Peter did not want to leave Georgia, not after the night he and Trystan had. He wanted to abandon his responsibilities in Los Angeles and stay with her, at least for a little while, because getting her off of his mind was not a motion he would even attempt to try.
He could not stop thinking about her, her tangerine scent, how soft her skin was and how it flowed like melted chocolate, her almost-black eyes and how they showed what they wanted when she wanted them to. In the mirror he took pride in the red welts he saw against his shoulders, remembering when she had clawed at his skin as she indulged in her ecstasy.
Peter had not had that kind of love-making in what felt like a lifetime. Sure, he had had sex and sure, there had been times where it was wild and rough, but none of those times had consisted with Trystan wrapped in his arms. She always made everything better, in a place where other women simply could not compare, and the anticipation of seeing her again nearly had him getting right back on a jet.
Peter even wanted to see little Raina again, who he felt he had bonded with as well. He was still deciding whether or not he was good with kids, but her personality, strung together by darling giggles, had him anticipating the next time he would see them both.
When he went to pick up Jewel from Roger's when he arrived back in California, the younger man would have feigned offense at the dog jumping all over her original owner as if she could not wait to get out of his home had he not been interested in Peter and the wide smile he was wearing.
"What the hell are you so jolly about?" Roger asked as Peter tried to calm the canine down.
He cocked a brow, the grin still on his face. "What, I can't be happy to see my dog?"
"I've never seen you this happy when picking her up before."
"Well, there's a first for everything isn't there?"
Roger twisted his lips, eyeing his friend's mannerisms and noting that they were indeed atypical. Peter was a stoic individual—always had been—and he knew well enough that it was not his pet that was breaking his character.
"You weren't in Cleveland were you?" Roger inquired and garnered Peter's perplexed expression.
"I had to be in Ohio for a business trip–,"
"Neal owes me a two-hundred-fifty dollars now."
Peter erected, thoroughly confused. " Rog, what are you talking about?"
"You weren't in Ohio because you were in Georgia—with Trystan," Roger told him, and Peter could not fix his mouth quick enough to deny it. "Neal bet that it would take you another month to do it, but I told him you'd do it sooner than that. And I bet that when you came back here you'd lie about it, which is what the extra fifty bucks is for."
"To do what?"
Roger would have been annoyed had he not found it hilarious that Peter would simply not stop lying. "To sleep with her," he deadpanned. "And considering how you came in here smiling so hard your cheeks almost broke, I'd say she's got your ass sprung."
Peter wanted to tell Roger that no, he and Trystan had not partaken in anything sexual, that they were simply friends, but then he thought that that would not be fair to either of them.
They had not spent four years apart to treat each other as they used to, like secrets that, if were revealed, would destroy something. He liked protecting, keeping her from prying eyes and ears, but it was not fair. She meant something to him, and he would not deny that right to the face of people closest to him anymore.
"Well," Peter sighed and plopped down onto one of Roger's couches. He blew air past his lips and dropped his hands against his thighs. "Go easy on Neal; let him keep the fifty."
Roger's brow rose, and then his own smile began to hitch up the corners of his mouth. "Wait." He went to sit on the sofa adjacent to him. "So you and Trystan really did it? Holy shit!" He burst into laughter. "It's about fucking time!"
"About time?" Peter queried, his own chuckling bubbling up his throat.
"Yeah, man. All of us have been waiting for you to come to your senses and get back with her! She was the fucking love of your life. No matter how much you denied it, we knew there was no one else for you but her."
"All of you?"
"Yeah. Me, Neal, Em, even Angelique. The second you guys found each other again, we knew you'd get back together. It was just the matter of when."
For once, Roger was right about something. Trystan was the love of his life, there was not a single woman who could compare, and deep down, he too, had known their future would be together.
He kept that in mind on Sunday, thoughts of her being his only one. And then, it turned to Monday, and then Tuesday and Wednesday. When it reached Thursday and he had not gotten the call from Trystan to reclaim what had once been theirs like she had promised, Peter had become antsy.
He could not take not hearing her voice, at least once that week, so he called her on Friday thrice, and she did not answer.
Peter began to worry. He knew Derek had seen him driving down the road from their house, and he feared that he figured out what had gone on in his home in his absence and that was why Trystan was not speaking to him. He loathed that the man was getting in the way of he and Trystan's happiness, but as he had promised himself, he would let her handle it.
When it turned into Saturday, and Peter was stuck in his office finishing up all the work he had been a snail at doing, he tried calling her once more. Again, she did not pick up, but an hour later, sent him a message that had his joyous heart dropping into his stomach with a crushed thud.
Please don't call me anymore.
He stared at the text. He stared at it so long it felt like hours, maybe even days, trying to make sense of it, but there was no sense to be made.
Please don't call me anymore.
Peter was aghast, unable to figure it out. After the night they had shared, all the things they had done and said and felt, and she did not want him calling her anymore?
Had they moved too fast? Gone too far? Said things they should not have? No, she had promised him what they did was what she desired, that there would be no regrets. They had done everything they did because they wanted to. It just did not make sense.
He messaged her back, asking her why, but he did not receive an answer for the only thing he cared to know at that moment.
Peter did not like stressing over things out of his control. He wanted to fly right back to Savannah and ask her what the hell her message had been about, but he did not want to make things worse by doing so. Leaving the ball in her court had him up all night, barely eating, zoned out during meetings. He felt just like he did when she left him the first time—empty, but this time was worse because she had promised to keep him full.
"Huh, well that's odd," Bill noted after Peter met him at the diner and told him of his predicament. The older man leaned against the lunch counter with a furrowed brow and frown beneath his thick gray mustache.
"Odd? That's all you have to say? That it's odd?" Peter inquired incredulously. "We do all that and then she doesn't wanna talk to me anymore? It's bullshit!" He kept from slamming his hand on the kitchen counter as his expletive had already been loud enough to turn a couple of customers' heads.
"All right, son, calm down." Bill held up his hands. "Let's just talk this one out; can't have you scaring away my regulars." He nodded and smiled toward the customers who still looked concerned of Peter's outburst.
"Sorry, Bill," he apologized and ran a hand down his face. "It's just . . . I don't get it. Everything was fine. She wasn't acting like anything was wrong, like I shouldn't've been there, hell, she was the one who invited me over. I'm confused . . . I just wanna know why."
Peter had not gone to his friends after Trystan sent him that cryptic text, thinking they had already gone and got excited at the possibility of them getting back together. His own high had deflated just as quickly as it had risen, and he did not want to embarrass himself further by admitting that what he assumed about he and Trystan's relationship had been completely wrong. So he opted for Bill, who was always there to hear the worst of Peter's troubles and offer the better advice.
"Well," Bill sighed, running a hand a top his balding head, appearing flabbergasted himself. "You trust the girl, don't ya?"
Peter nodded without thinking. "Yeah, I do. But it's different now. She's just a different Trystan in a lot of ways. She's not as open as she used to be, and even though she hasn't told me, I know she's been through some things. So, yeah, I trust her, but I'm worried about her and I hate that she doesn't want me to talk to her."
"There's your answer right there, kid," Bill pointed out and Peter cocked a brow.
"Where?"
"You said she's gone through some things. Maybe she didn't tell you, but you know they must've been heavy enough if they changed her personality. You having slept together may have complicated things for her." Bill shrugged.
"But she told me that everything was fine and that she wanted the same things I did."
"Well, that's how some women are, Peter, say one thing but thinking something else. If I had a dime for every time my wife told me everything was okay but she really wanted to ring my neck, I'd be a rich man," Bill chortled, but Peter shook his head.
"But Trystan's always been open about her feelings."
Bill leaned against the counter. "Kid, you hadn't seen the girl in four years. A lot can change in that time. Look, you said you trust her, right?"
Peter nodded.
"Then do that—trust her. What she sent was a little fishy, but in due time, you'll get your answer. You could trust her before, so trust her now."
Peter tried hard to hold on to Bill's word and trust the woman that he loved. Well into the next week, he thought it futile to attempt focusing on his work so not to be concerned about her—every waking moment included thoughts of her, him still trying to figure out what she had meant in the message or had it been as plainly as she said it.
It was not until Friday, when Peter had managed to doze off in his bed, Jewel resting on the carpet beside him, when the vibrations from his phone retracted him from his light slumber. The device shook across the wood of his nightstand, and he caught it before it could fall on the floor and startle his sleeping dog.
Disoriented, he saw that the bright red letters of his alarm clock read that it was barely past five in the morning. He groaned, annoyed that the one moment he had achieved some kind of dormancy that week was interrupted. He rubbed at his eyes and awakened his phone, which had ceased its trembling. The fogginess of his vision immediately cleared when he saw he had missed Trystan's call.
He quickly sat up in bed, swinging his legs over the side and accidentally hitting Jewel, who awakened alertedly and hastily followed him over the broad windows of the bedroom, overlooking the early light traffic of Los Angeles.
She barked and he hushed her, pointing for her to go back to her place on the floor as there was nothing to get riled up about as he waited for Trystan to pick up.
The ringing only lasted for a few seconds before she answered, "Bruno?"
"Trystan." Peter would have blamed the stoniness of his voice on the sleep he had not been receiving for almost a week, but the selfish part of him wanted her to know that he was not happy with her. "I thought you didn't want me talking to you."
"Bruno, I just . . . I needed some time to think–,"
"Then why did you say yes? If you knew you'd have regrets you could've told me no and we wouldn't've–,"
"Bruno, I wasn't calling about us, not about that," she explained, and Peter was deflated as that had been all he wanted to talk about. "It's Dew. Something's wrong."
Past his irritation, he finally heard that there was fear in her voice. For a moment, he felt bad for not waiting to hear her out and immediately went for the jugular. He abandoned his displeasure with her and instantly became consumed with what had happened with Raina.
"What is it? Is she okay? What's going on?"
"I-I'm not sure. She won't tell me."
"What do you mean?"
"She's not talking. She hasn't said a word since Sunday."
Not speaking? Since Sunday? That was an astonishingly peculiar trait for the little girl to have suddenly obtained. She was a certified chatterbox, Peter then understood Trystan's distress and listened closely as she continued.
"She's been in a funk all week and I've been asking her to tell me what was wrong, but she always just shakes her head and asks for you."
Taken aback, Peter repeated, "For me?"
"Yes," Trystan exhaled, and Peter could not tell if she had been crying or not from the shakiness that linger in her breath. "She won't talk to me, to Becca, doesn't wanna play and I have to force her to eat. But she keeps saying your name. When I asked if she wanted to see you, she nodded but wouldn't tell me why. I know you're mad at me right now, Bruno, and you have every right to be, and I promise we'll talk about it, all of it, but I need to make sure my baby is okay. Is it too much to ask for you to come back? Just for an afternoon, just so she tells you what's wrong."
Trystan did not have to plead. Peter was already pulling fresh jeans out of a drawer as she spoke with him. "Tell her I'll be there in a few hours."
When Peter arrived to Trystan's home, its vibe different from when he had left it versus then, but he reminded himself that he was concerned only with Raina for the moment. When he was sure everything was all right with her was when he would return his attention to he and Trystan's situation.
Peter noticed that Derek's silver car was not in the driveway, and he wondered if he was at work as he always was, or if he had known about Trystan's infidelity.
He did not use the key to open the front door, feeling that in he and Trystan's sudden incompleteness it would not be proper of him to just walk inside. So in lieu, he rang the doorbell and waited out on the porch as any normal visitor would.
It did not take long for Trystan to answer. She swung the door back, looking every bit as beautiful as she did the morning he had left, but it was obvious she was stressed. Redness lingered at the rims of her eyes as if she, too, had not been able to get much sleep.
"Hey, Bruno," she greeted uneasily, not looking him in the eye as she stepped to the side to allow him space to enter. "Come in."
If he wanted to be shallow, he would have asked her then and there what the deal was between them, but instead, he voiced, "Where's Dew?"
Her arms crossed and concern etching a line between her eyebrows, Trystan answered, "She's in the family room with some of her toys, but she's not really playing with any of them and–,"
Cutting off the report of her daughter, Raina surprised them both as she sprinted around the corner and wrapped herself around Peter's leg, having heard him enter and could not wait another second without him.
"Hey, Dew," Peter regarded her cautiously. The little girl did not return the greeting, instead enclosing her arms around him tighter. He tried again. "Are you all right?"
That time, she shook her head against his jeans, and through the fabric he could feel hot tears beginning to seep through the tough fabric.
"It's been like this all week," Trystan reiterated quietly, running a hand over her daughter's head, who subtly shied away from her mother's touch. "I don't know what's wrong with her."
Peter crouched down to meet her at eye level. Just like her mother, she did not look him in the eye, as if embarrassed he had to see her like that even though they had spent an entire afternoon wiping away her tears before.
"Dew, why won't you talk to your mom and tell her what's bothering you?" he inquired gently, but the little girl still did not answer.
"I think I might be the problem," Trystan sighed when Peter stood back up, trying to get the child to speak proving futile. "She won't say what's wrong while I'm here."
"Well." Peter stuck his hands in his pockets. "Is there anything I can do?"
Trystan contemplated for a moment, looking down at her daughter before suggesting, "There's an ice cream parlor right off of Branch Avenue. It's one of her favorite places to go. Maybe if you took her there and tried talking to her? I can give you money and–,"
"No, I got it," Peter deviated with a shake of his head. "What's the place called?"
"Aunt Charlie's. It's in bright yellow letters; you can't miss it."
Peter looked down at the small child again, who has relinked her arms around his leg. "You wanna come with me to get some ice cream, Dew?"
Raina barely nodded, probably not wanting to but doing it to appease Peter's proposal. Trystan went to get the girl's shoes and jacket from the closet and her keys before telling Peter, "Here, take my car. It's got her car seat in it. Her favorite flavor is vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles."
Peter nodded, and when the little girl was properly situated, he grabbed her hand into his. It was limp. He shook it a bit to give it and her a little life.
"Come on," he gently tugged at the appendage, "Ice cream can make anyone feel better."
Peter sat across from Raina in a little red booth, her vanilla ice cream with colorful sprinkles, his cookies n' creme, and a small basket of french fries settled between them.
The sight of the parlor did not send even the tiniest spark to her eye when they pulled into the parking lot, and neither did Peter lifting her up to pick which sprinkles she wanted behind the counter. He had encouraged her to eat, fearing she had not done much of it during the week. She adhered to his gentle command, taking a couple of the fries from the basket and leisurely taking a bite from each one, ate three spoonfuls of her ice cream, but ultimately settled with stirring the dessert with her spoon until it melted into a white pool in her bowl.
"Dew," Peter spoke, settling down his own spoon as the sight of her so unusually quiet lessened his appetite. "Can you look at me for a second?"
Her cheek in her hand, Raina's gaze had been downcast for most of their time there. She did not immediately respond, so Peter asked her a second time, and the eyes she had stolen from Trystan looked up into his.
"Can you please tell me what's wrong?" he inquired. "Your mom is worried about you, and I am, too. You usually talk so much, but now you're as quiet as a mouse." He thought the light teasing would bring at least a small smirk to her face, just where he could see her left dimple. Alas, she still did not speak.
Peter thought about what it could be that was bothering her. He did not know her well enough to know anything beyond thunder and naps that she disliked. Neither of those things had muted her, and according to Trystan, she had never behaved this way before. Whatever it was had to be much deeper.
He recalled back the moment at the house when Trystan was saying goodbye to her, and when she touched her, she shrank away. The movement had been small, but Peter had seen it, and in his peripheral, he knew Trystan noticed as well.
Carefully, he asked the little girl, " . . . Does it have something to do with your mom?"
Raina glanced at him, then looked away as her eyes welled with new tears. She nodded.
"Did your mom . . . do something to hurt you?" Peter knew she would never, but he had to get the child talking or else he would never find out.
Raina shook her head, letting a tear slip down her cheek and off her chin.
"Then what did she do?"
It took her a moment, but she finally spoke for the first time that day, "She scared me."
Peter tried to remain composed though his own cerebration ran rampant with what that could possibly mean. "What did she do to scare you?"
Raina's bottom lip shook, but Peter could not tell if she was afraid to answer him or remembering what had happened to make her feel that way. But when she did, Peter was relieved and riled. "Her and Mr. D was fighting again, and it was really scary and bad this time."
Peter had not known Raina had been witness to any of their arguments. By what Trystan told him, he figured that their disputes may have been often, but not where Raina had been privy to them. It brought him back to his own youth where he would hear his own parents' going back and forth.
He knew Joel and June's temperaments were swelled behind their bedroom door, but when they walked back out, they were collected, their mother smiling and hoping their children had not heard or suspected too much.
June had always been that way; whatever bothered her was personal and she did not showcase it to anyone but herself. Peter always wondered how she had been so resilient, but then he sat there thinking that as Trystan was in many ways similar, maybe neither woman was as headstrong as they tried to portray.
And he had been a teenager by then; Raina was barely passed her toddler years. He knew it affected her much more than it affected him.
"What made it so bad this time?" Peter queried, and more comfortable answering, Raina looked at him.
"It was a lot more louder, and Mommy was yelling a whole lot and said curse words. She sometimes yells, but not like that, and Mr. D was really loud, too, and he called her bad names. I wanted to tell them to stop 'cause I don't like it when they fight, but I was too scared so I stayed in my room.
"And then Mr. D left I think, and I tried to talk to Mommy in their room, but she was crying and yelled at me to get out." Recalling the incident ad Raina's voice shaking, and her attempt to wipe away her tears was futile as new ones kept forming.
"Mommy never yelled at me like that before. I wanted to call my nanna to come and get me, but I don't know her number and I can't reach the phone. Then later, she told me she was sorry, but she didn't look like Mommy. She looked like somebody else." She could only explain it the best way a three-year-old could, but Peter understood, and even as he was not in her shoes, he grew fearful himself.
From what he had seen, Trystan was an incredible mother—loving, patient, kind, all the characteristics one would seek. He had never even heard Trystan reprimand Raina out of her typical vocal range, hell, she had hardly yelled at him before, at least not to the extent the little girl had described.
He was disturbed at her describing her mother as appearing to be someone else. Peter knew that Trystan had changed a lot in the years they had not been together, noticing her differences almost immediately when they had reconnected, but for her own daughter to see something she never had before in her young life, it was startling. What made him even angrier was Derek, who had called Trystan out of her name and Raina had been witness to the disrespect.
Peter unclenched his fists when he realized his animosity had begun to take over, and grabbed a napkin from the dispenser to wipe Raina's eyes.
"It's okay to be a little scared–,"
"I was a lotta scared!"
In spite of himself, Peter offered her a tiny grin. "Well, that's okay, too. You had a reason to be. And I'm sorry you had to go through something like that. They shouldn't have argued where you could hear, but I want you to know that your mom and dad love you and wouldn't do anything to hurt you."
When Peter pulled the napkin away from her face and settled back in his place, Raina tilted her head to one side in the same way Trystan did. "Huh?"
Peter snickered confusedly, "'Huh' what?"
"I don't have a daddy. It's just my mommy."
His brow furrowed and he frowned. "I'm talking about your dad . . . Mr. D?"
Raina's own eyebrows creased in perplexity. She shook her head. "Mr. D's not my daddy. He's just Mommy's boyfriend. If he was then I would call him 'Daddy', right?"
Peter shifted in his seat. "Your mom told me you call him 'Mr. D' so you can learn how to say your teachers' names."
Raina appeared more befuddled than before. "I always called him that before. I never called him daddy 'cause he's not my daddy."
"But your mom . . ." Peter trailed off when he saw her disconcerted disposition had not changed the more he kept asking questions and that she had given him all the information she had known.
Peter's foot pressed against the gas pedal a little bit harder on the way back to Trystan's house than it had leaving it. Raina was in the backseat, quiet, and watching Peter's eyes in the rear view, wondering of the crease etched between his eyebrows. Had she upset him, too? She shrank back into her car seat, afraid that if she spoke, she just might agitate yet another adult.
When they got back to the house, Peter instructed that Raina go up to her room. "I just need to talk to your mom for a second, okay? Everything's fine," he promised when her eyes begged to differ. He gave her a little hug, hoping that would ease her qualms, and sent her on her way, making sure she made it up the stairs carefully and inside her door before making his way through the foyer.
Trystan was not in the family room or kitchen, but the faint smell of burning sage led his feet to the sun room.
As he would usually, he did not wait to be granted access into the space, not thinking to knock as he slid back the glass door to see Trystan sitting at the table, the sage sending a soft pillar of smoke into the air. A book was before her with a pink crystal settled between the pages, and a small tube of lavender oil was to her right. Her eyes had been closed, so she had either been praying or meditating before Peter interrupted her.
"Bruno?" She jumped at his sudden appearance, but upon realizing he was there, uncrossed her legs and went to stand. "Hey, is Dew okay–,"
"Trystan, who's Raina's father?"
Her movements stilled, any question about Raina well-being sent back down her throat as she stared at him. " . . . What?"
"She told me at the ice cream parlor that Derek's not her father. I kept asking her questions but she insisted he wasn't."
The woman slowly sat back down in her chair, her gaze somewhere in front of her but no longer on him.
"Why'd you lie? You know I wouldn't've cared if it was someone else. And if you don't wanna tell me, it's fine, that's your business, but you didn't have to lie about it."
Trystan said nothing, and Peter's former indifference to the matter deepened when he saw her eyes becoming glassy behind a film of tears.
"What's wrong, Trys?" he queried of her sudden shift in character, worrying he had said something wrong. But when she did not deny her daughter's words, when she did not respond but merely looked at him with her wet dark eyes, something in the pit of his stomach dropped, and his heart thumped so roughly he could feel its vibrations in his temples.
"Trystan . . . who is her father?"
A tear dripped from her eye, and she did not bother to brush it away when her ebon gaze, ever so mysterious but in that moment, opened. Her full lips shuddered in the same manner Raina's had.
Her voice quiet, she replied, "Her name's Raina."
Peter sighed, frustrated at her stalling. "I know what her name is, Trystan."
Trystan stared at him, willing him to understand, and what drowned in her eyes had him feeling as though his heart stopped beating.
"Raina June."
. . .
. . .
. . .
Thanks for reading! ^_^