Page 130 of Revenge Is a Dish Best Served… Wearing Heels?

"So you're okay?" he asked.

I nodded. "More than okay."

Turning my head to face him, he pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead, then my nose, and lastly my cheek.

"I know you're not there yet," he said, toying with a strand of my hair, "and I don't expect or even want you to say it back until you have time to think about it. But I want you to know that I love you. I love you so much it scares the shit out of me."

My heart stuttered at his words. Because I already knew that I loved him too. I just hadn't wanted to admit it before because I wasn't sure, wasn't one-hundred percent sure that he'd been innocent.

But now I knew. I knew for certain that Tristan Hawthorne was a completely different man than I'd thought, one that I could trust with my whole heart. So I didn't care what he'd just said about not saying it back. I wanted to say it anyway.

"I love you too."

Thirty-Four

Tristan

"Fuck, Astrid."

She had no idea—no idea—what hearing those words from her lips did to me. And it also meant something else, something that meant the world to me.

"So..." I ventured, "you believe me now? You know I wasn't the monster you thought I was for the last ten years?"

"I do. I mean, I don't." She shook her head, then laughed. "Wait, what was the question? I got confused. I... I'm still thinking about what just happened in front of the mirror."

"Oh, yeah? You liked that?"

"I loved that."

"You know I have a room full of mirrors at my place."

A line formed between her brows. "You do?"

Not able to keep a straight face, I let out a laugh. "No. I'm just joking. But it might be something to invest in."

She smiled up at me. "It might."

For a moment, we were silent, and I reveled in how her body responded to me, the goosebumps rising up on her arms as I gently stroked her.

I noticed her eyes straying to the forgotten letter by the door, and I braced myself for her next logical question.

"What's in the letter, anyway?" she asked, just like I'd predicted. "I assume you wrote about what really happened and how you were innocent."

The specific words were fuzzy with the passage of time, but I did remember some of my thoughts as I wrote it. "No, actually, I didn't. It was just a general apology, probably a really lame apology."

She paused a beat before she spoke. "I'm guessing you were trying to protect your friends. Am I right?"

"I guess, although I really shouldn't have." The way my brain worked then was very different from who I was currently. "If I hadn't taken the blame, if I'd told everyone what really happened that day, it would have saved you from their bullying the rest of the year."

"I seriously doubt that. And I doubt the school would have done anything, only if I'd brought my parents into it."

"Fucking St. Lucius."

"You can say that again."

So I repeated it a few times. "Remind me to never give anything to their alumni fund."

She laughed, and I was glad we'd moved on from the awful memories. I'd talk about it all as much as she wanted or needed to, of course, but I was so ready to focus on the now, the possibilities before us, the baby coming in our near future. My God. The baby.