Page 444 of Biker's Virgin

; “I have been in love with Tristan since I met him,” I said quietly.

“Whoa,” Jason said, as his expression changed into one of surprise. “That’s… Whoa…”

I smiled. “Does that freak you out?”

“I… Well… No,” he said slowly. “It doesn’t freak me out. It’s just… I mean, when you were younger we suspected you had a crush on him—”

“Who’s ‘we?’” I demanded.

“Mom, Dad, and I,” Jason admitted. “But as you got older, you seemed less…aware of Tristan, and we all assumed you’d gotten over him.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I just got better at hiding it.”

“Ah…”

“In any case, when I went down to the resort, everything was great, and I had a really good time. Tristan and I didn’t see much of each other, and that was expected, but upsetting to me at first. I started dating casually, and Tristan seemed to get jealous of that. Then the night of the resort Christmas party—”

“You slept with Tristan?” Jason interrupted, his voice going up an octave.

“Uh… Well…. yeah.”

“Fuck.”

“It wasn’t just sex, okay?” I said. “We had a relationship… We were in a relationship.”

“For how long?”

“Since Christmas.”

“What?”

“Yeah…”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.

“I didn’t tell anybody.”

“Is that your excuse?”

“I wanted to tell you,” I said. “But… Tristan insisted that he should be the one to tell you. But he obviously never did because he didn’t really intend for our relationship to be long term.”

“But you thought it would be?”

“Things were going so well between us,” I said. “Tristan was amazing—”

“Of course he was amazing, Molls,” Jason said, sounding frustrated. “That’s how he is with women. He’s charming and charismatic and a whole heap of other things besides. It’s how he lures them in. Did you actually believe he would be different with you?”

“Well, yeah,” I said defensively. “It was different between us.”

“Oh,” Jason said, with obvious disbelief.

“Scoff all you want,” I said. “It was different. I felt it. I’ve seen Tristan with old girlfriends, and I know how he behaves around them. With me, he was…more like himself.”

“Okay, then what happened?” Jason asked. “There’s a reason you’re here brooding about something. Something must have gone wrong to make you quit.”

I sighed. “He became distant with me suddenly,” I said, unable to bring myself to tell Jason the whole truth.