One Reckless Decision

He knew who he was. He knew what he must do.

And he did not believe in love.

Even hers.

Tristanne felt him freeze solid beneath her hands. Her words hung there between them, taking over the night, seeming to gather significance—seeming to echo back from the cliffs.

“I did not mean to say that!” she whispered, stricken. Appalled at herself and her carelessness.

He looked like a stranger suddenly—so faraway, so alien—though he had hardly moved a muscle. Panic and dread exploded inside of her, making her feel almost drugged—heavy and close to tears, where seconds before she had felt like air.

“I’m so sorry,” she said hurriedly. “I did not know I was going to say it!”

“Did you not?” His voice was so cold. So distant. Condemning. “Perhaps you meant it in the casual way. The way one loves a car. Or a shoe.”

He sounded almost uninterested. Almost as if he was poking at her as he’d used to. But Tristanne could see something that looked like anguish in his eyes, turning them very nearly black.

She sucked in a breath, skimmed her hands over his wide shoulders. Took another breath, and met his gaze. For a moment she did not know if she could do this. She, who had stood up to him when her very knees threatened to give out. She, who had argued with him when she would have been better-served trying to protect herself.

But if she could not keep herself safe, she could pretend to be brave.

“I did not mean to say it, but it’s true,” she said, her voice soft, but sincere. “I do, Nikos. I love you.”

He only stared at her, as the party seemed to dim and disappear around them. His eyes were so dark as he looked down at her, with no hint at all of gold. No trace of something like tenderness she’d thought she’d seen there on occasion. It was almost as if he could not make sense of her words.

Something passed between them, heavy and unspoken, thick. Tristanne felt her eyes well up, though she did not cry, and saw a muscle twitch in his jaw—though she sensed he was not angry. He was nothing so simple as angry.

“This wedding has addled your brain,” he said, hoarsely, after moments—or years—had passed. “How can you love me, Tristanne? You hardly know me. You have no idea what I am capable of!”

She remembered the words she had thrown at him on the cobblestones in Portofino, and shivered involuntarily. Had that been foreboding? A premonition? Had she been waiting, since then, for the other shoe to fall?

“I know you,” she said softly. She squared her shoulders, and met his gaze straight on. “Better than you think.”

“Very well then,” he said then, biting the words out. So cold, so far away suddenly. “I hope that knowledge brings you great comfort in the days to come.”

“You mean when we are married?” she asked, not quite following him, but feeling somehow that they were poised on the edge of a great disaster.

“Yes,” he said, his mouth twisting, bitterness thick in the air between them, though she could not understand it. “When we are married.”

Chapter Fifteen

TRISTANNE stood before the floor-length mirror in the villa’s master suite, staring at the vision before her. Her hair was caught back in a clasp at her crown, then tumbled about her bare shoulders in a cascade of dark blonde waves. The ivory dress clasped her tight around the bodice, then skimmed to the ground, light and airy, simple and elegant. Her makeup was flawless, calling attention to her eyes, her lips, and making her complexion seem to be a deep cream, with a glow within. She wore her mother’s pearls and behind her, near to the chair where Vivienne sat clasping her hands to her chest in delight, a bouquet bursting with fragrant white flowers graced a low table.

Tristanne was the perfect vision of the perfect bride. And yet she could not seem to shake the terrible sense of foreboding that had gripped her ever since Nikos had left her side the night before. Ever since she had told him she loved him and he had stared at her as if he’d never laid eyes on her before. She trembled again, now, thinking of it.

“You are a beautiful bride!” Vivienne cried from behind her, as if she were neither fragile nor upsettlingly pale.

“Am I?” Tristanne was hardly aware of having spoken. She felt as if she was in a dream. How could this be her wedding day? How could she be dressed to marry a man that she did not quite trust, who did not love her, who might never care for her as she did for him? How could it all have come to this? Surely, on this day of all days, she should feel some kind of certainty about the man she was about to vow to spend the rest of her life with. Instead all she could see was that odd, cold look in Nikos’s dark eyes last night. All she could feel was a low-level panic, making her faintly nauseous, slightly dizzy. And she could not seem to do anything but stare at herself, as if her reflection held the answers, were she only to look hard enough.