Page 33 of Filthy Rich Santas

I need to be rescued frommyself, and from this disease I don’t even want to admit to having, much less know how I’m going to handle living with for the rest of my life.

8

TRISTAN

I blink into the darkness,not sure what it was that woke me up. Then it comes again—a knock on my hotel room door. When whoever it is knocks for a third time, I finally get over my groggy confusion and grab my glasses to check the time.

It’s 2:20 in the morning. That gets me moving. Ryder and Beckett are in the other room we booked, and I’m already envisioning an emergency at the club that one of them has come by to bring me in on.

I don’t feel awake enough to work out why they wouldn’t have just called, so it takes me a minute to process my surprise when I open the door to find out it’s not what I was expecting.

“Lana?” My voice is raspy from sleep, but I’m suddenly wide awake when I realize she’s upset. “What’s wrong?”

“Can I come in?”

“Of course.”

I step away from the door, worried over the hitch I hear in her breath. I didn’t bother to turn on the lights, so the room is too dim for me to see her well, but it’s obvious by her loungewear and mussed hair that she came straight from her bed.

“Did something happen?” I ask.

She stands awkwardly just inside the door, shifting from foot to foot and looking up at me with big, glassy eyes. The protective instincts she’s always inspired in me rise up instantly at the sight of her like this.

“Um, no. I mean, yes. But nothing real.”

She looks down, obviously embarrassed, and I step closer, tipping up her chin. “Tell me.”

“I had a bad dream,” she blurts out. “And I just… didn’t want to be alone.”

“Okay.”

Tension flows out of her body, and she sways on her feet. “Okay? Really? That’s not weird?”

“No,” I tell her simply, shoving away the memories that try to rise to the surface.

She called it “nothing real,” but I suffered through enough bad dreams after the accident that took my parents’ lives to know that “real” can be very subjective.

And no one should have to go through that kind of suffering alone.

“So, I can stay with you?” she asks. “You really don’t mind?”

I’m surprised to realize how much I don’t. Maybe it’s the dark, or maybe it’s just that it’s her, but the usual reluctance I feel to have someone in my private space, much less sharing my bed when I’m dressed only in a pair of boxers with most of my scars fully exposed, just isn’t there.

“I don’t mind,” I tell her honestly, leading her over to the bed and pulling the covers back for her.

It’s only after I crawl in next to her that I realize that, just like the room Beckett and Ryder are in, mine is a double too. I could have put her in the second bed, but damn. I really don’t want to. Not just because I’ve always been attracted to her. I’ve long known that nothing can come from that. But because those instincts of mine are only getting stronger.

I want to comfort her, protect her, be the wall between her and all her fears tonight, whatever those may be.

Lana doesn’t complain about sharing my bed, so I set my glasses back on the nightstand and pull the blankets over the both of us after settling onto my back, careful not to touch her. That’s not what she asked for, so I leave a good amount of space between us, hoping my presence here will help.

“Okay now?” I ask, staring up at the darkness.

“Uh huh,” she says, her breath still ragged and shallow in a way that I don’t like. Then after a minute, she adds a soft, “Thanks,” followed by a quiet sniffle.

Then it comes again, as if she’s fighting to hold off tears, and it breaks my resolve to keep my distance.

“Lana,” I mutter, rolling toward her and pulling her into my arms.

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