Backdraft - The Secret Life of Trystan Scott #2 (3 page)

After all this time, he finally understood
what Mari meant—that a kiss was worth something—that it meant
something. This was the difference between a shallow kiss and one
that he craved with every ounce of his being. When Trystan opened
his eyes, he looked Brie in the face. For once, she was silent.
Shocked. They both stared at each other as the spot light faded and
curtain swung shut.

Trystan dropped his hands and stepped away.
He felt sick, like he’d done something wrong.

“Trystan,” she said his name like he had a
tremendous effect on her. Brie stared at him with her red lips
parted, waiting for him to respond. He’d never kissed her like that
before. Sure, he’d kissed her plenty of times before that, but it
never meant anything. It was purely fun, purely lust. This time was
different, because he was thinking of Mari and her perfectly sweet
lips. Apparently, Brie felt the difference. The look in her eye
said she wasn’t done with him yet, that he could have more.

Trystan said nothing. There was no way he was
telling her what changed, why the kiss felt passionate. Instead, he
turned to the wing where Mari was sitting and walked off stage.
When he passed through the curtain, there were several stage crew
members blocking his path. One slapped him on the back and said,
“Holy hell! That was hot!”

Brie watched him walk away with her fingers
to her lips like she never realized what she had while she had
it.

When Trystan finally plowed through the kids,
he found Mari’s seat empty. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. That
was Mari’s kiss and he gave it to someone else—someone he detested.
Trystan sat down hard in Mari’s chair and leaned back, running his
fingers through his hair. Where was she?

Tucker’s voice boomed from the other side of
the curtain, “Take a break, Scott.”

That was all he needed to hear. Trystan got
up and exited through the side stage door. He walked through the
empty halls toward the cafeteria and went to the vending machines.
He normally didn’t buy stuff like that. It was too expensive, but
he wanted caffeine. He was shaking, his stomach churning inside of
him like he’d be sick.

Fishing a dollar out of his pocket, Trystan
fed it to the machine and then pressed a button. A Coke tumbled out
of the bottom of the machine. He bent down and picked it up, lost
in thought. Trystan walked back slowly, drinking his sugar quickly,
when Seth ran up next to him. A teacher screamed at Seth to stop
running, but he didn’t slow until he reached Trystan.

“Hey man,” Seth huffed. “You almost done? I
have us a dinner date lined up.” He waggled his eyebrows, very
proud of his latest catch. It had to be the 7-Eleven twins. Seth
had been hanging around them nearly every day.

Trystan groaned inside, but he didn’t show
any sign that he wasn’t interested. He didn’t want to fight about
Mari again. Nodding, Trystan said, “Yeah. Give me about forty-five
minutes. We should be done by then.”

Seth grinned, “She’s so hot, man. And her
rack is like,” he paused his hands cupping the air as a look of awe
spread across his face, “so perfect.”

“Which one?”

“Like it matters?” Seth laughed. “They’re
twins. They’ve got the same of everything.” He elbowed Trystan,
like his crass comment amused them both and then took off in the
other direction. “Later, Scott! Don’t be late!”

Trystan shook his head. He was starting to
think that he and Seth had little in common anymore. At some point,
Seth fixated on bodies and Trystan wanted more than that. A good
body was great, but without a brain it didn’t hold much appeal.
Mari had a great mind, filled with tack-sharp wit and other awesome
things. Plus she had the body, too. He grinned, thinking about it.
Trystan started back toward the auditorium, chugging the rest of
his Coke.

As he rounded the corner, Trystan saw Mari
leaning against the wall by the stage door. Her head was tilted up,
her eyes closed like she was upset. His heart twisted in his chest.
He watched her for a moment, unsure if he should approach, but he
couldn’t help himself. His feet took him to her. It was like they
were two magnets and when she was near, he couldn’t pass her
by.

“You okay?” Trystan asked, stopping in front
of her.

Mari jumped when she heard his voice. She
looked directly at him. There were no tears in her eyes, but he
knew something was bothering her. Something had been bothering her
all day. Mari seemed more agitated and jumpy than normal. “Yeah,
fine.” She waited a moment, then crossed her arms and sighed, “I
don’t get it.”

Trystan leaned his shoulder against the wall
next to her. The hairs on the back of his neck started to rise. He
ignored the warning premonition. Looking down into her face, he
asked, “What don’t you get?”

“How you can do that. How you can make
everyone believe your emotions are real, even when they aren’t.
That kiss...” She spit out the word
kiss
, shaking her head.
Mari’s soft brown curls moved as she did it, falling forward into
her face. She pushed them back, her gaze skewering him in place.
“It makes it hard to believe that you like someone else. That’s
all.”

Trystan didn’t understand why she was upset.
Her reaction was strange considering what she’d told him earlier.
She didn’t care about him that way, and while kissing Brie made
Trystan feel dirty, it shouldn’t have had any effect on Mari.
Unless…

Unless what, Scott? Take a hint
, the
voice inside his head scolded,
she doesn’t like you. Stop acting
like she does.

Maybe his words were too clipped, but once he
said them, he couldn’t take them back. “Why does it matter, Mari?
It doesn’t affect you.”
And you’d tell me if it did
, he
hoped.

She straightened like he’d hit her.

Crap. That was the wrong thing to say.

“No, it doesn’t.” Mari looked at him once
like he was cruel, and started to walk away.

He reached for her, grabbing her wrist,
wanting an explanation. “Hey, wait a second. Mari, what is this?
You know me.” His heart throbbed harder as his hand gripped her
wrist. Her skin was so warm, so smooth. When she looked up at him
with those dark eyes, he was lost.

“I’m not so sure anymore.” She looked down at
his hand on her arm like she didn’t want it there.

“What do you mean? Of course you know me.”
Trystan tried to strangle the pleading tone out of his voice, but
it wouldn’t budge. An icy feeling was pooling in his stomach as he
watched her.

“I’m never really sure if the guy I know is
the real Trystan or the act.” She tucked a curl behind her ear and
looked up at Trystan with those eyes. They said everything. She
didn’t trust him. She didn’t know what to believe anymore and it
was his own damn fault. “You can put on a dazzling show when you
try. How I am supposed to know what’s real and what’s not?” When
she asked the question, she couldn’t look at him. Her gaze fell to
the floor.

He took her shoulders in his hands. “Look at
me, Mari. You know me. I wouldn’t lie to you. About anything.” Her
gaze lifted and met his. Her brown eyes seemed incredibly
vulnerable right then, and he didn’t know why. Trystan knew this
was important to her, that she felt misled and he wanted to fix it.
He lifted a hand to her face and tucked a stray hair behind her
ear, letting his fingers linger in her soft hair. His voice was
soft, beseeching, “You know me better than anyone else. You always
have.”

Mari swallowed hard, her eyes locked on his.
She didn’t look away. She didn’t shirk him off like she usually
did. Instead she stood there, barely breathing, looking for the
truth in his eyes. His gut twisted like someone was wringing it
out. The way she looked at him said so much. Did she really
not
see it? Of course not. She saw the guy on stage, the one
who kissed Brie—the one who was never serious about anyone.

Finally she said, “I don’t know.”

“Come to the prop room tomorrow with Tucker’s
pass. I’ll show you that I’m serious. Acting is acting. Brie
doesn’t have my heart.” He paused, willing her to see it, to feel
it. Squeezing her shoulders, he said, “Someone else does.”

Mari broke the intense gaze, nervously
tucking her hair behind her ear, and stepped back. He smiled at
her. The way she tucked her hair behind her ear was a tick that he
hadn’t noticed before. Something about the way she did it, like she
was trying to hide from him, made him adore her even more.

“We’ll see, I guess. I want to believe you. I
really do. I just... I don’t know anymore, but I’ll come. I’ll be
there because of what happened today. All of it.” Mari gave him a
weak smile and turned on her heel to leave.

Trystan’s eyes slid over her curves and
landed on her hips for a second. The black top she wore wasn’t
tight, but it wasn’t loose either. Coupled with those jeans and
that sexy hair, she looked like a goddess—and just as far out of
reach.

Mari was too good for him and he knew it.

CHAPTER 4

~MARI~

I didn’t want to watch that part, but the end
of the second act drew me back to my seat. No one blocked my line
of sight, so I had the perfect place to watch Trystan give Brie a
perfect kiss. The tension in the air was so thick, the way he
looked at her made my stomach twist. It was like watching the lines
when he ran them with me. Nothing seemed real in that moment. The
guy I loved was inching closer to someone else, his lips pressing
to hers, his hands gently touching her face. It was like hitting
replay and watching him kiss me. Suddenly it felt like there was no
air. The room grew hotter as my heart slapped into my ribs, banging
inside of me like I was going to die.

That was my kiss. It was the same kiss he
gave me in the prop room. I’d known it was fake, that he was
acting, but somehow seeing it in front of me was too much. I felt
sick and couldn’t stay there for another second. My stomach
churched like I ate glass as I staggered to my feet. My head was
caught somewhere between being crushed in a vice and floating away.
Anger surged through my veins, but not at Trystan—at myself.

How could I be so stupid? I’d come to think
that the kiss we shared meant something to him. The way he looked
at me, the way he leaned in so slow that my heart felt like it
would burst, even the way he gently pressed his lips to mine—it was
all nothing. Out on the stage, it looked like Trystan hit a replay
button. The entire thing played out, just as it was done to me, but
he was with another girl and it was right in front of my face. It
didn’t matter that he was acting. I couldn’t get control of myself.
My eyes stung as I tried not to blink. Tears would roll down my
cheeks. I looked insane as it was, shoving my way through gawking
kids and running away like there was a fire.

My kiss was nothing to Trystan. Our kiss
meant nothing.

Irritated with myself for being so naive, I
hurried through the hallway to my locker. Pretending that I forgot
something gave me a moment’s peace. I darted from my chair while
everyone else watched the lights fade to black. It was like the air
was charged with hormones and I imagined Trystan would get a fair
amount of high-fives and crass statements for delivering such a
smoking-hot kiss in front of so many people.

I fumed as I raced to my locker, trying to
calm down. The teachers wouldn’t say anything as long as I didn’t
linger, and as long as I didn’t run. I opened the door and leaned
my head against the shelf, feeling the cold metal against my skin.
The scent of paper and musty textbooks filled my head.

How dumb am I?
I wondered.

For a moment I thought that Trystan actually
liked me. When I heard him sing, it made me feel like there was a
part of him that I couldn’t see. There was genuine pain and longing
in that song. Could he have concocted that song and all its
haunting beauty like he concocted that kiss? Could he toy with a
girl’s emotions as easily? I felt sick. How could I be so stupid?
And what about everything else? All those looks, the way he brushed
my hand when I was close, the way he looked at me—
I swear, if I
didn’t know better I would have thought he liked me
.

But I did know better. I knew Trystan Scott
and this was one-hundred percent Trystan behavior. Damn, the guy
was like a total sociopath. He wore so many masks, way more than
I’ve ever even tried on, and each one fits him perfectly. He can
become what he needs to be, what people expect, at the snap of a
finger. The guy I saw so rarely was hidden somewhere beneath layers
too deep to fathom.

Why does he do that? Why does he change when
different people are around? The version of Trystan that sat in the
basement and played the guitar, the earlier version that wasn’t Day
Jones even, those were great. What’s not to like? Why hide when
everyone loves you? There has to be a reason for it, but I had no
idea what it was.

Yeah, you know. He likes getting what he
wants
, my inner-voice chided.

Oh God, was he that shallow? Did he really
change to suit who he was with to get what he wanted? Trystan
couldn’t be that shallow. Deep in my bones, I knew he wasn’t like
that. There was something else. Something more that damaged him.
There had to be. Trystan had that lost puppy thing about him. It
made girls flock to him and want to be with him. That was always
there. It never went away. He wore it like a scar. It was a piece
of him that he couldn’t hide no matter how much he smiled and
flirted.

I checked my face in my mirror and pressed
the locker closed. Walking back to the stage door, I stopped for a
second and leaned against the wall trying to blow off what I’d just
seen.

It doesn’t matter what he does with Brie
or anyone else. Trystan and I are nothing, but friends.
I kept
telling myself that, but it didn’t take away the sting. Pressing my
eyes closed, I took a deep breath. When I opened them again, I saw
Trystan standing in front of me with a can of Coke, asking me a
question that I barely heard.