Page 13 of Mystic Wonderful

He sighed, hating that she thought him so suspectable…afraid that he truly was.

But he and Tris were teammates. They would need to work together on innumerable missions, would have to cooperate, trust one another, rely on one another. Francis couldn’t afford for there to be any sort of resentment or uncertainty between them.

So the next morning, after breakfast, he checked his shirt for crumbs, and went in search of Tris.

He wasn’t in the workout room, but one of the Blue Knights glanced up from his treadmill and said, “You looking for Mayweather?”

Francis fought to sound indifferent. “Yeah, you seen him?”

“He hit the showers, probably. I think he broke that treadmill. And I’ve never seen anyone dothatmany reps with the free weights. Can’t believe he walked out on his own, honestly.”

O…kay.

“Thanks,” Francis said, and headed for the locker room – slowly. It sounded like Tris was in a mood, and he couldn’t help but think it was because of him. Tris was the stoic sort, and it would be like him to throw all his anger into physical exercise rather than talk about it.

What would he do, though, when faced with the cause of that anger?

Francis wasn’t brave enough to go into the locker room and search for him there, keenly aware that finding him in any state of undress would put Tris at a disadvantage for what was sure to be an uncomfortable conversation.

He leaned back against the wall opposite the locker room door and settled in to wait, unable to keep a dozen possible scenarios from unfolding in his mind, each more alarming than the last. What if Tris refused to work with him from now on? What if he’d gotten himself kicked out of Gold Company in the heat of one rash, flustered moment?

It was twenty minutes before the door finally opened, and by that time, Francis had all but tied himself in knots.

Belatedly, he realized that there could be any number of people about to step out of the locker room, and that he might have jerked all over as if shocked for nothing.

But, no, it was Tris.

Fresh from the shower, hair damp and dripping at the ends, droplets dappling the shoulders of his very tight white t-shirt.

Francis’s traitorous eyes went there first, because he was a pig, and then shifted up to meet Tris’s gaze – where something surprising happened.

Tris’s gaze became a hard, polished, impenetrable wall that wasn’t a glare, but somehow worse than one. Before that, though, between one blink and the next, Francis saw an unmistakeable doubt flicker there, deep, and startling, and quickly tamped down. Covered. A sign of feeling, beneath the granite mask, one more vulnerable and entrancing than Francis had ever expected.

But then he was his public self again, and he spared Francis a long, unfeeling look before setting off down the hall.

Courage bolstered by that glimpse of something more, Francis fell into step beside him.

“Tristan.” This felt like a time for formality. “I wondered if I could talk to you for a minute.”

He didn’t get an answer – but silence wasn’t a refusal, so he pressed on. “I wanted to apologize about yesterday. I–”

A muttered curse was all the warning he got before a hand closed around his forearm, and he was shoved sideways down another hall and into the shadowed doorway of a recessed closet.

“What–”

Tris swung around in front of him, right in his face, his superior height and breadth nearly blotting out the light from the caged bulb in the hallway ceiling. Up close, he smelled like the chemical pine of body wash; heat from the shower rolled off his skin. Francis could just make out the dark gleam of his eyes; they burned.

“I know you look like an idiot,” Tris growled, “but you can’t go around acting like one.”

He was too shocked to be offended. “Wha–”

“If you keep throwing yourself at all of your sparring partners like that, somebody’s gonna take you up on the offer eventually. Whether or not you want them to.”

“I wasn’t–”

“This is war, not a house party,” Tris snarled. “Grow the fuck up.”

He’d been squeezing Francis’s arm tighter and tighter throughout this short, furious dressing-down, and he let go now, just as suddenly as he’d first grabbed him, and stalked off while Francis was still gathering breath.

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