Forbidden French

“Come home with me.”

It’s the third time I’ve asked.

I have Lainey in the back of my car. We’re heading through the city streets, back toward her grandmother’s house after leaving Bar 717. At any second, we’ll arrive and she’ll get out, and I hate that I haven’t been able to change her mind about coming back to my place.

“It’s not even midnight.”

She shrugs, keeping her attention out the window. “Then you still have time to go find another woman to kiss when the ball drops. I’m sure Miranda would be all too happy to oblige. And if not her, the next one down the line…”

I haven’t touched her since we walked out of that draped-off corner of the bar, but I’ve had enough. I reach over and grab her by the chin, forcing her to look at me. I’m not being kind or respectful. I’m being a fucking animal.

“What do you need me to say? She means nothing. They all mean nothing. If I never saw them again, I’d think nothing of it.”

She tries half-heartedly to pull away, but I don’t let her.

I lean in closer. “You’re the one I want, petite souris.”

Her green eyes are wide with panic. Her pupils dilated. Her lips bruised and red.

What we did at the club was torture, barely a taste.

The car starts to slow. We’ve arrived, and Lainey’s relief is palpable.

She’s unbuckled and opening her door before we even come to a full stop. I follow suit, flinging my door open to walk her up the stairs.

She’s not amused.

“Do you find it so hard to believe that I want you?” I ask.

She whirls around to face me, her voice turning desperate as she throws her hands out toward me. “Do you find it so hard to believe that I don’t care?”

“I thought we were done with lies.”

I almost touch her again, almost pull her into my arms and force the issue.

It’s hard to stay away and watch her shake her head as she looks up to the cold night sky. When she resigns herself to meeting my gaze again, a fissure of fear runs through me. There’s a detachment there, a purposeful separation between us.

“Emmett, I almost feel bad for you. When’s the last time a woman actually turned you down? When’s the last time you were heartbroken over someone?”

I drag my hands through my hair, utterly exasperated that she’s trying to degrade the issue to something as mundane as that. “Don’t paint me with that brush. You know I’m not that guy. We sat in the library at St. John’s and whispered our fucking secrets to each other. We had a kinship, you and I, and you know full well I’ve dealt with heartache. I’m a bleeding heart on your doorstep, Lainey. I’ve known so little love in my life that it’s blatantly obvious to me what this is.”

She looks physically wounded by my declaration.

“How can you ignore that?” I ask, my voice already fading.

Then she forcefully shakes her head, wanting no more of this discussion. “Good night, Emmett.”

Jacobs is there closing the door after she steps inside her grandmother’s house. He gives me a disapproving frown as if discouraging me from trying to go in after her.

Fuck.

I curse under my breath as I head back to my car.

I don’t know what I expected Lainey to do when I showed up at the club tonight—throw herself in my arms? She did, however briefly.

This situation is complicated and messy and I worry we’re approaching a point where for her, enough is enough. No matter the past we share or the undeniable chemistry between us—it might not be worth it to her. I can’t bear the thought.

I ride back to my house in silence, replaying everything she told me on Christmas Eve.

Her insistence that her feelings for me are in the past doesn’t hold water.

She kissed me in that dark corner tonight. I felt her desire.

Right now, she’s scared and angry. Her defense mechanism has always been to pull back and self-isolate, to shrink herself down into corners and hide. She thinks she’s protected as long as she keeps me at arm’s length, but I won’t allow it.

I owe Lainey a fight, not just the Lainey I know now, but the girl I met when she was thirteen, the girl I gifted my library books to, the girl who kept them all this time.

The following evening, I show up at Fay Davenport’s house with flowers in hand. I knock and stand there, straightening my tie, feeling as fidgety as a teenager about to pick up his prom date. Jacobs opens the door, and I watch his lips purse in disapproval as he takes me in.

“I’d like to see Lainey.”

He nods tersely and grants me entry into the foyer, but he doesn’t invite me to take a seat or make myself comfortable. He disappears down the hall, and the grand house’s silence bears down on me from all sides.

A row of pictures on a marble entry table captures my attention. It’s Lainey through the years: proudly showing off two missing front teeth, about to walk in for her first day of elementary school, smiling and holding her college diploma. There’s even a photo of her during the time I knew her at St. John’s. I lean down to get a closer look, and emotion tightens my throat. I recognize the location right away. She’s at St. John’s sitting on the grass in between the rose garden and the lake. She’s wearing that pink tulle dress and she has perfect ringlet curls in her hair. It strikes me as odd that her grandmother chose to frame the photo, because Lainey doesn’t look happy. She’s not smiling at the photographer. She’s looking back over her shoulder at the camera, her pale green eyes pleading for something.

When I was at St. John’s, I knew Lainey was young and fragile, but seeing her now through the eyes of an adult, it seems impossible that she could have survived such a place.

“She isn’t receiving visitors at the moment,” Jacobs says with a jut of his chin.

I stand up and nod. “Right.”

Well seeing as how I have no plans to mow down a butler well into his sixties, I set the flowers down in front of the photos of Lainey and ask him to make sure she gets them. Then I leave with plans to return the next day.

And I do.

I even develop a routine. I leave work and stop by a florist right by my house so they can put together a bouquet for me.

“Another?” the owner asks with a wink. “You certainly know how to spoil her.”

Then, I go and stand in Fay Davenport’s foyer. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes…Lainey never shows.

By the sixth day, I decide maybe the flowers aren’t right. So, I stop in at a bookstore instead.

It doesn’t take me a long time of perusing the aisles before I land on The Midnight Library. I read it a few years ago and loved it; it felt like a book I immediately wanted to discuss with someone. Now, Lainey can be that someone.

I purchase the book and go through the now-familiar routine of knocking on Fay Davenport’s door and contending with a displeased Jacobs.

He opens the door and delivers a drawn-out “Yes?”

I brush past him, walking into the foyer so we can get this dog and pony show on the road.

“Jacobs, you look well this evening.”

He clears his throat, trying hard to continue to find me unamusing, but his act can only go on for so long. At this point, we’re practically friends.

He closes the door and turns to assess me. “No flowers this evening?”

I hold up the book for him.

“Think she’ll like it?”

“She enjoys reading,” he says, attempting to stay neutral.

“And what has she done with the flowers?”

Hopefully they haven’t all suffered a terrible fate, buried at the bottom of a trash can, shredded in a garbage disposal, crushed beneath the heel of her shoe.

“They’re in her room.”

My eyebrows spike. “All of them?”

He nods a bit reluctantly, as if he’s betraying her by giving me this information.

“Good. When you go alert her of my arrival tonight, you should tell her I have no plans of stopping.”

“Tonight, I won’t tell her anything. She isn’t in residence.”

It’s Friday night, close to 8 PM.

Surely, she’s not…

“Is she on a date?” I ask, sounding indignant.

He nods nearly imperceptibly. “A friend came to collect her. Collette. They went to dinner.”

There’s no inflection in his tone, no hint of any feelings.

“Right. Thanks.”

I hand him the book, knowing he’ll pass it on to her. On my way out the door, I turn back to him. “Has anyone ever told you that you missed your calling with the FBI?”

I swear, for the first time since I met him, he almost smiles.

“Good night, Mr. Mercier.”

The next day, I have a work dinner with Alexander and the team from Banks and Barclay that runs late. I don’t leave my office until close to 10:30 PM, but I still have my driver take me to Lainey’s grandmother’s house. Once we pull up and I see all the lights off, I decide I can’t knock. I’ve missed my opportunity, and it doesn’t sit well with me. The day went by without a visit and I don’t want Lainey to get the wrong idea, so the next morning, I arrive on her doorstep before work. The sun hasn’t even fully risen, and my breath is visible as I wait for Jacobs to let me in.

I have coffee and fresh croissants from a bakery, enough for Jacobs and everyone.

The moment he opens the door, I quickly explain, “Tell her I came last night, but it was too late.”

He nods as he lets me in, closing the door against the chill before taking the food and drinks from my outstretched hands.

I expect him to send me away like usual with some brushoff about how Lainey is otherwise occupied, but he returns a few minutes later with The Midnight Library in hand.

My heart sinks. My brows furrow as I have no choice but to accept it. It feels like an obvious rejection. She might not have returned the flowers, but she’s returning the book. She’s telling me to stop.

Then I feel the raised ridges on the spine, the evidence of a book read through to the end, bent back on itself and well-loved. I turn it in my hand, running my finger down over the binding with gentle reverence.

“She read all of yesterday evening,” Jacobs divulges as I continue to study the book. “Up in the front sitting room. I think she might have been waiting for you to come.”

I’m impatient, giddy almost, as I rush to speak. “Let her know I’ll come back this evening. I’ll bring another book.”

I look back up at him, and there’s a softness in his gaze he’s usually careful to hide.

He nods to let me know he’ll keep up his end of the bargain then I’m rushing back to my car, already thinking of which title I should get her next. I slide onto the back seat and the book falls open on my lap. Neon yellow highlighter catches my eye. I flip a few more pages to see she’s done it every so often, highlighted a line or two of text. Once, a whole paragraph. There are no annotations or notes. Instead, she’s simply marked her favorite passages. It’s her way of letting me know she liked it.