Chapter 41 Limits
We were in Tristan’s car, driving back to the estate from the Veridian tower. The city lights were blurring past the window, streaks of gold and red that hurt my eyes.
Tristan was driving with one hand on the wheel. His other hand was resting on the center console, inches from my knee. He looked... undone. His tie was gone. His top button was undone. There was a smudge of my lipstick on his jaw that I hadn’t wiped off.
He looked triumphant.
He looked like a man who had gambled everything on a single hand and won the pot.
"Are you hungry?" he asked. His voice was low, intimate. The voice of a lover. "Marco probably left dinner in the warming drawer. Or I can make something. I make decent eggs."
I stared out the window. "I’m not hungry."
"You should eat. You burned a lot of calories."
He chuckled. A dark, throaty sound that vibrated through the quiet cabin.
I closed my eyes, feeling a wave of nausea roll through me.
He had warned me. He had told me exactly what this was. And I had let him shoot up.
Worse. I had helped him find the vein.
I shifted in my seat, the green silk dress sticking uncomfortably to my skin. I felt exposed. Used. Not by him but by myself. I had used him to scratch an itch, to soothe the ache of five years of loneliness, and in doing so, I had dismantled every boundary I had painstakingly built since I arrived.
"Mina?"
He reached out. His fingers brushed my thigh.
I flinched.
I didn't mean to. It was a reflex. A physical rejection of the intimacy we had just shared.
Tristan withdrew his hand instantly. The car swerved slightly before he corrected it.
"Sorry," he said, his voice tightening. "I didn't mean to startle you."
"It’s fine," I said. My voice sounded brittle. Like dry leaves.
"You’re quiet."
"I’m thinking."
"About what?"
"About the elevator," I said. "About the fact that the maintenance log will show exactly when it stopped and started. About the security cameras in the lobby that recorded us walking out looking like we’d just..." I trailed off, waving a hand.
"Looking like we just reconnected," he finished. "Let them talk. I don't care."
"I care, Tristan. I care about professionalism. I care about the fact that I am the lead architect and you are the client, and we just..."
"We just made love," he said softly.
"We had sex," I corrected sharply. "In an elevator. Because the air was thin and the adrenaline was high. Don't romanticize it."
The silence that followed was sharp. It cut the air in the car.
Tristan gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.
"Is that what that was to you?" he asked, keeping his eyes on the road. "Adrenaline?"
"Yes," I lied. "We were trapped. We were emotional. It was a reaction."
"It felt like more than a reaction, Minerva. You screamed my name."
"I told you," I said, my voice shaking. "I have bad luck with enclosed spaces."
He didn't speak for the rest of the drive. The triumph drained out of the car, replaced by a heavy, suffocating tension.
We pulled up to the estate. The gates opened. The house loomed in the darkness, the windows dark except for the porch light.
Tristan parked. He killed the engine.
But he didn't unlock the doors.
"We need to talk," he said.
"I’m tired, Tristan."
"I don't care. We are not doing this. We are not doing the 'morning after' regret thing. Not tonight."
"It’s not morning," I said. "It’s midnight."
"Stop deflecting." He turned in his seat to face me. The shadows cut across his face, making his eyes look like voids. "What happened in that elevator was real. It was the first real thing that’s happened between us in five years. Don't you dare reduce it to a mistake."
"It was a mistake!" I snapped. "Because nothing has changed! Ida is still in jail. The press is still watching. And you... you are still the man who wants to own me."
"I don't want to own you," he said, his voice rising. "I want to love you."
"Your love is ownership, Tristan! That’s the only way you know how to do it! You proved it today! You fired a man for looking at me! You dragged me into an elevator to trap me! And I let you! I let you win!"
"You think this is a game?" he asked, incredulous. "You think I’m keeping score? I’m trying to survive, Minerva! I’m trying to keep you in my life by any means necessary!"
"By any means necessary," I repeated. "That’s exactly the problem. You don't care about the collateral damage. You don't care about my boundaries. You just care about getting what you want."
I reached for the door handle.
"Unlock the door, Tristan."
"No."
"Tristan."
"Not until you admit it," he said. "Not until you admit that you wanted it just as much as I did. That you’re not a victim here."
I froze.
He was right. That was the knife in my gut. I wasn't a victim. I was a participant. I had worn the dress. I had walked into the elevator. I had said yes.
"I wanted it," I whispered. "I admit it. I wanted you. My body wanted you."
"And your heart?"
I looked at him. I looked at the hope in his eyes, the desperate, terrifying hope that I could fix him, that I could fill the hole Ida had left.
"My heart is tired, Tristan," I said. "My heart remembers what happened the last time I let you in."
He flinched.
"I’m not that man anymore," he said.