The Lost Girl (38 page)

“At last, the princess arrives!” he greeted her, smiling broadly, making Robin roll her eyes at him as we approached. “You look beautiful, by the way,” he added, and shyly looked her up and down. She blushed hard, caught off guard by his sudden chivalry.

“Okay. You two kids have fun now. Go on, get out of here,” I said, shooing them away while trying hard not to giggle at their cuteness.

“Okay, let’s go, then, princess. I don’t have a carriage waiting, so it’s going to be walking for us today,” he teased, bowing with a dramatic flourish.

Robin rolled her eyes again, faking a snobbish sneer. “Oi, gods. Is this what I get for dating a plebeian? I mean, walking? The
horror
…” she mocked, flipping her hair theatrically, making Harry laugh.

“Don’t wait up for me,” he called out, strolling to where Robin was waiting on the cobbled street.

Then he stopped and turned to me, a mischievous glint flashing in his green eyes. “Ah, Joey. I left something for you on the balcony by the pool. Go have a look, will ya?”

“What is it?” I asked, but he just raised a hand up in the air and walked away with Robin.

I gave an exaggerated sigh and headed back to the house. I hoped Harry hadn’t brought a turtle back. He was always bringing weird animals back with him. He loved pets. I took my sandals off, leaving them next to the sliding doors, and walked distractedly to the balcony outside, my head too full of turtles and other odd animals.

My breath caught in my throat as I lifted my head to see Tristan leaning against the iron railing, his back turned to me as he watched the deep-blue sea.

I hesitated for a second. My pulse quickened. He hadn’t noticed my presence yet. I wanted him to turn and look at me; I wanted so badly to see his face and look at his beautiful eyes again, but I was afraid. The fact that he hadn’t taken any of my calls the past few days was indication enough that he was angry with me. It didn’t matter, though. I should walk on, head held high ready to face whatever, with courage and determination. I would make him forgive me. I would make him love me again. I would do whatever it took to have him again.

“Tristan.”

His back tensed and he turned slowly. A strong wind brushed past him in my direction, bringing me a soft scent of carnations mixed with his scent, making my hair flow back and my dress twirl in waves in the air, as we stared silently at each other.

His sterling-silver eyes glowed with a light of their own. He didn’t smile or show any expression; he just stood still and stared fixedly at me.

He looked incredibly beautiful, his raven hair framing his pale, flawless face. But he looked taller somehow now and … stronger. He had cut his hair very short too, clipped sharply at the base of the neck and at the sides, his long locks completely gone, giving a clear view of his amazing gray eyes. He wasn’t hiding them under his hair any more. They were completely unveiled for the world to see, piercing and bold, holding a strength that I hadn’t seen before.

He had changed. A lot.

But it wasn’t just the physical appearance that made him look so changed, although that was quite a noticeable sight to behold. He also looked so …
grown up
; he had this older, wiser look about him, a perfect picture of masculinity. I realized it wasn’t just me that had been going through a life-changing experience of self-discovery. He had gone through a lot as well. I had
made
him go through a lot … I was the reason he looked so different, so changed.

This guy in front of me wasn’t the same Tristan I had left back home. He wasn’t the same boy I had left behind. This was no boy. The guy staring back at me with steady, piercing gray eyes was a man. When I looked into his eyes this maturity reverberated in his soul; it showed clearly in his whole stance, in the air all around him.

It was kind of intimidating.

The Joey of a few weeks ago would have crumbled at the feet of this glorious man. She would have buckled in insecurity and guilt. She would have thought she was beneath him, that she didn’t deserve him, that he was clearly so much better than her.

But the new Joey knew better. She knew nothing could ever stand between her and the man she loved. Even if he had changed so much that he no longer wanted her and was here to tell her that, she was still going to fight the hardest she could to win back his heart.

“Wow. Look at
you
,” I whispered, more to myself than anything. “You look so … different.”

I was about to take a step closer to him; all I wanted right now was to hug him. It didn’t matter that he held a guarded look, or that he might be mad at me. All I wanted was to feel him in my arms one more time. But before I could make a move he broke eye contact and turned to look at the view.

“This place is beautiful,” he said quietly.

The moment had passed. I stood still, not daring to walk closer. It was clear he didn’t want me in his proximity; his posture, his voice, said it all.

“Yes, it is,” I answered, and I was surprised at the steadiness of my voice. I was ready for whatever he had to say to me. I was ready for his anger, his disappointment
and even his rejection. I knew that, no matter what, we would always be connected. No matter the outcome of this conversation, he would always have my heart, even if I didn’t have his any more. We could never be completely apart for that reason alone.

He looked at me again and his eyes flickered with an emotion, but I didn’t want to know what the emotion was. I didn’t want to rob him of his privacy.

Vigil’s words came back to me: I could control this. I had already done it once.

Then something shifted and I remembered that moment of insight I had of how to control Vigil’s powers. I used the same principle on my empathy-sight now. I simply turned it off, like an internal flick of a switch. The emotions immediately stopped flashing in Tristan’s eyes.

“I can control it now.” I breathed out in relief. “My sight. I can turn it off. You don’t have to worry about it. I will never peek at your feelings ever again,” I said calmly.

He seemed taken aback. “Is that so?” he asked, surprised.

“Yeah. At least I got something out of all this mess. It feels good to be able to finally control it.”

He nodded but didn’t reply.

I walked slowly to the railing and leaned over it, surveying the view. “I’ve been trying to call you,” I said, looking at the sea.

He had turned around and was leaning over the railing as well, right next to me. “I know. Harry told me. I had a little …
accident
with my old cell phone. I spoke to Seth yesterday and he told me you’d been trying to reach me. He gave me this address. So I came. I promised you I would,” he said matter-of-factly.

“I tried calling you at the house, too.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t home,” he said, staring ahead. “I was doing some soul-searching myself. Did a little traveling, too.”

“Oh. Okay.” I noticed he didn’t elaborate on his travels. It was only fair, since I hadn’t told him where I was going when I left the house … when I left him.

“You look very … different,” I said, peeking at him.

“I suppose I do,” he said, a quiet smile tugging at his lips, but his eyes never left the sea view in front of us. “I feel different.”

“I’m sorry I left the way I did,” I apologized. “I should’ve talked to you in person, but I would have just given up if I had and … I really needed to be alone.”

He leaned his arms on the railing and looked down. “I understand. I probably wouldn’t have let you leave anyway if we’d talked about it … I was really mad, though … When I read your letter. I felt powerless – I couldn’t control your impulsive actions. Then I got worried that something would happen to you on this trip. In the end I calmed down, after I’d read the letter ten times over, and I understood what you were trying to tell me. That’s when I wrote you that text message.”

“Thank you for sending it. You don’t know how much it meant to me,” I said.

He watched the sea in silence for a while before speaking again. “I’ve come to realize that, regarding you, Joey, it’s better to let you go free, to let you do what you have to do, than to keep trying to hold you still. The more I try to hold you, the harder you fight to slip through. So I packed some clothes, went for a trip myself and decided to just … let you go,” he said calmly.

I pursed my lips. “You’re still mad at me.” He sounded
so distant; a quiet, calm tone hid stormy waters beneath.

It took him a few seconds to register what I’d said, and he blinked a couple of times before turning his head to look at me.

“Actually, no, I’m not,” he said, and his eyes lingered on mine, studying something inside. “You really have no idea what I’m feeling right now, do you?” he asked curiously.

I shook my head, feeling completely at a loss. His eyes and expression gave nothing away, and he had put such strong walls around himself I could barely even read his body language. I had no clue whatsoever what he was feeling. I was in the dark, begging for him to give me a sign.

He let out a deep breath and turned to look at the view again. “I
was
mad at you for some time, though. Mad that you didn’t let me in to help you get through this, that you needed to do this by yourself. I even smashed my phone against the wall one night.”

Ah, so that had been his little accident, then.

“After a while I realized that, deep down, I was really mad because you’d left me. I have always had this irrational fear that you would eventually leave. In my head it was only a matter of time before you did, and then it finally happened,” he said, brushing his hand over his now-short black hair. “And then I was stuck with this anguished pain and weight in my chest. And I hated you for making me feel that way.”

He turned and looked me directly in the eyes. “That’s when it finally hit me, and I understood what you’d been trying to tell me back then in our room … about how we were being crippled because we couldn’t stand on our own feet, because we couldn’t stand being apart. I was hurting
because I was away from you. I was alone … and the pain was so strong that it even made me start hating you for it.”

I cringed a little as he used that word a second time. The thought of Tristan hating me pierced through me like a stab to my heart. Hearing him say it out loud was devastating. What had I done? I had made him hate me …

“But that’s just insane, isn’t it?” he continued. “Because you didn’t leave me, you’d just gone away. I get it now, what you mean about being addicted. It sure felt like an addiction. The withdrawal was painful, but without that pain I would have never understood. You were right about us … What we had, it wasn’t right. For any of us. I get it now. I was fighting so hard, throwing tantrums, trying to keep us together, that I never stopped to think about what you were trying to show me. That this was for the best, for the both of us. We both needed this change.

“When I finally let go of that old notion of us, all the anger, the hate, the pain faded away. Being alone no longer hurt me. It took a while, but now I can honestly say to you that I can stand on my own; I can walk alone and be complete without you,” he said, nodding to himself. “I don’t need you any more.”

I held my head high as I stared back at him. The old Joey would have cried, would have wished to be dead instead of hearing those words coming out of his mouth. But I was stronger now. I had walked through fire and endured such pain, but remained true to myself, despite it all. Tristan’s words would not make me lose sight of who I was. And they would not make me give up on him. I would fight for him until the end.

“And
you
don’t need
me
,” he said, brushing his thumb softly over my cheek. “I can see you have also learned to
walk on your own now. You stand alone, right here, strong and proud. Look at you. Stronger than you ever were. Fierce and beautiful …” His eyes flared with admiration. All of his words turned around in my mind as I watched him in awe. I saw him with the same eyes. He was also standing alone, in front of me, strong and proud, a real man, beautiful and magical. A true miracle.
My
miracle.

“And now that we have learned to walk alone, learned that we don’t need each other in that desperate, dependent way any more …
now
we can be together. I don’t need you any more, like you don’t need me, not in that addictive way. Now I can have you by my side, as a companion, not as a crutch,” he said, giving me his first smile since he’d arrived. He held my hands softly in his. “So, will you have me, Joey?”

I slid one of my hands out of his grasp and cupped his face. “Tristan … you never need to ask me that. I will always love you, no matter what. The real question is,
will you have me
?” I asked with a sad smile. “Before you answer me, though, I need to tell you something.”

I stared into his eyes for a long time, and he held my gaze anxiously. Then I turned and leaned over the railing again, trying to gather the courage I needed to confess. This could destroy everything we had, but I
had to
tell him. No matter what, he deserved to know the truth. Then, he could decide if he still wanted me by his side.

I took a deep breath. “I kissed Harry.”

I felt Tristan grab the railing right next to me.

“It was different, though. It wasn’t like how we always kiss as friends. It was a
real
kiss. We’ve crossed a line. It was just once, but it happened. And we regretted it as soon as it was over. We’re just friends. Nothing more could’ve
happened because my heart belongs to you. I can’t give him anything more than my friendship. And he wants nothing more from me than that. He told me so,” I said in one breath. “It happened while I had Vigil’s powers, and I wish I could blame it all on that, say that it was those powers messing with my head, but it wasn’t, really. I knew what was happening … and what we were doing. And I think you deserve to know, despite it being a gigantic mistake, and it will never happen again.”

Even though I was staring hard at the sea, I could still see Tristan in my peripheral vision glancing down where his hands gripped the railing. I couldn’t fathom what he might be thinking. So I decided to continue. Might as well go all the way.