Page 239 of The Professor's Wife

“I didn’t want to sit still,” he went on. “It was good to move, but…being up on those falls…I don’t know. Something happened to me. When I made it back to town, I spiraled.”

There was a haunted look in him now that I knew all too well. I saw it in myself when I lost Rowe. As fucked up as it was, Oliver’s teachings might have pulled me back from the same ledge Tristan had lost himself over.

I tried to understand him even more. He had been singing that heart-shattering song last night, and I wondered if while he lost his dad, he had also lost the woman he loved. It would be no wonder why he was so cold and angry.

“I wish someone had been there to help you.” I meant every word. For even a flicker of a moment, I imagined what it might have been like to calm him down.

He looked at me then.

Reallylooked.

His gaze moved slowly over my face before stopping at my mouth. I didn’t realize how deprived I had been of his attention until it returned all at once, his blue eyes staring into mine and dizzying me.

“If I’d seen you then, I think I would’ve lost myself in you.”

My thighs tightened beneath the table, but I refused to smile. The moment was too heavy.

I said, not for the first time, “I’m married, Tristan.”

He said, not for the first time, “I know that.”

“Then why aren’t you running?”

“I ought to,” he admitted tightly. “But I can’t.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer immediately. His eyes moved over my face, lingering at my mouth as though the truth was written there.

“Do you want to come upstairs with me?”

My body tightened, but his question didn’t surprise me. I had known he would ask. Maybe I had known from the moment I left the house that nothing innocent would come of finding him again.

“You’re moving fast.” My attempt at humor fell flat.

His gaze dropped to my mouth.

“I’ve been trying not to.”

“Have you folks had a good look at the menu?”

I barely registered the server as she stopped at our table.

I looked down at the full glass of water, debating my next move, wondering if I was going to play it safe.

You should play it safe. There’s still time to go back to the clinic.

But the thought of walking away from him opened a strange grief inside my chest. It was too deep for a man I had only just met, too immediate to make sense. Something buried inside me recoiled from leaving, as though this moment mattered in a way my mind had not caught up to yet.

Going back to the clinic should have felt like the safer choice.

Instead, it felt wrong.

I cleared my throat and looked back at Tristan. “Actually, there’s been a change of plans.”

I didn’t get a chance to take in his reaction before he immediately stood and gathered his things. His movementswere quick. He slid the satchel back over his broad chest and swung the strap of his guitar case over one shoulder.

I got up, too, following his long strides away from the bewildered server and out of the restaurant.