Lovely Trigger (Tristan & Danika #3)(59)

I giggled as he set me down.

“You’re right.  We can always just apologize to your neighbors later.”

I backed up a few steps, warding him off with my hands.  “One question.  Is the race going to start without you, if you’re late?”

His breath whooshed out of him in a noisy, annoyed breath.  “Not likely.”

“Is there any way we have time to run into my house and have a quickie, and still make it on time?”

“Not f**king likely,” he growled, his mood darkening by the second.

“Okay then.  Get in the car.  We’ve got to go.  You are not going to make everyone wait on you.”

He cursed his entire walk to the car, kept it up as he held my door open for me, and even for part of the drive there.

“You should have come early,” I told him.

“Well, thank you for the invitation, but it’s a little f**king late.”

I laughed.  I don’t know why, but I’d always gotten a kick out of grumpy Tristan.

I saw when we got there that everyone participating wore white.  There was a huge banner at the starting line that read Color 5k for Charity, and I began to get an inkling of what I was in for.

“White, huh?”  I shot him a look.

He grinned.  “It’s fun.  You’re going to love it.  Trust me.”

Those were the strangest words.

Trust me, coming from him of all people.  My head and my heart went to war when he said those words, even in a lighthearted way.

Because I wanted to trust him.  A part of me needed to.  I wanted to trust him with the best of me, the worst of me, and everything in between.

So much of me instinctively reached for that trust.  Sometimes it felt like my very soul had cast its lot with him, and even in the years apart, it had clung to him, leaving the rest of me to wither.

But I had trusted him.  Trusted my whole heart with him, and he’d crushed it into little tiny pieces, seemingly uncaring of the carnage he’d left in his wake.

But he’d changed.

It was hard to deny that the things about him that had destroyed me once had been transformed, or disappeared, or been left behind.

And so, the battle inside of me raged on, and that charming devil of a man just went about his life, smiling while he slowly broke down all of my defenses against him.

Defenses I’d worked hard for.

Defenses I’d earned.

It wasn’t fair, just as it wasn’t fair when he gave me a mischievous grin that made me melt, and I quickly lost my train of thought.

That was what I was dealing with.

I was outclassed and outgunned, and I was only realizing it when it was too late to do a damn thing about it.

A heart could only break so many times before the cause was lost.

We were separated once we got near the starting line.  He was hosting the thing and had to wade into the center of the chaos, so I waved him on, hanging back.

I could do a 5k, I knew it.  But I hated that I’d be the slowest one, and everyone knew why just by glancing at me.  Even after years of dealing with it, it was a difficult pill to swallow.

Still, I swallowed it every day and did my best.  Today was no different, just a bit more public.

There might have been people I knew there, I wasn’t sure.  I didn’t look for anyone.  I didn’t want to slow anyone down.

I suddenly wished I hadn’t come.  It wasn’t like I’d really be spending time with Tristan.  But it was also too late to back out.

Still, I briefly considered hailing a taxi and just cutting out.

For some reason I didn’t.  For some reason I stayed.

I caught some glimpses of the spectacle that was Tristan and all of the girls from his show towards the front of the line.

The assistant/showgirls were all wearing white belly shirts and white hot pants, as they posed with him for photographers.  Briefly, I got close enough to see him putting his arms around some of them for the pictures, and by them, I mean that one of them was Mona.

I got far away after that, wondering why he needed to have ten showgirl/assistants in his act, and why they all had to sport double Ds.  It was depressing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I was at the very back when the race started.  It only made sense.

I started moving briskly as soon as the starting shot was fired.  I didn’t look up or to the side, just down at me feet as I trudged along

I’d been doing this for about five minutes when I saw his shoes come into view, walking beside mine.  “You don’t have to slow down for me,” I told him without looking up.

He grabbed my hand.  “Stop it,” he said quietly.

I kept going, kept watching the ground, and moving.

“Is your knee hurting?” he asked.

“It’s fine,” I said.  It was sore.  It was always sore, but I was very used to that.  “I’m not what I used to be, huh?”  That had slipped out, and I wasn’t happy about it.

I tried not to look at my bum knee or my barren belly.

“Stop it,” he said again, halting me in the middle of everything.  “You’re everything you were.  You’re still you.  The rest are details.”

I wanted to take strong exception to that statement, but I couldn’t think of a single thing to say that wouldn’t come out sounding like self-pity, so I kept my peace, and started walking again.