Page 115 of Revenge Is a Dish Best Served… Wearing Heels?

"I'm not being held against my will. Quite the opposite. Iwantto be here."

Archie took a long slurp of the drink in his hand. "Youwantto be here in a closet with a bunch of weirdos?"

"Hey, we're not weirdos," Annalise argued.

"This is Astrid." Tristan nodded his head in my direction. "Her sisters and their boyfriends."

"Astrid?" Archie asked. "Am I supposed to know who that is?"

"You know,Astrid. She's been to our place, watched a zombie movie with you, ate some popcorn..."

Archie's eyes nearly popped out of his head as he stared at me. "You? You're the masked woman that my brother is obsessed with?"

Tristan groaned. "Archie."

"The one he can't stop talking about? The one he's spent hours, and I meanhours, searching for on his phone?"

"Archie."

"The one he's thinking about when he takes these long showers lately and—"

"Archie! If you don't stop talking right now," Tristan said through gritted teeth, "I will tell everyone about what happened in the McDonald's play place."

The color drained from Archie's face. "You wouldn't."

"I will if you don't shut it."

Everything had happened so fast, I almost missed it. But had Archie implied that Tristan was... well, doing things in the shower while thinking about me?Me?

Absolutely no one in my life, in my past, had ever been so obsessed with me, and it was incredibly flattering.

Pathetic, I know.

Tristan's phone rang, and he whipped it out of his pocket, quickly silencing it.

"Who was that?" Ethan asked, a wicked gleam in his eyes.

"Huh?" Tristan asked, looking up. "I don't know. Just spam."

"Oh, yeah? Did you get on some weird list or something?"

There was a weighted beat before Tristan answered, brows lowering. "Yes, I did," he answered slowly. "And how exactly would you know about that?"

Ethan pressed his lips together, but even that movement couldn't suppress the amusement splashed across his expression. "No comment," he said.

"Anyway," Aria interrupted. "Back to the issue at hand, gentlemen. And that issue is..." She looked pointedly at the man standing next to me.

Tristan inhaled deeply then turned to face me fully, pinning me with his intense eyes, taking both of my hands in his.

"Astrid... God, I love saying your name to you," he said, voice raspy with emotion. "Will you do me the honor of being my date to the gala? And if you say yes, I promise you that if we get there and you feel uncomfortable in any way, we'll leave and, I don't know, grab a pizza or something."

"Dude," Archie said on a groan. "That was so lame. You call that a grand gesture? Pizza? What are you? A teenager? You're like a fucking billionaire. You need to do way better than that if you want to get the girl."

There were snickers of laughter all around the closed space, Tristan's eyes closing for a long moment as he took a breath.

After a tightly controlled exhale, he met my gaze. "Let me try that again."

"You don't have to," I said, wanting to spare him.