Page 11 of It Must Be Fate

“Wild girl,” he purrs.

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Chapter Four

Nera

“We said no texting or calling, Tristan,” I admonish him after answering his call.

“If everyone else can break the rules, then so can I,” he quips. “Plus, what I really wanted to do was go over there and force you home with me, so you should be thanking me for all the restraint I’m showing, really.”

I laugh and he sits up, getting closer to the camera.

“I don’t like it when you laugh when I’m not there.”

“Well, that really can’t be helped, baby.”

“It can. Hope you enjoyed this one night without me, you’re not getting another one for a while.”

“Define ‘a while’.”

“Ever.”

“You’re going to be so sick of me if we spend every waking moment together.”

“First of all, I don’t just want every waking moment, I want the sleeping ones too,” he clarifies. “Secondly, I’ll never be sick of you, my beautiful fiancée.”

I smile and look down at the ring on the fourth finger of my left hand. Every morning, when I go to my bathroom and slip it on, there’s still a moment of disbelief that this is all real.

Tristan blew into my life like a tornado. A stubborn one at that, one that refused to disappear, no matter how much I pushed. And unlike a real tornado that leaves nothing but a path of destruction in its wake, he came in and healed. He was a tornado in reverse, taking all the broken, mangled pieces of me strewn everywhere and putting them back together one by one until I was whole once more.

As much as I like to tease him, I don’t want to spend time without him anymore than he does.

“Those moments already belong to you, baby,” I tell him.

He groans, his head dropping back against the couch as he stares at me through half-lidded eyes.

“I can’t get enough of you.”

Next to me, I hear Sixtine whisper to Phoenix, “Do you think we actually traumatized my horse?”

“Traumatized?” he scoffs. “We gave him the best show of his entire life. I’m sure he went back to the stables and told all his horse friends what he was lucky enough to witness.”

I laugh again. A grumble from Tristan pulls my attention back to him.

“Get a pen and paper,” he orders.

I frown but do as he asks. There’s a notebook in the miscellaneous box with a pen attached to its spine so I grab both.

“What am I doing with these?”

“If you’re going to keep laughing when I’m not there, then I need you to write down every time you do and exactly what it was that made you laugh. That way I can read it later.”

I roll my eyes even as a smile tugs at my lips. “Tristan–”

“I earned your laughter, baby. I don’t want to miss a single giggle.”

He turns my insides into a puddle of warmth with just a few words. The craziest part is he’s never rehearsed in his declarations. He simply tells me what he feels as he feels it, and it’s always the most romantic words I’ve ever heard.

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