Tristan

I bite my lip through a smile, then just bury my face in his chest and hug him tight. “Just thinking about you.”

He lets out a lighthearted laugh and sweeps me off my feet to carry me back down to the car on his shoulders, and I giggle as I’m given a bird’s eye view of the trek back.

Once we’re back to the car, I see my phone flashing. While Tristan gets ready to pull out, I open my phone to see a message from one of my friends. It’s just a link to an article with no words. That’s not like her.

I furrow my brows and pull it open, and I nearly drop the phone in shock at what I see.

It’s a tabloid article, and it features none other than me and Tristan, on the beach, legs locked in passionate fucking, just barely concealed by part of my surfboard.

I scroll through the article, my heart pounding in my chest. This can’t be happening. I knew there was some risk in fucking in public like that, and it was only a matter of time until someone saw, but paparazzi?! What in the hell would they find newsworthy about a couple of random people?

Then my thumb freezes on part of the article that makes my face pale.

...unknown woman was seen with Tristan Delaney, youngest brother of the world-renowned Delaney dynasty, the rightful heirs of the lands of Rookswood in Surrey County, UK. The Delaney brothers, whose collective net worth is over twenty billion pounds, represent the cutting edge of global development and arts, with projects ranging from environmental protection to up-and-coming indie bands. Tristan, a known renegade and international womanizing playboy of the siblings is the youngest of these enterprising billionaires, whose bloodline runs back to the fourteenth century, seems to have found his latest victim in this unknown young girl pictured above, and...

I can’t read any further. I feel nauseous, and I take a step back as my head spins around me.

“Babe, are you alright?” Tristan says, striding over to me and reaching out, but I draw away from his hand, glaring at him in sudden indignation.

“Don’t babe me, Tristan Delaney!” I snap at him, my blood boiling as I hold up the article in his face. “Is this all I am to you? Your next conquest in a string of girls across the world? Just some more pussy you thought you’d pick up on the road before going back to your manors?”

His eyes narrow at the phone, and before I can react, he snatches it from me, setting it down on the side of the car and stepping towards me. I take a step back, but he isn’t stopping.

“It isn’t like that, Sienna.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me any of this?” I say, tears in my eyes, stinging and salty as they run down my cheeks. I turn and start to bolt, but Tristan catches

me around the waist and hauls me back. I pound on his back and kick at his chest after he slings me over his shoulder to carry me back to the car, inconsolable.

“I was falling for you, damn it!” I cry, letting my limbs slump as I realize it’s useless. He sets me down on my feet, holding one of my wrists in a firm grasp. I pull away, but his grip is like iron. That stupid, gorgeous face is almost mocking my efforts as I fight against him. It must all be laughable to him. “I thought this was...we were…” I sob, trying to slap him across the face, but he catches my other wrist, wrestling my arms down and pinning me against the car. “What are you going to do to me?” I finally say to the man I thought I knew.

“Explain,” he answers, his voice stern...yet sincere.

I sniff. “What?”

“I wanted you to see me for who I really am, instead of just assuming things about me from the press,” Tristan says earnestly, reaching for my hand. I snatch it away and he looks genuinely heartbroken, his mouth falling open with words he can’t quite find.

“Who you really are?” I retort, my eyes filling with tears. “Tristan, everything I thought I knew about you — it was all a lie. Everything is just a cover story with you. It’s all make believe.”

“But you’ve had fun, right? You and I — we’re good together. We’re real, aren’t we?” he replies, his gorgeous amber eyes shimmering with emotion.

I choke back a sob and shake my head. “That’s the thing about make believe, Tristan. It’s fun while it lasts, but it’s only temporary. Eventually, the real world has to come back in. Remember when you promised me you wouldn’t do anything to have my picture land in the press? I thought you were just playing around, but you-you were serious, weren’t you? I was just supposed to be some silly secret of yours, right? You just wanted to have a fling with some nameless, faceless girl the press wouldn’t recognize. And guess what? You broke your promise. My picture is on the front page now, and I-I never asked for this! I can’t believe I let you make me think — make me feel — ugh! I thought there was something really here, Tristan,” I end with a sniffle. “But it was all just another game for you.”

His face hardens, and he drops his hands to his sides. “So your mind’s made up.”

I stare him down, face unflinching. “I want to go to a motel. Separate rooms. I want to get cleaned up, call someone, like my parents or my friends, get them to come pick me up, and...figure out how to get my life back together,” I say with a huff, marching over to the car and getting in.

In awkward silence, Tristan starts the car and complies.

The motel is nearly booked up. We’re given two rooms, just like I asked, but we’re told that the bathrooms are shared. We’ve hardly spoken a word to one another this whole way, and I’m not about to start now.

We march to the rooms, and I take my key, fighting back more tears.

“Doll, listen,” Tristan starts, but I’ve already unlocked my room and headed inside. The place is filthy, but not as filthy as the lies I’ve been fed over the past few days, so I lock the door, strip my clothes off, and head for the bathroom. A few moments later, some gracefully hot water is running, and I’m feeling the warm, clean shower was away all the salt, all the grime, and all the remnants of sex we had, down my bare breasts, between my thighs, and down the drain.

I’m letting my tears flow freely here. I can’t believe this. Just when I was about to admit that I loved him. Do I still love him? Despite it all? No, I love the lies he fed me, those sweet lies of a renegade bad boy without a care in the world. But he was just going to dump me like all the rest of the women in his life.

Then I hear the door on Tristan’s side open, and I cover my breasts and gasp, even though the glass shower is fogged up beyond visibility.