All of Me (Inside Out #5.5)(2)

We stop at the entrance to The Script and Chris reaches for what I’m certain will be a locked door, but I’m wrong. It opens, and Chris motions for me to enter first. Everything inside me wants to wrap my arms around him and drag him away, but I understand why he must do this. It’s about knowing versus wondering, and it’s impossible to fight—the same instinct that makes people stare as they pass an accident, even though they know it’s going to be traumatic to view. The need to know consumes us, and it’s consuming him now. And what consumes Chris destroys him. I think he knows this. I think he is trying to keep that from happening, and I have to help him do it.

I step inside the warm building. It’s stuffy, as if the heat has been cranked a few degrees too high.

Chris follows me into the narrow hallway and silently shuts the door. He takes my hand and leans in, his lips near my ear. “Follow me. I don’t want you enduring his wrath.”

I nod and he moves ahead of me quickly, rounding the corner to the main room before I catch up. I blink into the dark of the retail area that’s decorated with artwork designed mostly by Amber. Memories rush over me, and I recall sitting at one of the tables set up for customers across from Amber and grabbing her wrist to question her about the whip marks on her arm. God, it hurts to know she’s gone, and I have nowhere near the history with her that Chris has.

He moves toward the doorway behind the tables, where light spills from a cutout archway. When he steps through the doorway I follow, gasping as we see Tristan’s naked ass, a pair of tattooed female legs with black four-inch heels wrapped around his hips.

Tristan looks over his shoulder and grunts before uttering a few French words that I’m certain aren’t nice. He steps away from the woman despite her protests, pulling up his pants as her eyes meet mine and she slips out of her fog of lust, her eyes going wide. Instantly in motion, she scrambles to pull her denim dress down.

I can’t help staring at her; I’m stunned by how much her ink-marked white skin, slender, curvy body, and long blond hair remind me of Amber. Suddenly, I’m sick with the thought that that’s exactly why he’s with her. He can’t let go of Amber, and my one bit of solace is that maybe seeing Chris will force Tristan to cope with a loss he hasn’t yet faced.

“I guess we know how you’re dealing with your pain,” Chris says dryly. “You aren’t. Does she know that she looks like your dead girlfriend?”

I cringe, but I’m glad that he’s not going to let Tristan pretend nor is he going to let the woman be hurt by thinking she’s more to Tristan than she is.

“Shut the f*ck up, Chris,” Tristan growls, running a hand through his loose, long hair that he’s colored black with a few blond streaks. He steps in front of the woman, his tattooed, muscular arms flexing beneath his white tee as his hands go to his lean hips. “She’s American. She speaks English.”

“Good,” Chris replies coolly. “She needs to know she’s being used.”

Tristan sways forward as if he intends to have a go at Chris, the clench of his jaw telling me he’s fighting the urge. “Who the f*ck are you to judge me?” His voice is low, terse. “You, who use a leather strap as an escape.”

“Better a whip than a person.”

“Dead girlfriend?” the woman demands, honing in on exactly the words Chris intended. “What f*cking dead girlfriend?”

Chris replies, “The one who owned this place and looked just like you.”

Tristan hisses something in French at Chris. When the woman grabs his arm he whirls on her, gripping her wrist, and in a low, scathing tone, orders, “Go home. Leave now.”

“What?” she gasps. “I—”

“Go. Now.”

Her face reddens and she turns on her heel, charging toward us. Chris and I quickly move apart to allow her to pass between us before automatically coming back together. We are together, even in the worst of times now. Chris isn’t turning to the whip but to me, and it infuriates me that Tristan taunted him with his need for that escape. It also makes me wonder if that’s Tristan’s heartache talking, or if he did the same to Amber. Maybe he never really accepted her addiction or tried to understand it.

“Let me guess why you’re here,” Tristan drawls as the back door slams shut, his French accent thicker than usual. “You’re evicting me.”

His assumption that Chris would be so callous hits a nerve that is already rubbed raw by his reference to the whip, and I cannot stay silent. “Chris would never do that to you, or anyone—and acting as if he would says more about you than him. All he ever did was try to help Amber. He’s not a monster for that.”

There is ice in the stare he turns on me. “And we all see how successful that was, don’t we?”

The urge to shake some sense into him is powerful, and I launch myself forward. Chris shackles my arm, pulling me to him. “Sara. Stop.”

I still look at Tristan. “He came here to give you the tattoo parlor.”

“What I wanted was Amber,” Tristan growls, his fists balling at his sides. His gaze shifts in accusation to Chris. “He took her from me.”

“He didn’t—” I begin, but Chris pulls me to face him, his hands on my shoulders. “He’s right, Sara. And taking responsibility for the roles we play in life is part of moving forward.” He turns me so my back’s to his chest, his arm draped over my shoulder.