Lovely Trigger (Tristan & Danika #3)(93)

I’d been so full of anger, so fueled by wrath, that when it left me, I was completely deflated.

I would have fallen to the ground if he hadn’t caught me.

But caught me he did and swung me up into his immeasurably comforting arms.  I laid my head on his chest as he kissed the top of my head.  I could have stayed there forever.

It felt like coming home.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

We were in the kitchen of his house, cleaning up after one of his amazing dinners.

“What did you come to the apartment for that night?”

I didn’t have to ask what night he meant, no matter how we’d been tiptoeing around it.  We talked about the before and the after like reasonably well adjusted adults.  But the other, the incident, that night, and the sequence of events that led directly to it, that we’d been avoiding.  Well, okay, I had been.  He’d been quietly but persistently asking and then waiting me out for answers.

I would have loved to keep avoiding it.  It had already caused us so much pain.  What was the point of dragging it all out in the open and letting it hurt us again?  Because it could.  I knew it was only a question of when.

There was no doubt in my mind that we weren’t done bleeding for that night.  Weren’t done suffering.

“What could it matter, Tristan?  Why do you keep digging at this?  What’s the point?  Just let it go.”

“I can’t.  It’s always bothered me.  I find myself thinking about it all the time.   On the edge of sleep, at the oddest quiet moments, that’s where my mind goes.  To this day.  I need to know.  What were you doing at the apartment that night?  Did you come to reconcile?  Is that what happened?”

“Yes,” I said quietly.  “That is what happened.  I came there to try to work things out.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him jerk.  As I’d suspected, he hadn’t taken that well.

“My God.  You came to make up and I—I—“

“Yes.  You were too far gone to talk just then.  You couldn’t be reasoned with.”

“There are so many holes in my memory that night.  In rehab, they call it a blackout.  You function, sometimes almost like normal, and have no memory of it.  It’s a sign of alcoholism.”

I, unfortunately, had had no such mercies.  I remembered the details of that night so clearly that they haunted me.  I had been so stupid.  I remembered that.  So completely naive, thinking I was tough, meanwhile a predator had been lurking in our midst, taking advantage of our every emotional misstep.

I had a thought.  “I have a question for you.  Something you said that night never made sense to me.  Do you remember when I sent Jerry to you with the divorce papers?”

I’d even gone so far as to ask Jerry about this, but he’d assured me that he handed the papers and the note directly into Tristan’s care, so I’d gotten no answers there.

Tristan had seemed so ready to take on the subject when he was asking the questions, but something about my question seemed to have weakened him.

He moved to the table in his breakfast nook, felt for a chair, and sat down, looking at his hands.  “Yes, I remember.”

I moved to sit as well, but not facing him.  No, I turned my chair away, staring out the window.  This subject was hard enough to face, without having to face each other, as well.  “Do you remember the letter I sent with the papers?”

There was a very long pause, then some agitated movements behind me, as though he’d taken exception to his chair or the ground it was sitting on.

My stomach churned when he answered behind me, his tone just awful with pain and confusion, “What letter?”

My eyes squeezed shut.  I didn’t want to dig into the old wounds, but ignoring them had obviously never made all of the questions go away.  “When I sent Jerry to you with the divorce papers, there was a letter with them.  A very important letter.  For you.  Jerry swears to me that he handed both directly into your care.”

A longer silence passed with more agitated movements.

“What did it say?” he finally asked in the most wretched voice.

I wished instantly I’d never brought it up, but I trudged on.  There was no going back now.  He’d been like a dog with a bone before I’d opened my big mouth about the letter.  There was no question he’d be even more relentless with still more questions in the mix.  “I’ll tell you.  First, though, I want to know what happened to it.  Were you alone when he came to see you?  He told me he didn’t see anyone else at the apartment.”

More silence, then the sound of something breaking in the kitchen.  Near the sink, likely a plate, I thought, but I didn’t look.

This was rough enough, just hearing what it was doing to him.

“Dean was at the apartment with me.  He came out of his room after Jerry left.  He’d heard Jerry’s voice, wanted to know what was going on.”

“The letter was tucked into the papers,” I explained, keeping my voice gentle.  I’d come to terms with this years ago.  No new fresh wounds for me here, just sore old ones.  Not so for Tristan.  Some of this was very new to him.  “Impossible to miss once you started going through them.  Is there any chance you set them down before…before you read them?”