Tristan’s jaw ached, a muscle ticking in his left cheek, as he muttered through gritted teeth, “Mark King drugged you and then sexually assaulted you. He threw a party for me, saying he wanted to celebrate my signing with Tarmac Records, then spiked your drink, and dragged you up to his bedroom. His buddy Reg came up to me and said Mark wanted to give me some pointers before my meeting with the execs, so I went looking for him.”

He didn’t need to shut his eyes as he revisited the events of that night. The image of a lingerie-clad Izzie on her knees blowing Mark would forever be branded in his retina. He couldn’t unsee it. Except now, the scene played out in his head under a different light. What he once believed to be exhilaration on her face just turned out to be stupor.

The one thing that had triggered his reaction that night had been Izzie’s gaze. Instead of pouncing on Mark for suspecting him of sexually assaulting Izzie, Tristan had frozen at the door when he noticed her eyes glazed over. That happened when he aroused her, so he connected that flimsy piece of evidence with the countless incidents of Mark touching Izzie that he had witnessed before.

He had misread the whole situation.

He was wrong.

Dead wrong.

Unforgivably wrong.

“Instead of doing something, like punching him or wrestling you away from him, I turned and fled. I bolted down the stairs and didn’t stop until I was out of the house.”

She nodded, but didn’t say anything, as if she understood he was thinking out loud.

He went on. “I thought you wanted to be with him. All these years, I thought you had chosen Mark over me, but you had no choice that night.”

His head was about to explode.

His heart clawed its way up his throat.

He choked.

His chest compressed as if a giant held him in a tight fist.

Conflicting emotions jumbled up inside Tristan.

Too many for him to sort them out.

His brain stalled.

“I feel like I should yell or cuss or both. I’m numb, though.” That wasn’t entirely true. Through the haze that fogged his mind, one idea stood out like a beacon. Would he dare hope? His next words bypassed his brain and came out unfettered. “You didn’t betray me.”

“I did not.”

“Why did you let me believe you did?”

Izzie knelt between his knees and framed his face in her warm hands. In his addled state, Tristan just stared into her forest green eyes. “What would you have done if I had told you all this back then?”

“Killed the motherfucker.”

No doubt about that.

“Exactly. Then, you’d either be in prison or you would have been killed by Mark’s buddies from the Crips. Plus, I was ashamed. I felt dirty. I blamed myself for what happened at the party.”

He covered her hands, pressing the palms against his face. He closed his eyes to better enjoy the warmth that radiated from her as it penetrated his numbness, nudging it away. He pulled her hands from his cheeks, laced their fingers together and rested the back of her hands on his thighs.

Then, he pinned her with his gaze and asserted, “I wish I knew this then, so I could’ve told you there was no reason to feel dirty or ashamed. You did nothing wrong. I don’t believe what-ifs will get us anywhere, but I’ve got to say this. Had I had a chance to make the bastard die a slow, excruciating death, I would’ve happily taken it.”

Her upper lip quivered as if she was fighting a smile. “You’re saying I was right?”

“I guess I’m saying we’ll never know.” He shrugged. “We can’t change the past, but I still haven’t wrapped my head around what happened after the party. I get that he forced his dick down your throat at the party, but that doesn’t change the fact you left me. For Mark. Months after that night. Why did you do that after he treated you that way?”

Her cheeks beamed red and she framed Tristan’s face again, prodding his stare as if she was trying to reach his soul. With a slight sigh, she blurted, “He blackmailed me. Mark picked up on the fact I never told you what he did that night. One day he cornered me at the studio. We stayed late, alone, mixing a track. He said he knew I was terrified at the possibility you’d kill him, if I told you the truth.”

Tristan knew her too well to recognize she burst out the story before she got cold feet.

“You’re saying he forced you to sleep with him, so he wouldn’t tell me that he was fucking you? That doesn’t make sense. He wouldn’t tell me that and risk getting his face smashed in.”

“That was my response to him, then I told him to fuck off.”

Tristan threw his hands up. “You’ve totally lost me here. How did he blackmail you, if that didn’t work?”

Izzie held his stare without a word, her eyes moving over his face, clearly buying time. Never a good sign.

She finally said, “That last tour, you didn’t come with us on the road because you were putting together the band, remember?”

“Yeah, Noah and I were recruiting.”

“Exactly. On the road, I’d be too late to come down for breakfast or I wouldn’t eat at all in the mornings. Most of the time, my face was ashen. Mark noticed I was pregnant before I did. He knew he would never break us up, if you learned you and I were having a baby. So, he played his last hand. He told me he’d have his Crips buddies kill you, if I didn’t dump you for him.”

A loud buzz rang inside Tristan’s head, muffling Izzie’s voice. Stuck in loop, his brain didn’t process the rest of her words. All he heard was that one piece of information that threw his certainties into the trash can. A humungous monkey wrench had been thrown into his life and the gears got stuck.

Feeling like he should yell at the top of his lungs, he was surprised as he whispered, “What the fuck, Izzie? You’re saying Arthur is mine?”

She nodded, and his world crumpled.

Again.