“Alright, alright. Let’s not get crazy here. I’m heading out to the house now. Maybe Varo found something there or Jensen remembered something about the ride home that can help us. I’ll see you there in a little while, right?”
“Yeah. If you find out anything before I get there, call me. Do you understand?”
“I get it. Don’t worry. We’ll find her safe and sound.”
Chapter Twenty
Tristan
I drove like a demon over the roads and highways that led to the house I shared with Nina, my mind drifting back to the events that now made her run from me. Even though they’d occurred seven years before, the memory of them still ached like a fresh wound.
A haze of smoke hung heavy over the spacious room, a telltale sign of how long we’d been ignoring the outside world. Melissa giggled as she lay sprawled out across the bed while Sam smacked her on the bare ass. I guessed I should have been jealous since I was sleeping with her, but it wasn’t anything exclusive between us and I didn’t care if she liked to fuck him too.
Sex wasn’t what kept us together. Coke was.
Well, coke was what kept me there. Melissa didn’t like what coke did to her, preferring the more mellow high of pot or pills. But she was always good for what I wanted, knowing I liked it and eager to please me, no matter the cost.
I had no idea what the fuck Sam saw in any of this. True, he liked to smoke every so often, but nothing like how often Melissa did. I wasn’t even sure I’d ever seen her straight. Not that I cared.
“Tristan, come over here. I’m all alone and Sam won’t talk to me,” she whined in a voice that I found cute at times other than this. She knew it and used it anytime she wanted something from me.
Sam stood from the bed and pushed her away. “I won’t talk to her because she doesn’t make any fucking sense. Maybe if you’d get your head out of the clouds one in a while, Lissa, I’d be able to understand what the fuck you’re talking about.”
This was their usual routine when Sam felt like a third wheel. To everyone but Melissa, it was obvious he was in love with her. I had a feeling he hated me and wished I’d just disappear so he could walk off into the sunset with her, happy and high as a fucking kite. I would have been okay with that, as long as it didn’t interfere with what she and I had.
What that was exactly was hard to say, however.
I liked her well enough. I liked her even better when she spread lines out in front of me in an effort to make me happy. I didn’t love her, though, and she knew it.
That fact never stopped her from wishing it wasn’t true.
“Melissa, I don’t feel like talking. I leave that up to Sam,” I said with my usual curtness.
Lying there naked, she looked up at me with a stare that was supposed to make me want to fuck her. “Tristan, why are you so mean?” she cooed. “You’re always so mean to me.”
“You don’t want to see mean,” I said, hoping to put an end to her attempts to seduce me. Turning to look at Sam, I nodded my head toward her. “Talk to her. That’s all she wants.”
“I don’t want your fucking scraps, Stone,” Sam snapped before storming out to Melissa’s living room to sulk as he always did.
I let my gaze travel to the bed where Melissa lay pouting. I understood why Sam would want her. Perfect body, at least as perfect as money and a plastic surgeon could buy, lots of laughs, and not a lot of frustration. For many, she’d be the perfect girlfriend.
“Tristan, he’s gone. You don’t have to sit over there all by yourself anymore. Come over here on the bed with me.”
Leaning forward, I snorted the last line on the tray and shook my head trying to handle the sensation of the coke teasing the inside of my nose. “You should be nicer to Sam, Melissa. When I go, he’ll still be here.”
“Don’t say that! You’re not going anywhere,” she cried as she rolled off the bed onto her feet to come toward me. “I won’t let you.”
She knelt between my legs and gazed up at me with bloodshot blue eyes. I knew what she wanted, and if I hadn’t been so fucked up, I might have wanted it too. “Get up off your knees,” I ordered only to have her respond by shaking her head.
“Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you. Whatever you want, Tristan. Tell me.” As she spoke, her hands slid up my thighs to the crease of my legs. “I could make you happy if you’d let me.”
I pushed her hands away, and she careened back into the table. “I have everything I need to make me happy.”
She looked up at me and frowned. “Then why aren’t you happy, baby?”
Reaching toward her, I smoothed her platinum blond hair from her eyes. “Don’t try to use what you learned in Psych class last semester on me, Melissa. It’s not going to work.”
“When I become a psychologist, you’ll see. I can be your therapist and solve all your problems.”
“That’ll be the day you’re a therapist,” I said casually without care for her feelings.
Her face fell as her eyes filled with tears. Why I was such an asshole to her I didn’t know. Even if I believed what I said, I didn’t have to say it. She’d never been anything other than completely devoted to me and I couldn’t even muster up enough feelings to be kind to her.
Closing my eyes, I tried to shut out the truth of how much a fuck I really was.
“This isn’t happy, Tristan,” she whispered as she lay her head against my knee. “This isn’t happy.”
“Well, it’s all we have. If you want happy, I’m not the person to be with. Stick with Sam.”
“Someday, Sam and I will be together. I know it. He’ll be in love with me still and I won’t be in love with you anymore, so we’ll finally be together. But then you’ll be all alone, my Tristan without a soul in this world.”
“Jesus, Melissa. Stop being so fucking maudlin. I have women all the time. I’m not alone.”
Standing, she sat on my lap and straddled me. She cradled my face in her hands and shook her head. “You’re more alone than anyone I’ve ever met, baby. I could change that. I want to change that for you.”
My hands slid over her perfect ass and pulled her into me. “I like the way we are. You like the way we are, don’t you?”
She didn’t dare say she didn’t and risk my rejection, and I took advantage of that fear. I saw it in her eyes, though. She loved me, or felt what she thought was love. Fuck, I didn’t know what she felt at that moment.