Chapter 24 Stop lying, Tristan.

Chapter 24 Stop lying, Tristan.
Tristan’s POV

The charcoal snapped in my hand as I pressed it too hard against the paper. I cursed under my breath and swept the black dust off the page before picking up another stick to finish the shading. The image staring back at me was a torment of my own making as I could not get the sight of Trad touching her out of my head. I had drawn the curve of her waist where his hand had rested and the smile she gave him which was brighter than anything she had ever given me.

I reached for the bottle of whiskey on my desk and poured a glass without looking away from the sketch. Suddenly, the door to my study opened without a knock.

I slammed the sketchbook shut and threw a file folder over it before I looked up. Elsie was standing there in that blue dress that had ruined my sanity earlier tonight. She looked calm and dangerous as she walked into the room and closed the door behind her with a soft click.

"I told you I did not want to be disturbed," I said coldly as I leaned back in my chair and tried to look bored. "Get out."

"You are lying," Elsie replied as she walked toward the desk. "You are not working Tristan. You are hiding."

"I am working on pack strategy," I lied smoothly. "Something a slave would not understand."

"Is that what you call it?" she asked as she stopped in front of the desk and pointed to the black smudge on my hand. "Charcoal does not look like strategy to me."

I wiped my hand on my pants and glared at her. "What do you want Elsie? Did you come here to gloat about your little victory at dinner? Because I assure you that tomorrow things will go back to normal."

"I came to see what you were drawing," she said as she reached for the file folder I had used to cover the book.

I caught her wrist before she could touch it. My grip was tight but I was careful not to bruise her because the memory of Tyler slapping her was still fresh in my mind.

"Do not touch my things," I warned her with a low growl.

Elsie didn't pull away. She looked down at my hand on her wrist and then up at my eyes with a knowing look that unsettled me.

"Why are you so afraid of me seeing it?" she asked softly. "Is it because you are drawing me again?"

I froze, but kept my face impassive. "I do not draw you," I scoffed. "Do not flatter yourself."

"Stop lying Tristan," she whispered. "I know about the false bottom in your nightstand."

The air left the room. I let go of her wrist and pushed my chair back as I stood up. I looked at her with wide eyes because that was my deepest secret. That compartment was the only place where I allowed myself to be human.

"You went through my room," I accused her as the anger flared up to cover my panic. "You violated my privacy…now I get it, you came to steal my perfume."

"I was looking for a weakness," she admitted without shame. "And I found it. I found the sketchbook Tristan. I saw the drawings of me sleeping in the garden and I saw the one of me in the kitchen."

"They mean nothing," I denied quickly as I walked around the desk to put some distance between us. "They are just sketches. I draw everything."

"You only draw me," she corrected me as she turned to face me. "And I found the note."

I stopped walking. The note? The letter I had written after the day I had to whip her. The day I had gone to my room and thrown up until my stomach was empty as the sound of her screams had shattered something inside me.

"I don't know what you are talking about," I said hoarsely.

"June fourteenth," she recited from memory. "Mother ordered the whip again today. I had to do it because if I let Tyler do it he would have cut too deep. I hate that I have to break her to save her."

"Stop it," I commanded as I squeezed my eyes shut.

"You don't hate me," she continued as she took a step closer to me. "You never hated me. You hurt me because you knew that if you didn't do it then Luna Gretel would have killed me. You played the villain to keep me alive."

"I am a villain!" I shouted as I opened my eyes and grabbed her shoulders. "Look at what I have done to you Elsie! I have watched you starve and I have watched you bleed and I did nothing to stop it! I am a coward who hid behind his mother’s skirts while his mate suffered!"

"You kept me alive," she argued as she placed her hands on my chest over my racing heart. "You gave me extra food when you thought I wasn't looking and you assigned me chores that kept me out of her sight on her bad days. I see you Tristan. I see the guilt eating you alive."

"You can choose now," she whispered. "You don't have to be her son anymore. You can be the man who draws me with so much tenderness that it makes me want to cry."

I looked down at her and felt the mate bond surge with a hope I didn't deserve. She wasn't angry. She was offering me absolution. She was standing in the wreckage of my cruelty and telling me that she saw something worth saving.

"I don't deserve you," I said as my voice broke. "I am damaged goods Elsie. I have done things that cannot be forgiven."

"Let me decide what can be forgiven," she said as she leaned up and brushed her lips against my jaw.

The contact sent a jolt of electricity through my body that made my knees weak. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to crush her against me and bury my face in her neck and beg her to never leave me. My hands slid up her arms to cup her face and I tilted her head back.

I leaned in until our breaths mingled and I saw her eyes flutter shut. She wanted this. She wanted me despite everything.

"Tristan," she reached out for me but I held up a hand to stop her.

"Go to bed," she ordered softly.

She opened the door and walked out leaving me alone in the silence of my study. I turned back to the desk and opened the sketchbook. I looked at the drawing of her and Trad and with a sudden burst of anger I ripped the page out and crumpled it in my fist.