Page 104 of Reckless Obsession

Everything about tonight sucks.

Okay, that’s not entirely true.

I’m being dramatic. It’s a bad habit. Tonight is actually fine and tolerable, specifically because Tristan fucking Sinclair is sitting directly across from me at his family’s dinner table, looking like every terrible decision I’ve ever made and at least four I haven’t gotten around to yet.

His mother, Regina, invited my parents over for dinner. Since my father couldn’t make it, my mother apparently decided I was still six years old and fully within dragging range. I came because refusing her never works, and, if I’m being honest, there are worse ways to spend an evening than being fed by Regina Sinclair.

I just wasn’t expecting him to be here.

Not that I’m complaining.

Well. Maybe a little.

Because things between Tristan and me aren’t exactly bad, but they’re definitely not good either. We’ve been stuck in that strange, suffocating no-man’s-land for two weeks now, ever since the night he fucked the absolute sanity out of me in his house and then apparently decided the most logical next step was to vanish like a coward in a tailored shirt.

I woke up the next morning alone.

He was nowhere in sight, and I didn’t stay around long enough to find out why.

Maybe that was pathetic. Maybe it was self-preservation. Maybe I just didn’t have it in me to wait there like some lovesick idiot, hoping he’d walk back into the room looking soft enough for me to survive it.

Because I knew there were only two versions of that morning, and both of them would have ruined me.

Either he’d look at me like what happened between us was a mistake.

Or worse, he’d look at me like it wasn’t.

Like it was just sex.

And maybe that should have been the easier option, but it wasn’t, because it wasn’t just sex to me. It has never been just sex with him. Not one touch, not one kiss, not one awful, perfect moment where he lets me close enough to matter and then acts like it means nothing the second daylight shows up.

I don’t know exactly what I feel for Tristan Sinclair, but I know it’s not infatuation.

Infatuation is easy.

Infatuation doesn’t sit in your rib like a loaded weapon. It doesn’t make your stomach drop at the sight of a familiar mouth, nor does it turn silence into something bruising. It doesn’t make you check your phone like a loser every ten minutes, hoping he’ll answer this time.

He ignored every message I sent that week.

Every single one.

Part of me—the sensible, self-respecting part—was thoroughly unsurprised and deeply disappointed, because this is Tristan Sinclair, and reverting to stone-cold asshole mode is practically a reflex for him. The other part of me, the embarrassing part I refuse to acknowledge in daylight, kept whispering that maybe, just maybe, he was avoiding me because he felt something and didn’t know what to do with it. That his silence wasn’t indifference but poorly managed panic wearing indifference’s mask.

That would make two of us. Because whatever this is, whatever I feel when I look at him, is not infatuation.

This is something else.

Something I haven’t named yet.

Something I’m not entirely sure I’ll survive.

“Oh wow,” my mother says, pulling me out of my own head before I can spiral any further. She sets down her fork with a genuinely delighted look. “This tastes so juicy and delicious.”

Regina smiles.

“Took my time with it.” She gives my mother a playful wink across the table. “I know exactly how much you love a perfectly roasted turkey.”

Then her eyes slide over to me, warm and maternal and completely unaware that I’m internally on fire.