Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

EMILY

Tristan jolted as if I'd punched him in the stomach.

"Cheyenne…" he repeated.

I nodded. "Cheyenne Benson."

I could see the transformation in his face as realization dawned. His eyes slowly widened to a blank stare.

This was the moment I'd been fearing for so long.

I wanted to explain why I'd let things develop between us, but that was last on the list of items that needed to be addressed.

Tristan placed his hand over his heart as if he might collapse. "I don't understand," he whispered, shaking his head. He turned to me, his voice shaking. "Are you implying what I think you are?"

Holding back tears, I nodded. "When Jacob went to meet Cheyenne, she told him she'd gotten pregnant with him when she was a teenager. She admitted that she'd never told the father. She said at the time she was scared and worried you would quit everything and ruin your career to stay back home. She also knew she wasn't ready to raise a child, so she made the difficult decision to put the baby up for adoption."

Tristan hung his head, his voice barely audible as his ears turned red. "I can't believe this."

I gave him a few moments to process before I went on.

"When Jacob asked her who his father was, she told him your name and who you were. He thought she had to be lying. He knew of you. Jacob was way more into music than I ever was. Then she showed him photos of you and her from when you were teenagers. She gave him some of them to keep. He didn't know how to handle it. He asked her if she thought you'd be open to finding out about him. Cheyenne told him she didn't know, that she hadn't spoken to you in years. She felt like she didn't know who you were anymore, but that the boy you'd been back then would've wanted to know."

"You're damn fucking right I would've," he growled.

It was the first bit of anger he'd shown. I was sure it was only the beginning. He deserved to be angry.

"Cheyenne told him she wouldn't blame him for reaching out to you. She seemed deeply regretful for having hidden him from you and apologized for not being able to go back and make things right."

Tristan placed his head in his hands and bounced his knees nervously. He finally looked up at me, his eyes cloudy with confusion. "I don't understand. How did you end up at the recording studio? You were...stalking me or something?"

My stomach lurched. I felt like I could throw up. "No. Not exactly." I shook my head. "I have a friend from high school who works in the music industry out in L.A. now. I contacted him, pretending to be a Delirious Jones fan, and asked if he knew how I might be able to get an autograph. He told me where you guys were recording your album. The information came so easily that I took it as a sign. My initial intent was to see if I could get access to you. I wasn't sure if I was going to tell you anything or just gauge whether you were a good person, one who would want to know the truth." I gulped. "I knew nothing about you aside from what I'd read on the Internet. When I stood in front of the building that day, I had no idea what I was going to say or do if I met you. Then the door opened, Doug saw me standing there, and he mistook me for someone coming to interview for the assistant job. So I went with it, never imagining where it would lead."

Feeling ashamed, I paused a moment. This sounded ridiculous, even if it was the absolute truth. Tristan stayed silent.

"I convinced myself that the best way to get to know you was to take the job. If you were a bad person or someone who might reject the idea of having had a son, I could rethink how to approach things. But quickly, I learned you were a good person, someone who absolutely deserved to know about Jacob. Someone who would want to know. But I also soon realized that telling you during the tour wasn't fair, because it would devastate you. Then I learned about your voice struggles, and I worried about your mental health if I were to throw this at you in the midst of it all. It became about when to tell you, not whether to reveal it at all. I didn't want to put you through this until you could properly process it."

He stared at me incredulously.

It felt like my throat was closing, but I forced myself to continue. "The chemistry we have, the strong feelings I still have for you-that was independent of everything else. I allowed myself to fall for you, to get lost in the experience, wishing so much that I was really the girl you thought I was. And it became harder and harder to acknowledge the truth, even to myself."

The vacant look remained in his eyes. "You should've told me…"

"Telling someone they have a child they never knew about, let alone that the child is dead, wasn't something I could just spring on you. And then my heart got twisted up in it. I started to wish I had met you under different circumstances, where I could've allowed myself to see where things would go. But that's not reality. That's why I left. Because I'd let things go too far. My feelings for you were blinding me, making me forget why I'd gone to find you in the first place. I wasn't trying to deceive you, Tristan." A tear rolled down my cheek. "Please know that. I just didn't want to devastate you in the middle of a tour. I didn't know how to tell you." My voice cracked. "I'm so sorry. I handled everything wrong."

His eyes held a torment I'd never witnessed before. "You're sure? You're sure he's my son?"

There was only one way to give him the assurance he needed. I went to get the box where I kept all of Jacob's belongings-the journals and his photos. After I returned with it, I took two of the latest photos of Jacob and walked them over to Tristan.

He looked down at the first image and was transfixed. I was certain he didn't need any more proof, because he could see for himself what I always had. Jacob had his eyes. Jacob's face was a younger version of his own. In the photos Cheyenne had given Jacob, Tristan was the spitting image of Jacob at the same age. Had Jacob had a chance to grow into a man, I suspected he would have looked even more like Tristan as time went on.

Still staring down at the photos, he simply said, "I can't believe this."

He continued staring at the images of his son, the one he'd never know. This wasn't about me-or us. It wasn't about the dumb mistakes I'd made. Tristan was in shock, and I needed to let him process.

After several minutes, he finally looked up at me again. "Why didn't Cheyenne contact me after he went to see her? I mean, she told him who I was. He could've come to find me, so why didn't she contact me at that point?"

"According to his journals, she left things up to him. And Jacob wasn't sure if he was going to find you. She apparently told him to let her know if he decided to reach out, and she would contact you first so you would be prepared."

"Why didn't he come find me the second he knew?"

"I think he was afraid..."

Tristan shook his head. "I can't believe this." Then anguish crossed his face. "Does Cheyenne know he's dead?"

I sighed. That was the other difficult part of this. "No one knew he went to find her until I read his diary a month before I found you. Jacob never told anyone about meeting with Cheyenne, and he died a year ago. I did try to find her first. But she was gone. So she doesn't know."

He narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean gone?"

"She'd moved from the address I had for her, the one Jacob had written down. And the person who lives there now didn't know where she'd relocated. I never had a chance to tell her. I decided to try to find you instead."

He held his stomach. "I feel sick." When I came over to comfort him, he warned me away. While that hurt, I understood. I wouldn't have wanted anyone to touch me, either.

"Tell me what you need, Tristan. I'll do anything to help you get through this."

He looked at me like I was crazy. "What I need you can't give me. I fucking need to turn back time. I need my son not to be dead. I need Cheyenne to have told me the goddamn truth more than two decades ago. I'll never get what I need."

My voice was barely audible. "I'm so sorry."

He stared back down at the photo. "She needs to know he died."

"I know."

Tristan rushed toward the door. "I have to fly to Iowa."

"Will you be able to find her?"

He paced. "I'm sure her family still lives in Spirit Lake. Someone will be able to tell me where she is."

"Are you going to try to find her before you go to Europe?"

"I feel like I have to."

My heart raced. "Do you need me to go with you?"

"No. I need to do this alone."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. You need to work. And you've done enough."

I've done enough . I wanted to throw up. "Do you mean that in a bad way?"

His expression softened. "No, Emily. You were the only one who had the decency to tell me I had a son."

"You should hate me right now for the way I let my feelings get in the way of everything. I only made things more complicated, and I'm sorry."

He scrubbed his hands over his face. "You didn't do anything wrong. But I understand now why you felt it couldn't work between us. Everything makes sense, and yet nothing makes sense. The last twenty-plus years of my life were a complete lie." He placed his hand on the doorknob. "I should go."

"What if you can't find her before you have to go to Europe?"

"Then I'll go on tour with my fucking heart in my mouth and figure out a way to finish it. But I won't rest until I tell her. And I won't rest until I look Cheyenne in the eyes and ask her to explain why she never told me about the most important thing to ever happen in my life."

"Before you go..." I walked over to the box and took out Jacob's journals and the photos. I held everything in a pile, returning to where Tristan stood. "I want you to take these. You should look through everything. These are his most recent private thoughts. It will help you learn about him."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. You can give them back to me, if you want, when you're done looking through everything. Or you can keep them. You have more of a right to them than anyone."

He took them from me. "Thank you."

I wanted to ask when I'd hear from him, but I didn't. I wouldn't blame him if he never called me again. Even the pain of that felt better than having to hide everything from him. My feelings for Tristan were just as strong as they always were, so I could only hope both of us would find our way to some peace with all of this. I loved him. It was as simple-and as impossibly complicated-as that.