Shadowlands (Shadowlands 1)

He turned and led me back down the hallway, toward the party.

“Oh. Sorry. Olive said she was going to the bathroom, so—”

“That’s on the other side of the kitchen,” he said, tipping his face down so his hair fell across his cheekbone. “If you need it.”

“Oh, well…thanks,” I said.

We had come to the end of the hallway. To my right, Darcy and Joaquin chatted with Bea and Kevin. To my left was the living room and the brocade couch I’d vacated. Olive wasn’t back yet. I turned to Tristan, dying to ask him about that room, about the guitar strap. It belonged to the missing minstrel boy. I was certain of it. But how had it ended up here? Did Tristan know the guy? Had he given it to him? Or had someone in Tristan’s family taken it from him?

“So,” Tristan said. “You came.”

A blush swirled up on my cheeks. “Darcy wanted to come, so…”

“Do you always do stuff you don’t want to do for your sister?” he asked.

He crossed over to the brocade couch and sat. Still trying to figure out how to broach my questions, I sat next to him. The skin on my legs tingled just from the proximity of his knee to mine. I turned in my seat slightly, angling myself away from him.

“No,” I said. “This was really important to her.”

“Why?” he asked, looking across the room, where Darcy was laughing with her hand on Joaquin’s arm.

Because she’s massively crushing on your annoying friend was the first answer that came to mind.

“She likes parties,” I said simply.

“And you don’t?” he asked, turning back to me again.

He was gazing at me, like he was staring into my soul. No guy ever looked at me that way. Maybe not even Christopher. They were always too busy fidgeting, or looking past me for something better. They had the attention span of flies. But not Tristan. Tristan knew how to focus. I just didn’t know how to be the object of that focus.

“Why do you care?” I asked, my body temperature off the charts under his scrutiny.

“I just do,” he stated simply. “I imagine you avoid stuff like this because it’s beneath you.”

“Wow. So you think I’m stuck-up,” I challenged.

“Not at all,” he said matter-of-factly. “I think you know who you are and don’t give in to peer pressure. But with your sister it’s different, so here you are. That doesn’t make you stuck-up. It makes you special.”

I swallowed hard, feeling flattered, but also thrown.

“Do you like to people-watch?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes when I’m at a party, I just sit back and observe,” he said, glancing around the room. “Like that guy over there.” He nodded at an adorable but nerdy redheaded boy leaning against the far wall. “He’s clearly nervous as hell.”

The boy was wrapping the string on his sweatshirt around his finger so tightly the tip was turning white. Meanwhile, the girl he was talking to lifted her arm to smooth her hair and surreptitiously checked her watch.

“And that girl couldn’t care less,” I pointed out.

“Exactly,” Tristan said, smiling back at me over his shoulder. “So I was right. You are a natural observer.”

I shifted under his gaze, finding it slightly unsettling that he kept acting like he knew so mu

ch about me.

“Maybe,” I shot back. “But at least I’ve never openly spied on anyone.”

Tristan blinked, then finally looked away. He rested his forearms across his knees and laced his fingers together. The braided leather bracelet clung tight to his wrist. It looked like it was melded to his skin. Like it had been there forever. He started to absently toy with the weave.