad said. "And you were always the first to help anyone who needed it."

I failed to help everyone , I thought.

"We can't change the past, darling," Mom went on. "What is gone is gone, and Jen's not coming back. She was a beautiful girl. And she was smart, you're right. And when she died, a bit of light went out of the world. But all we can do is go on, baby."

"You can't let that tragedy shadow over your whole life, son," Dad explained. "It's not right."

"And it's not fair to compare yourself to something that simply doesn't exist," Mom said.

"Especially when you're such a fine man already," Dad finished.

A small, stubborn part of me woke up and believed them. And when it did, there was no shutting it down. That night, and the next day, I believed they were proud of me. We spoke more, and I told them about Pudding the Panda and where most of their money was going. They laughed and shook their heads in disbelief. We visited Jen's grave and left flowers. I cried.

By the end of the following day, I began wondering if I should return to the Hudson Burrow and start making things right with Roman and, even more so, Mama Viv. My parents thought I had overreacted, but they didn't blame me for it. Not when every deeply buried trauma had resurfaced in an instant.

I failed to tell them who Cedric was and what he left me for. It didn't matter.

He had picked the comfortable life of a young royal instead of the calloused hands of a kitchen helper. I couldn't blame him for taking care of himself. I only blamed him for kissing me in the first place.

That thought was followed by regrets. I didn't mean that. I wanted all his kisses, and I didn't want them to ever stop. But if they had to stop, I wanted to remember the kisses as clearly as I could.

Roman called me one evening, and my heart climbed into my throat. I didn't feel ready to face him, but I wasn't going to make things worse by ignoring him.

"Um…hello?" I shut the door of my room and sat on the edge of my bed. Only a reading lamp was on, and an old book about Apollo and Hyacinthus was on my bedstand, procured from my mother's collection the day before.

Roman cut right to the chase. "I know you don't want to hear from me. I'll respect that, even if I don't get it. But this is important. More important than whatever we're fighting about, alright? I need to tell you something…"

Mama Viv's voice came from the background. "Is he alright? "

My heart ached. I was such an asshole.

"Hush," Roman replied to her in frustration. "Let me tell him."

"What does he sound like? Does he sound well?"

"Tris, you there?" Roman asked. I sucked in a breath of air; it was most I could do now that the emotions threatened to overwhelm me again. "Look, Tris, it's about Cedric. You better be sitting down." For a moment, panic spiked in me, but the controlled laughter in Roman's voice removed the fear that something bad had happened to him. "Oh boy, I don't know how to…" The sound was filled with static, and something clicked and clacked.

"He's a prince, darling," Mama Viv said far too loudly. "Some Vermont place in France, Tristan. Rafael recognized him and saw the news."

"Verdumont," I corrected her, then frowned at myself. That was the least important part. Rafael? News?

"Ah, yes, you see, you know better than…hold on. Tristan, darling, did you know this?" Mama Viv was scandalized.

"What is it? He knows already?" Roman demanded in the background.

"Darling, you never said," Mama Viv cried. "I made that boy scrub pans twice because he didn't remove the grease well."

A laugh pealed from me toward the ceiling. I could imagine Mama Viv quivering with anxiety now that she knew all the things she had asked a foreign royal to do in Neon Nights.

Roman stole the phone back. "Tris, you knew this? "

"I…yeah, I knew that," I said softly. "But how did you find out? What's the news?"

"Oh, well, Rafael follows these French magazines, and some duchess or whatever was photographed with Cedric a couple of days ago. They say they're getting engaged." Roman said, bewildered.

"Who says?" I asked, my heart sinking lower than I had expected.

"The magazines," Rome clarified.

The ridiculous relief at finding out that it wasn't Cedric saying it lifted me off the bed and made me cross the room. But it was useless. He would announce it in due time. "If he's meeting with élodie in public, it must be true. His family wants to announce the news before the elections."

"Dude, what the fuck?" Roman demanded. "You know everything ?"

I cleared my throat and pushed all thoughts of Cedric aside. "Rome, I was an ass. I'm sorry. He left me, and I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't even blame him. Hell, I'd leave me for a crown, too. I couldn't take it out on him, so I took it out on you and Mama Viv. I…I hope you can forgive me."

"Hold on," Roman said. "His family wants the announcement?"

"Um, yes, but Rome…"

"Did he tell you he wanted to marry her when he left?" Roman asked.

"What's going on?" Mama Viv cried.

"Hold on," Roman said. A moment later, the quality of sound changed, and I knew they'd put me on the speaker. "Tris, did he tell you that? "

"Well, no, but it's obvious," I said.

"You have to tell us what he said, Tris," Roman insisted.

So I did. I wanted to protest it, but they deserved to know the whole story. It would be great gossip to tell people forever, hiring a prince and criticizing him when he dropped a tray full of beers and cocktails. I told them, however much I hated remembering it, everything from the moment I knocked on Cedric's door. I told them about his phone and about Cedric's fears that he could be located. I told them that they had already found him and followed him. The story wandered back into the past to everything Cedric had told me about the marriage, election, tradition, and his older brother. And then, I told them about Cedric saying we simply couldn't be together because his duties were elsewhere.

"And you believed him?" Mama Viv demanded.

I rolled my eyes but didn't let that enter my voice. "It's the truth. You know who he is."

"Darling, he ran from them," Mama Viv.

"No, but he changed his mind," I said. "He realized he was better off without me."

"Don't be silly, Tristan," Mama Viv said.

Rome hijacked the conversation. "It's so clear, but only you don't get it. He told you before that he wouldn't marry her for anything in the world. That he doesn't love her. Tris, they must have threatened him real bad to make him go back. If they were following him here, then they probably knew about you."

"Darling, can you call him?" Mama Viv asked.

"No. He never had his phone on," I said. "I don't even have his number." And he won't want to hear from me .

Silence. They were thinking. Roman spoke after a while. "I think they blackmailed him, maybe. Or worse. I think they forced him to go back. It makes no sense that he just flipped around and decided he was done. That guy loved you, Tris."

"He did," Mama Viv said softly. "When I told him we would hunt him down if he hurt you, he beamed. He was so happy to know you had loyal friends, Tristan."

"This smells rotten to me," Rome said. "We need to get in touch with that guy."

My soul was torn out of me, and an abyss opened up in my chest. Had I let him go on some stupid, self-sacrificial quest because I couldn't believe that he loved me? Had I doomed him to a forced marriage just because I didn't think I deserved love? Oh God. Oh, all the gods that listened. Apollo and Antinous, Hyacinthus and Dionysus and Hermes. "We have to save him," I whispered.

Whatever they threatened him with, I could protect him from it. I could help him get out.

"And I have a plan," Mama Viv said.

It took Mama Viv three days to arrange the flight. Her text message to me said, "I have always stood by your side. And I always will. Get that boy back."

The return to the Hudson Burrow passed in the blink of an eye, and the flight that followed was restless and sleepless. Its significance clutched my heart and filled me with anxiety.

How would I ever find him ?

How would I ever come near him?

Would he even want to see me?

It turned out I didn't have to worry at all. As soon as my passport was scanned, I was detained, and two agents in black suits appeared some minutes later.

"Mr. Lawson, welcome to Verdumont. We have been told to expect you," the older one said.

"Good," I said, a hopeful smile touching my lips, although I knew everything about this was absolutely wrong. I forced out a laugh. "I hope I didn't keep you guys waiting."

They didn't smile back.