VICTORIA DIDN’T KNOW what Tristan and Mischa were talking about, but the way Tristan’s expression flashed from confusion to concern to anger, all while looking at her, narrowed the list down a lot. At least, if it had to do with something she actually knew about. The way he said she and her made her grind her teeth in time with the hammer of her pulse in her ears.

“Anything interesting?” She tried to keep her question casual when he hung up.

The waver in her voice and the fury on his face made her attempt a failed exercise.

“That was what Mischa was wondering. If you knew anything interesting about him.”

Shit. That narrowed the list down to about one. “Lots of things. He’s got a scar—”

“Don’t.” The single word cut deep. “You had him followed.” It wasn’t a question, and there was no accusation behind it. He stated it as blandly as if it were an item on his to-do list—find out if Victoria is as crazy-stalker-obsessive as suspected.

“Yes, but...” She didn’t have a way to finish the thought. There was no excuse for what she’d done. She could explain what she was thinking at the time, but that wasn’t likely to help her case.

He pursed his lips and widened his eyes. “But...?”

“I don’t know what else to say.” She wasn’t trying to be evasive. She had no clue where to start. “It all seems so ridiculous now.”

“How about you start with why.”

She didn’t like this Tristan. Angry? She could deal with that. Unintentionally hurtful? She knew how to shrug it off given time. Seductive, playful, and sexy? Add in just the right amount of sweet and she’d take that any day.

But when he turned the icy stare on her, she stalled. Every time. “I hit a low point. It happens sometimes, and I wish it didn’t. I just wanted to know what he was up to.”

“What happens next time you have a day like that?”

I call you. Except that was obviously far from the right answer. She wanted to argue he wasn’t exactly being supportive, but why would he be? This wasn’t a drunken text. She’d hired someone to collect information on Mischa. I’m better now. But that wasn’t the whole truth. Most of the time she was fine, but she still had down days. “I deal with it.”

“Sounds promising.” His tone implied it sounded anything but. “Let’s try something else. How does blackmail play into that?”

“What?” She was going to be sick. “It doesn’t.”

“Mischa talked to the guy, who said you hired him to dig up dirt for blackmail.”

This was bad enough without someone else making up shit that wasn’t true. “I don’t know why he said that. I wanted to know what Mischa was doing. It was curiosity. Reckless and obsessive, but I wasn’t going to do anything with it besides know.”

“It was less than six months ago. You keep insisting you’re over Mischa. You’re better. You’re not the same person you were when the two of you were together. Did you magically flip a switch and all of that went away?” The emotion was creeping back into his voice, but the rage tinged with hurt was worse than the icy gaze he’d turned on her earlier.

“I don’t have the answers you’re looking for, because there’s nothing that’s going to make you okay with this,” she said.

“So it’s my fault for being unreasonable?”

“I didn’t say that. I fucked up. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. I called the guy a week after I hired him, and told him to forget it. That I didn’t want to know after all. It was before Ash. Before—” us. But there was no us, especially not now. “I’d like to think I won’t do it again.”

He scrubbed his face, a sigh escaping through his fingers. “That’s comforting.” Sarcasm dripped from his voice.

She wanted to scream—at herself, at him, she didn’t know—or cry, or something to relieve the pressure building inside. But that wouldn’t solve anything either. “I’m sorry.”

“So you said. I think it would be a good idea if you left.”

“Me too.” She bit the inside of her cheek to keep any emotion from slipping out. He didn’t say anything as she went to the bedroom to fetch her stuff, and when she came back, he was nowhere to be found.

She headed toward the driveway, head down and insides a jumbled wreck. So this was a walk of shame. God, it sucked.

She tossed her overnight bag into the back seat, then reached for the driver’s door, and stopped. “Fuck this.” She turned and stalked back to the front door, then pounded on it with the side of her fist.

Tristan answered within a few seconds, a mask in place. “What?”

“You said you didn’t want to do this anymore. The clashing. Neither do I.”

“I didn’t have the whole picture when I said that.”

She was tempted to toss the revelation back at him, about the way he’d forced her apart from Mischa. That was its own issue, though. Countering her breach of trust with one of his didn’t change the nature of either one. “And you still don’t. Neither do I. We’re still learning about each other, and there are things in my past I’m not proud of. But I’m trying every fucking day to make sure I don’t make more memories I’m ashamed of.”

“I don’t know if I want to be a part of those.”

Wind sliced through the air, and she clenched her jaw to keep from shivering. At least he didn’t outright say go away. “You said you didn’t want to define us beyond fucking, and that’s fine. I’m not asking for that. I’m asking for...” She sighed and grasped for words to put to what she was feeling. “I had a lot of fun last night, and this morning, and at the cabin. At least offer me the same courtesy I gave you, of hearing you out.” Okay, so she’d bring it up a little.

He stared at her, gaze cutting deeper than the wind. She swore her heart stopped as she waited for him to do something.

*

AS TRISTAN WATCHED Victoria, several things occurred to him in the span of a few seconds—she was doing her best not to show how cold she was, but that wasn’t the most important thing. It bothered him more that she targeted Mischa than that she hired a PI. He believed her when she said she was sorry. And he didn’t want to send her away.

“Do you really think I’d resort to extortion or blackmail?” Her voice was meek.

Did he? “No. Come back inside.” He opened the door wider.

She stepped inside, and followed when he headed back into the living room. She fiddled with the buttons on her coat as she stood near the sofa.

He wasn’t sure what to say.

“When I broke up with Mischa, I blamed you for stealing my only friend.” Victoria stared at her shoes as she spoke.

The words didn’t surprise him. That didn’t prepare him for the ache that ran from his teeth to his fingers to his toes. “Mischa wasn’t your friend. He was your martyr.” He didn’t blame Victoria for that, but it was a truth that needed to be out there.

She dragged the back of her hand across her cheeks, but her eyes were dry. “I know. At least, I do now. Then? He was the only person who listened to me.”

“Do you know what caused the relapse—I hope it’s okay to call it that—six months ago?” He didn’t want to muddy the waters by dragging up his own mistake. He wouldn’t deny it, but it didn’t change this.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

He wanted to. The more time he spent with Victoria, the less he wanted to spend apart. He didn’t want to argue. He wanted to figure out what this skip was in his heart each time she smiled, and make it happen more often.

He stepped up behind her, slid her coat from her shoulders, and draped it over the arm of a chair. “Sit.” He tugged her toward the couch. “And try me.”

She perched on the end cushion, as far from Tristan as was possible and still be on the same sofa. “I saw your name in that Tribune piece.”

“You mean the firm’s?” That was enough to trigger thoughts of Mischa? He didn’t know how to process that.

“I mean yours. Tristan Hough.”

He really didn’t know what to do with that. “I don’t understand.” Was it because of the request he’d made of her years ago, to keep her distance? That didn’t seem right.

“You know what it’s like to grow up with someone else’s expectations driving you? With people watching your every move?”

“I do.” Not the way she did, but he’d been performing for as long as he could remember, to prep for that Olympic bid.

“And you know what happens when you piss off the wrong person or let down the wrong fan.”

His coach’s disappointment rang in his skull, after that silver medal was announced. “I’ve been there.”

“I hit my late teens and suddenly I wasn’t Vicky the girl next door anymore. I was Vicky the pair of tits.”

He winced at the description.

A wry smile ghosted over her lips. “According to my studio contract, I had to be the most chaste pair of tits in existence.”

“I’m sorry.” The sentiment felt weak.

“Eh. I didn’t have a problem with it. My issue was with the people who didn’t believe it. I was tired after filming one night, and there was a group of fans waiting by the sound stage exit as I left. I tried to be polite, but one guy groped me, and I turned on him and gave him an earful. People were filming, of course, and the footage went viral.”

“I remember that.”

“Then you remember what they said.”

It was impossible to look anywhere, the internet, TV, the magazines at the grocery store checkout, without seeing variations on Vicky the bitch next door. “Yes.”

“The rumors about alcoholism and drugs sucked. The rumors that I’d made a sex tape when I was sixteen, got me fired.”

“And none of it was true.” He wasn’t asking. Back then, like most everyone else, he bought in. He had no doubt now that if she said it was fake, it was fake.

“If they believed it, I was going to make it true. There was no way I was depriving myself of those things if the world already thought I’d done them. And then the guy with the heavy tattoos and bottomless brown eyes bought me a drink, and I thought I’d found the perfect person to help me do exactly that.”

Tristan couldn’t ignore the pit that formed, hearing her describe Mischa that way. “Except he’s not so much the bad boy you were looking for as sure, let’s give it a shot.”

“Sounds about right. Two days later, after enough drinking and fucking that I was numb, I met his best friend and wondered...” She cringed. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. You don’t want to hear it.”

“First, I do want to hear it, and second, you can’t do that. You can’t get to the part of the story that’s about me, and stop. My ego is fragile.”

“No, it’s not. You’ve got fractures, but your confidence is real.” She drew in a shaky breath. “The first time I met you, I wondered if I’d gone home with the wrong guy.”

“Oh.” Maybe he should have seen that coming, but the confession stalled his brain.

“And then you looked at me. No, through me. That icy blue stare froze me, and I saw so much judgment in your eyes. Just like everyone else.”

But that wasn’t what he’d been thinking. He remembered that day distinctly. “The first time I saw you in person, I was thinking oh look, Mischa won again. Lucky fucker.”

“Did you still feel the same after he told you who I was?”

He’d used the knowledge to convince himself Mischa hadn’t won after all. That the stunning brunette on his friend’s arm was a mistake. She must be based on the rumors. Tristan couldn’t bring himself to tell Victoria that. He couldn’t lie to her either, though. What was he going to say?