Forbidden French

Watching the red wine spread slowly across the tablecloth feels like I’m experiencing the last vestiges of a waking dream. I sit there wholly apart from the chaos that ensues around me, the crying and the shouting—all of it muffled like I’m in a soundproof box.

Sit up straight.

Stay quiet.

Be polite.

Act gracious.

Never argue.

Emmett and his father go at it like two alpha wolves tearing into each other’s flesh and then…Emmett’s gone.

The fight is over.

My grandmother places a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “You behaved wonderfully, darling.”

Except this time, her praise doesn’t feel good.

Her words aren’t the salve I need them to be. I frown and shake my head, looking around the room, first at Emmett’s ridiculous mother shouting about her ruined dress, then at his overbearing father, who’s still pacing with fisted hands, and last at his brother, who’s gone back to eating his food as if nothing’s happened.

I can’t stand it for one more second.

The absurdity of everyone here has me leaping to my feet and tossing my napkin on the table.

“Where are you—”

My grandmother doesn’t get to finish her question.

I’m going after Emmett, but he has the advantage with his head start and his longer, anger-filled strides. When I first spot him, he’s already clear across the hotel lobby. I shout for him to wait, but I don’t think he hears me before he flings the door open and escapes out into the night.

Rather than give up, I curse under my breath and hurry faster. One silly high heel slips off my foot and then, annoyed, I shake off the other, glad to be rid of them as I run and push the hotel door open. Immediately, icy wind tears into me. My feet go numb in a matter of seconds. My eyes water and fight to stay open. I wrap my arms around my chest to try to protect myself as best as possible as I turn in a circle, looking for Emmett.

He’s gone, down the sidewalk, taking off without a car.

“Emmett!” I shout.

The howling wind doesn’t let up.

“EMMETT!”

He turns and looks back, anger still evident in his dark features. There isn’t a moment that passes between him turning around and him rushing back to me, whipping off his suit jacket so he can wrap it around me tightly.

“You’re a fool! Get back inside,” he roars.

“Don’t leave!”

He shakes his head, already taking me by the shoulders so he can push me back. “Lainey, go back inside!” he demands, his voice rising over the wind and the traffic. “You don’t have fucking shoes on.”

God, he’s pissed. With his dad, with me. We’ve made it so impossible for him.

“Please don’t leave.” My voice breaks with emotion, but he doesn’t listen. He’s so intent on being rid of me.

I can already feel the moment starting to slip through my fingers. He’ll deposit me in the lobby and disappear, this fleeting window for honesty will end, and we’ll be right back where we started—enemies.

I can’t bear it.

I can’t endure another breath knowing he hates me.

“I’m sorry!” I shout suddenly, so overcome with emotion that I nearly choke on the words. “I didn’t mean to play a part in any of this—”

“Don’t,” he cuts me off, his jaw locked tight.

“You have to listen, Emmett.” I grab for him, desperate to get it all out. “The last few months have been unbearable. I’ve tried to please everyone. I’ve tried to play the perfect part for my grandmother, but it’s killing me. I’m catatonic, day in and day out. I hear rumors about you, where you are, who you’re with—”

“Where I am and who I’m with has nothing to do with you!” he erupts, so intent on letting his anger get the best of him.

Already, freezing tears are starting to slip down my cheeks.

“How can you say that? How can you be so blind?!” I jerk out of his hold and push his chest again and again so that he’s forced to step back, my momentum carrying us down the sidewalk, away from the hotel. “It’s my heart you stomp on, my fucking soul you crush beneath your ruthless acts. ‘It has nothing to do with me’ and yet every rumor of you with another woman is a knife in my chest. I care for you though you’re an utter fool, a selfish…unkind man.” The longer I rant, the cooler my tone becomes until eventually, I just sound totally defeated. “You have no regard for anyone but yourself. Don’t you see that? I’m in this too. I’m the one you injure in this war with your father.”

Still, he doesn’t listen. “You put yourself in the middle of this, Lainey. You’re to blame as much as me.”

“You’re right. I am equally to blame. But do you know why I was so willing to go through with my grandmother’s request of me? Beyond my desire to please her?” I get right up close to him, my head tilted back, my gaze clashing with his. “You want to know my deep dark secret?” His dark eyes bore into me as I continue faintly, “Because I love you.”

No.

I look down as I amend, “I loved you. Once, when I was younger. I built you up as some fantastic mirage of a man. I left you roses on the dock every night when you swam—”

His expression suddenly changes, hardness giving way to confusion. He shakes his head. “You what? What do you mean, you—”

I toss my hands up in the air, and his jacket slips off my shoulders and falls to the sidewalk in a crumpled heap. It doesn’t matter; I’m immune to the cold now. “That was me!” I slap my chest. “Me sneaking down from my room so I could watch you swim night after night. I was obsessed with you. You gifted me those books on your last day at St. John’s, and you know what? I never returned them, not even when I graduated. I paid the fines and took them home and I still have them. They’ve felt like such treasures and I was so embarrassed to admit it, but now I can’t seem to care at all.”

A wild, end-of-the-road laugh tumbles out of me. I think I’ve gone crazy. I feel crazy.

“The last few months have left me with no ego at all so, in a way, it feels freeing to finally come clean about my silly infatuation with you, because it’s done.” I step back. “You’ve ensured that.”

I’m turning back toward the hotel when he says my name, just once.

“Lainey.”

There’s a poem in that word. It’s gentle and heartbroken and pleading enough that it brings forth a fresh batch of tears, but it doesn’t convince me to turn around.

Unbothered by my bare feet and mascara-covered face, I pull open the door to the hotel and go to find my grandmother. We have a lot to discuss.