Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 132649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
“Thank you.” His voice was shaky as he said those words. “For doing that for her. For protecting her when I didn’t.”
“I didn’t do it for you.” Chance said, his voice frosty.
“I know that. But thank you nonetheless.”
Chance didn’t acknowledge his thanks with so much as a nod, and Trystan knew he deserved the man’s contempt.
“Nobody knows she’s at mine,” Chance said. “So I guess it’s the perfect neutral spot for that meeting you’re so keen on. But we can’t just show up. I have to clear it with her first. And if she says no, that’s it. I won’t bushwhack her.”
“He wants to what?” Iris asked blankly.
“You heard me,” Chance said.
“I did but I was sure I must’ve been mistaken. You told him I was here?”
Chance’s sigh was a loud and noisy blast into the receiver. “I had no choice, Iris. He was dead set on going to your parents’ house to see you.”
“You should have let him,” Iris retorted, her voice dripping with acid. “My dad would’ve kicked his arse.”
The thought of her scrawny father kicking anyone’s arse was incongruous, but the man was angry enough at Trystan to give it a good go.
“Uh… maybe,” Chance said, the soul of tact and discretion. “Iris, you can say no.”
“What does he want to talk about?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Why should I trust him not to hurl all kinds of unfounded, hurtful, and unfair accusations at me again?”
Chance remained silent, giving her the room she needed to rant and rave and work it out for herself.
“Put him on the line, Chance.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said in her grimmest voice, happy that she sounded certain even though she was a mass of nerves and anxiety right now.
“Hold on.” There were muffled voices and sounds as the phone was handed over.
“Iris.”
Oh God, the sound of his voice damned near broke her barely healed heart all over again. And the pain of it merely confirmed that the decision she’d made was the right one.
“I don’t want to see you.”
There was a long silence at the other end before his voice taut and urgent replied,
“Please.”
The word was a whisper. So faint she nearly didn’t hear it, but it packed a punch. Because it was stripped raw of all Trystan’s legendary confidence. It was denuded of his charisma and charm. It was the broken remnant of a word and yet, its impact was profound. Because—despite all that the broken single-syllable word lacked—it was steeped in despair, desolation and desperation.
But Iris hardened her heart against it. He couldn’t do this to her. He couldn’t ignore her for two weeks, while believing the absolute worst of her and abandoning her in the wreckage he’d made of her life and expect her to be swayed by just one word.
“No.”
“Okay… you don’t want to see me, yeah?” His accent was back and she knew it tended to appear only when he was at his most vulnerable. “What if we just talk? Like this?”
“I have nothing to say to you. And I can’t imagine how anything you could say would interest me.”
“I know you didn’t write that article.” There was an expectant pause after that statement and Iris sighed gustily, hoping the sound adequately relayed her feelings regarding that statement.
“You expecting applause?” she asked, breaking the—by now—awkward silence. “An award perhaps?”
“Iris, I fucked up.”
She laughed at that, the sound harsh and bitter, but didn’t acknowledge the admission in any way other than that abrasive, curt sound.
“Don’t bother me again, Trystan. I’m trying to move on with my life. You can go back to being a remote, larger-than-life superstar and all of this can hopefully one day become a distant, unpleasant memory. I have nothing more to say to you.”
“I promise I’ll fix it.”
“I don’t care.” Why was she still talking? Why didn’t she just disconnect the call? Iris knew that was what she should do. And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to sever what she knew would be the last contact with him.
“I’m sorry I hurt you, sorry I doubted you, sorry I was an arsehole. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“You keep apologizing, Trystan,” she said, a hot tide of bitter, acidic rage rising up inside her like a tsunami. And Iris discovered that she actually had a lot to say to him. And this was the last opportunity she’d ever have to get it off her chest. “That’s all you’ve been doing since the day we met. It’s a twisted, toxic cycle that pretty much defines our doomed non-relationship. You fuck up, you apologize, and I forgive you. But I’m breaking that pattern right now. I don’t forgive you. I’ll never forgive you. You hurt me, right after you promised never to hurt me again. Never to doubt me again.
“You gave me no opportunity to figure out what the hell had happened, no chance to defend myself. You literally kicked me to the curb, like I was a mangy dog you no longer wanted. No, you’d definitely treat a mangy dog better than you did me. I was expendable, easily disposed of, like so much garbage. You never trusted me, Trystan. You always believed I’d betray you somehow. You couldn’t look past the fact that Stanford Carter was my biological father, and that I had the absolute nerve to show up at your den of solitude and manly sorrow, in search of—horror of horrors—an interview.