Page 54 of About Last Night
‘Were there?’ She sighed and glared down at the ground. ‘Look, I’m sorry things happened the way they did. I didn’t handle the situation well, I know that.’
His blood pressure rose at her blatant understatement. Clearly, he still felt some resentment towards them then, although nothing like the anger he’d been experiencing for the last few months. His shoulders slumped as he took in her drawn expression. ‘Yeah, well. What’s done is done. I was the idiot that didn’t notice what was happening right under my nose.’
She took a step forwards with her hands outstretched. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you, Tristan. I seriously thought you wouldn’t care about us splitting up.’
He pinched his brows together so hard it hurt. ‘You thought I wouldn’tcare?’
She threw her hands up. ‘You shut down on me, kept me at arm’s length. You made me believe there wasn’t a future for us when you refused to even discuss getting married.’
‘But you knew how I felt about that when we first got together. I was always straight with you, Marcy.’
‘I know and I thought it would be enough for me, but then I realised it wasn’t and we kept drifting further and further apart as I got angrier about it.’ She looked at him fiercely now. ‘Jon made me feel wanted.’
Her obvious contempt for Tristan’s lack of skill in that department stung, leaving an uncomfortable pressure in his chest. ‘Yeah, he was always good at giving people what they want.’
Marcy frowned. ‘Look, he feels awful about all this too.’
Tristan closed his eyes and let out a long breath. Now he was here with Marcy he was surprised by how little he felt for her, especially when he compared it to how he felt about Lula. While he’d always found Marcy attractive and smart and good company, she hadn’t excited him the way Lula excited him.
After being so caught up in the humiliation of being rejected and lied to, he’d lost sight of the fact he hadn’t actually missed Marcy at all, and by coming here he was finally able come to terms with that part of his life being over now. He was moving on from anger to acceptance.
Lula’s face flashed into his mind as he thought about what Marcy had said about him refusing to even talk about getting married. Her expression had been pretty similar when he’d told her the same thing.
The pressure in his chest increased as he remembered how she’d walked out on him.
She thought he was a lost cause too.
No wonder she was keeping him at arm’s length.
He focussed back on Marcy, willing the tightness in his chest to recede. ‘Look, Jon’s not exactly my favourite person right now, but I’m not going to snub him forever. We’re family and we need to stick together.’ He ran a hand over his hair. ‘I’ve thought of a way he can make things right between us and hopefully set himself up well for the future too.’
‘Really? You’re finally going to give him the opportunity to help you run the family business? Because he’s always felt like a spare part there.’
Tristan sighed. It was a good point, he’d never let Jon take the reins at any point – he’d been too stubborn to delegate any of the responsibility, and that probably went some way to explaining why his brother hadn’t bothered coming in to work much. Tristan hadn’t allowed him to have any of the control.
‘Look, I know I’ve not handled things well either. I should have talked to both of you more and asked for help instead of pretending everything was okay. And I’m sorry for leaving it so long before re-establishing contact, but I needed a bit of time to hate the both of you before I got on with my life.’
Marcy nodded and gave him a watery smile. ‘I understand.’
‘Yeah,’ Tristan said, his mind suddenly clearer than it had been in years. ‘I think I do too.’
He’d been an idiot, assuming everything would work out fine with Lula too if he just ignored the fact that she was dead set on getting married and having her happy ever after. Something he hadn’t thought he was capable of giving her when they first met.
But she’d made the effort to stand up to him, unlike Marcy who had just given up on their relationship without letting him know why.
Lula wasn’t a coward. She was the bravest woman he’d ever met. He knew he could be formidable when he put his mind to it but she hadn’t put up with his crap.
He’d spent so much of his life hardening himself against caring too deeply about other people, in case they left him too, that he’d become a hollow shell of his former self.
Money had become his first and only love and look how that had left him – lonely and bitter.
Now he thought about it, the thing he’d found hardest about Marcy leaving him had been how unprepared he’d been when she’d wrenched away his control. He’d spent his entire life keeping things on track, determined not to live his life in the kamikaze fashion his father did, but he realised he’d missed out on so much by not taking risks. Marcy had left him and he’d survived and now he was on the cusp of losing Lula because of his inability to let go of the stranglehold he had on his life.
He wasn’t prepared to let that happen.
He was sure about Lula.
He loved her.
