when he’d made it perfectly clear that he wanted nothing to do with me. Especially not when Leo was proving himself to be the best boyfriend I could ask for. He’d even arranged a romantic picnic on the dock a few nights ago, after I’d insisted that we didn’t need to go out. I wouldn’t screw him over by thinking about screwing his brother.
Not wanting to engage in additional banter with Tristin, I grabbed my clothes and shut myself in the closet to change. Then I gave myself a mental pep talk. Because, if I was going to survive spending time with him again, I was going to have to get it the fuck together.
Leo is your boyfriend. You lo...like him a lot. You want to jump his sexy bones.
Tristin is your housemate and classmate. He’s not your friend. He hurt you once, and he’ll do it again.
I repeated something to that effect several times before forcing myself to push open the door and escape to the bathroom to pull a brush through my hair. When I was ready, I grabbed my purse and followed Tristin to the garage. Expecting him to head for the Tesla, I stuttered to a stop when he passed it and paused next to the passenger door of my car.
My car. That was going to take some getting used to.
“What are you doing?”
He leaned back against the Audi and crossed one long, denim-clad leg over the other. “After all of the chauffeuring I’ve done for you, I think it’s about time you repaid the favor.”
I wanted to argue. Not because I cared about driving. But because I still wasn’t comfortable with Vincent’s “non-gift.” It irked me to no end that he believed he’d won.
Still, Tristin had a point. It was more than past my turn.
“Okay.”
As I started the engine moments later, I realized that maybe this would be a good thing. If I was focused on not wrecking this way-too-expensive vehicle, I wouldn’t have the brain space to obsess over Tristin’s proximity.
“It suits you,” he said, once I’d made it safely onto the main street through Moss Harbor.
“We both know that isn’t true. A fifteen-year-old Honda, maybe. But not this extravagant piece of well-crafted machinery.”
He huffed out something that sounded almost like a laugh. “You don’t give yourself enough credit.”
“Whatever. We both know I’m nothing more than a forced-nomad-turned-farm-girl whose mother happened to be beautiful enough to catch the eye of a wealthy businessman.”
He made that grunt-rumble sound in the back of his throat I’d forgotten about. “You’re full of shit.”
Unable to resist, I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. He was studying me, his face relaxed almost to the point of appearing soft. “No. You don’t get to do that.”
“Do what?”
I returned my full attention to the road. “You don’t get to pretend like you think I’m anything more than pond scum.”
At that, he did laugh. “Pond scum? Really?”
“Yes. Pond scum.”
A quote about being the fungus that fed on the pond scum from My Best Friend’s Wedding came to mind, but I had a feeling Tristin wouldn’t appreciate the reference. For some strange reason, that had been one of the few movies Aunt Emmy had owned that wasn’t a Western. It was my one and only piece of evidence that she’d had a romantic bone in her body.
“Now, you’re just being ridiculous.”
“Am I?” I half-shouted, despite the few feet of distance between us. “You told me to leave you the fuck alone. And then you stopped attending Civ because of me. Not to mention that time you saw me on campus and pretended like I was fucking invisible.” I tightened my hands on the steering wheel. “Pretty sure that all qualifies me as pond scum in your eyes.”
“Thea.” He sighed my name as though it was a plea.
But I couldn’t deal with whatever else he had to say right now. “It doesn’t matter. Can we talk about Greg? What does he know about why we’re having this meeting?”
Tristin didn’t respond for a good thirty seconds. “He only knows I’m bringing a friend along who needs to ask him some questions about his time at Sharpe Shipping.”
“Do you think he’ll tell me anything?”
“If he knows anything, yes. Like I told you before, there is no love lost between him and my father. He’d probably be happy to stick it to the old man, given the chance.”
Nerves flitted through my stomach. As much as I wanted answers, I wasn’t sure what I