Contents (109)
- Contents
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- 68
- 69
- 70
- 71
- 72
- 73
- 74
- 75
- 76
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85
- 86
- 87
- 88
- 89
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- 99
- The South of France
- Author’s Note
- Reading Group Guide
- A Conversation with the Author
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
I told her it was fine, that I wanted her to feel she could tell me anything.
“I’m not usually a crier,” she said, sniffing back tears. “It’s embarrassing.”
“Hey, show me three minutes of Bambi and I’m blubbering like a baby.”
“Oh sure,” she said but managed a smile, then ran a finger along my tattoo. “Tough Mister Kill Van Kull.”
“Not so tough,” I said and meant it, drawing her into my arms, wanting to take care of her, to protect her. I was sorry to hear all she’d been through, sorry for her mother too. But it felt good that she had confided in me. I didn’t know what love was supposed to feel like, but for the first time in my life, I thought I might be feeling it and did not want to lose the feeling, lose her. I wanted to say, I’ll help you with your mother when we get back to New York. I’ll help you with anything but I didn’t want to scare her, so all I said was “It’s okay.”
That night, Alex slept in my arms, several times waking me with her violent twitching and mumbling, obviously bad dreams. “Shh,” I’d say, stroking her forehead, and she’d settle back to sleep until the next bad dream.
In the morning, I slipped out of bed early, trying not to wake her, then stopped to kiss her when I was dressed and ready to go.
“Where are you going?” she asked, lifting her head from the pillow.
“Paris, remember? I’ll be back in a couple of days.”
“Oh…right.” She tugged me back for another kiss, this one passionate but fraught, then pushed me away. “Go!” she said, pulling the blanket up to her neck and burying her face in the pillow.
52
Alex dressed quickly, started to make the bed, brought the pillowcase to her nose and inhaled Luke’s scent. She was glad he’d gone, couldn’t bear that he had. Jesus. She hadn’t signed up for this. She exchanged the pillow for the framed photo, the one she always carried with her, she and her mother, the mother she preferred to remember, the mother who remembered her.
Why had she talked so much last night? Was she looking for sympathy, excuses, hoping to be rescued? Luke Perrone the white knight, she the damsel in distress? If anyone was going to need rescuing, it would probably be him, not her.
She set the photo back on the bedside table, thinking sometimes you did things for the people you loved, no matter how hard, how wrong, because you had to, because you saw no other way.
53
The morning sky over Paris was slate gray, though the city was as beautiful as I had imagined. I’d taken a cab from the airport and, eager to see as much of the city as possible, had dumped my bag and was now strolling in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, an historic district of whitewashed buildings with wrought-iron balconies, fancy boutiques, and high-end art galleries.