“Tristan,” I began. “About Joaquin.”
He closed his eyes, as if the very sound of the name caused him pain, and held up one hand. “Don’t.”
“No, I want to explain,” I insisted.
A gust of wind hit the house so hard it moaned, then let out a series of loud snaps and crackles as ancient beams and floorboards resettled. I took a step around the side of the table and felt buoyed when Tristan didn’t move.
“I’m not going to stand here and say I don’t care about him, because I do.” I swallowed hard, gripping my fingers in front of me. “I wouldn’t have made it through the last week without him.”
Tristan stared at me, his face a complete blank.
“But the second I saw you again, the second I touched you, I knew…it’s you. It’s always been you. With Joaquin, it—”
“Stop,” Tristan said.
I froze in my tracks. I’d been inching toward him the whole time I was talking, and now I hovered just inches away, so close I could see the glint of the blond stubble beneath his jaw. My gaze flicked to his hands.
Reach for me, I willed him. Pleas
e. Just—
“So you don’t want him. You don’t want to be with him?”
“No,” I said, closing the distance between us. “I want you.”
His jaw worked and his fingers clenched. I could see, could feel how hard it was for him to hold back. “Are you sure? You’d better be sure about this, Rory, because we’re going to be here forever, the three of us. If you change your mind…it would torture you—torture all of us—forever.”
I gazed into his blue eyes, my heart thrumming inside my chest. Slowly, carefully, gently, I reached out to touch my fingertips to his chest. “I want this. I want you. Forever.”
Tristan let out a shaky, relieved sigh. He ran both his hands over my head and down the long, tangled braid of my hair. “I am in love with you, Rory Miller,” he said, using my real name, which sent a thrill right through me. “All I want is to be with you.”
I smiled and realized that I was crying. “All I want is to be with you,” I replied.
“Just try to get rid of me,” Tristan said with a grin.
Then he leaned down to touch his lips to mine, and I felt the urgency of his kiss run through me, filling every inch of me, warming my body from head to toe with an insistent, throbbing heat. I pressed up against him, pouring every ounce of the fear and frustration, of the misunderstanding and longing I’d felt over the past two weeks into my kiss. I had missed him so much. I had wanted to believe in him so much. And now he was here and he was true and he was mine.
For that one infinitesimal second I didn’t care about Pete or Liam or the universe or the Shadowlands or anything other than this. Then our walkie-talkies suddenly let out a freakish peal, and Krista’s panicked voice filled our little cocoon.
“Mayday! Mayday! Emergency! Or whatever! Over!”
We both whirled around as erratic pounding sounded on the front door. Tristan darted for it. I fumbled for my radio, which was clipped to the side of my waistband, and pressed down on the red button.
“What is it, Krista? Over.”
“It’s the visitors! Over!”
The front door opened, and Krista stumbled inside, soaked to the bone.
“The visitors what?” I said, dropping the walkie-talkie on the floor. “What about them?”
Krista gulped, bracing one hand on the entryway table. “We have a situation,” she said. “The visitors have taken over the town square.”
Even knowing how overcrowded the island had become, nothing could have prepared me for the horde that greeted us when we reached the town square. The visitors covered every inch of the park, some standing on benches, others clumped around lampposts. People streamed out of the general store to join the throng, standing on their toes and craning their necks even in the driving rain, trying to see what was going on.
Up front, of course, were the Tses, standing near the stone rim around the swan fountain, holding court with a willing group of visitors. From this distance, I couldn’t hear them, but Sebastian gestured angrily with his hands, and a few members of his audience nodded, agreeing with whatever he was saying.
“Damn. This doesn’t look good.” Tristan stopped at the corner of Freesia Lane and the square, his face going pale.