The Virgin Society Collection

20. Inevitable

20

INEVITABLE

Jules

At the airport a few days later, I can’t help wondering if coincidence will win again.

Like at the Albrecht Mansion the night we met.

Like at An Open Book.

Will it go for a third time?

I look for Finn at the check-in desk. In security. A burst of adrenaline-fueled hope powers me on. I walk faster, scanning the gate just in case he’s there.

But there’s no sign of him.

When I board the plane to Charles de Gaulle, I still hunt, and it’s half annoying, half exhilarating. I look around for him in first class, searching for his thick head of hair, his stubbled jaw, his chiseled cheekbones. His casual grin that lights me up.

Most of all, I’m searching for the eyes that seem to know me.

The first several rows are filled with women in Chanel power suits, men in joggers and backward caps, and teens in baggy jeans.

But no Finn.

I pass the curtain, leaving first class behind me.

I let out a disappointed sigh. It was foolish to think I’d see him. Besides, he’s a first-class kind of guy, and I’m here in coach, sliding into row 21.

I sleep most of the flight, then grab my luggage and head, bleary-eyed, to my boutique hotel on a curvy street in Montmartre. As the taxi whips through Paris, I stare at the sights between yawns. When I reach my room, it has an obscene view of Sacré-Coeur, the basilica tall and proud against the bold, blue Parisian sky.

The bed’s calling to me, but so is the city beyond that window—all the things I’ve never seen and never done. My limbs feel heavy, but there’s too much to see in Paris, and too much to do for work tomorrow, so I wash my hands, splash cold water on my face, and change into clothes I haven’t traveled in.

It’s summer, so I tug on a pink crop top, and a pair of wide leg jeans. Grabbing my shades, I head out to hunt for a coffee to wake me all the way up.

A big cup I can drown my brain in, ideally.

On a yawn, I round the corner. Up ahead is a bustling square. An artist draws caricatures at an easel. Another sells silky scarves with Audrey Hepburn vibes. A string quartet plucks out a tune I don’t recognize but it feels very édith Piaf. No one wears a beret or totes baguettes, and yet the whole street feels a little like The Rendezvous . It’s modern Paris, but with the whole vintage vibe this city is known for. The city feels both new and old—something I understand intrinsically.

At the far end of the square is a café with a red awning and, I hope, copious amounts of caffeine.

The sun is rising higher, warming my bare shoulders. I glance up at the street signs to orient myself—that’s Place du Tertre—and notice someone out of the corner of my eye. Dark brown hair with silver streaks. Broad shoulders…He’s walking, head bent, staring at his phone.

When he looks up, he stops. Smiles. Shakes his head in amusement. My stomach has the audacity to flip.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he says, but he doesn’t truly seem surprised.

“Or maybe not,” I say. “Are we in the same hotel?”

“I’m at The Hotel Particulier Eighteenth. I arrived yesterday,” he says, then points to the same hotel as mine. Bumping into him isn’t such a coincidence then. It was inevitable. I want to ask other questions—what are you up to, how’s Paris so far, what’s caught your attention on your phone?

But I don’t have to ask the last one because he turns the phone to me. “Check this out,” he says, showing me a photo of Zach and his cousin David roasting marshmallows over a campfire. Out of nowhere, tears well in my eyes and I’m not even sure why. Maybe it’s the travel. Or the jet lag. Or my need for caffeine.

Maybe it’s just that it’s a sweet photo of a happy kid, who does, indeed, roll with life’s big changes—mom to no mom, no dad to dad.

I swallow the tears, but there’s emotion in my voice when I say, “More, show me more.”

Finn gives a soft smile, then flicks to the next photo. An RV.

“And they’re not camping. They’re glamping,” I say, laughing as I accuse him.

“My mom’s idea, apparently. She said she endured enough of my father’s roughing it camping trips when Nick and I were kids. She’s not doing it now.”

I lean a little closer. “Confession: you’d never catch me camping.”

He lifts a skeptical brow. “Never?”

I shake my head then flick my hair. “I like my flat iron, my running water, and my soft pillows far too much. Also, coffee.”

“You can make coffee camping,” he points out.

“Or I can get it at a café,” I say as a yawn takes over.

Finn sets a hand on my back, his touch warm and confident. “Let’s get you a coffee, Jules.” He tips his forehead to the café with the red awning, where I was headed anyway, telling me he’s wanted to try this café since he arrived.

It’s just coffee. Colleagues do that all the time. “That sounds good to me,” I say.

But it doesn’t feel as good as his hand on my skin feels. Especially since it signals to anyone around that I belong to him.

Even though I don’t.

The first cup of coffee works wonders, but it tastes awful. “I think I need to learn the French word for mud,” I say, lifting the empty cup.

“The French are not known for their coffee,” he says.

“You’ve been here before, right? Paris?” I ask, since he said the city was wonderful at that lunch. A man like him, inking deals around the globe, probably speaks French too.

We’re sitting at a tiny round table on the sidewalk as fashionable Parisians stroll by. French words drift past my ears but mean nothing.

“A couple times,” he says, lifting his espresso. “But always for work.”

He’s quick to answer, and the subtext is clear—he never came here with his ex-wife or with another woman.

Don’t read anything into it .

“Do you speak French?”

He finishes his small cup, then sets it down, his green eyes sparkling. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he whispers.

A shiver runs down my spine. “I’m listening.”

“I can bullshit my way through any restaurant or store, and that’s about it,” he says.

This makes me unreasonably happy. I like that he doesn’t know the language. That he’s brutally honest about his lack of language skills with me, but that he tries to finesse his way through it. That fits him, swaggering through life, pursuing what he wants with guts and brain and charisma.

“So, sort of like how you bullshitted your way through playing the piano,” I say.

He leans back in the chair, looking smug in the best of ways. “I wanted what I wanted,” he says, owning his choice to pursue me relentlessly that night.

But in retrospect, does he wish we’d been unmasked? That we’d both had all the facts before we scurried off to the library?

Maybe it’s the jet lag that makes me want to ask. Or maybe it’s that no one knows us here. I feel like we’re in a bubble, and that bubble emboldens me. “Would you have talked to me if I wasn’t wearing a costume?”

“No,” he says, immediately. “I wouldn’t have.”

My shoulders drop. I knew that answer was coming, but I asked the question anyway.

“And I’m glad I didn’t know,” he adds in his bedroom voice—the one he uses when he tells me to spread my legs for him. “I wouldn’t change a damn thing about the tryst in the library. The night at my home. The afternoon in the restaurant. Not a single thing.” He pins me with a dark stare. “Is that clear?”

I shudder out a yes. “Crystal.”

“Good. But just in case, let me add this—I’m so fucking glad I had a mask on the night you played piano. Because you are the most sensual, responsive, exciting woman I’ve ever known.”

Known .

He didn’t say touched .

But known. Somehow that word carries even more weight. He’s not comparing me to his body count. He’s putting me on a pedestal for being…well, being me.

His reassurance breaks another layer of my walls. “My ex-boyfriend in college,” I begin, and he sits up straighter. “I was going to sleep with him. I didn’t.”

“Did he hurt you?” Finn asks, biting out the words.

“No.” I shake my head. “He didn’t hurt me physically. But he…” I stop, hesitate. This is harder than I’d thought it would be. Those journals I wrote in are twisted up with sex, and fantasies, and OCD, and secrets. I wasn’t so good at untangling my thoughts. I didn’t understand them enough to understand their separateness. And I don’t want to reveal all of myself. Just a part, because it feels like he’s earned it. “I used to write down what I did that day. What I thought. How I felt,” I explain.

“That makes sense. A lot of people do that.”

“Yeah and sometimes I had these uncomfortable thoughts,” I say, because that’s a safe enough way to tell him without slapping a label on myself. “Sometimes about random people. Like a professor. Or a teaching assistant.”

He nods for me to keep going, making it clear he’s not judging, just listening.

“And I’d write them down. Sometimes I’d mentioned a guy I had maybe gone out with once the previous year. On a date, or to a party.”

“Sure. You’d tell the journal about your life.”

Well, I was telling my sister. And you know what? There’s no need to keep that to myself either. “I was writing to Willa,” I say softly, my voice breaking briefly.

“That must have been hard,” he says, squeezing my forearm for a moment, then letting go.

“It was, but I needed it. I still need it. I tried to tell her everything in my journals. They were just mine.” I draw a breath for fuel, hating what Brandon did but feeling compelled to share it anyway. “But one time when Brandon slept over, he skipped his morning class to sleep in. I went to the lecture, leaving him alone in my dorm with my journals for maybe an hour. And I didn’t know it at the time, but he read them all. Every single private thought I’d written down. Whether it was one of those uncomfortable thoughts I mentioned, like about a teacher, or whether it was a recap of a date from my freshman year, or whether it was a book I read that made me want to try role-play,” I say, a fresh wave of hurt washing over me. “Sometimes I even wrote the specific fantasies down.”

“That’s a disgusting violation,” he says with vitriol.

“And then, bit by bit, day by day, he took that info and used it against me in subtle, manipulative ways. At a study sesh, he’d say would you ever want to go into the stacks…with your bio professor. Or he’d ask me about a guy I went out with a while ago. Was Carson a good kisser? Are you sure you didn’t think of anyone else when you kissed him ? Or even something more insidious. Remember when you said you wanted me to handcuff you? I didn’t remember every detail I’d ever written down, but he’d stay on it, trying to trip me up.”

Finn huffs an annoyed breath, like he wants to wring Brandon’s neck. “He manipulated you. He gaslit you.”

I hadn’t thought of it like gaslighting, but maybe it was. But it was also embarrassing. I was so fooled. “He was clever. I can’t believe it took me a few weeks to puzzle together where it all came from. From me ,” I say, still ashamed he tricked me so deeply.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Finn says, perhaps wanting to reassure me, or maybe to protect me from the stories I told myself about my past. “You have a good heart. You probably couldn’t conceive that he would trick you like that.” He sighs, scrubbing a hand across his chin. “Sometimes it takes us a while to see how we’ve been used.”

I’m about to ask how he’s been used when he adds, “What happened after?”

I need to finish my story before I ask for his. “I broke up with him. I never slept with him. And honestly, I didn’t want to sleep with anyone for a long time. I shut down, Finn. I was basically dormant sexually until several months ago, after a lot of therapy and a deeper understanding of myself. That’s when I realized I was truly ready. That I wanted sex a certain way. That I wanted to be…dominated. That I wanted the fantasies. And that I wanted someone who wouldn’t manipulate me. Someone who’d do the opposite—who’d role-play with me, not against me.”

“You found him,” he says, simple and clear.

Yeah. I did.

Too bad I can’t have him.

“Anyway, thanks for listening. I just wanted you to know that when I said I was glad it was you, I’m really glad it was you.”

He’s quiet for a long beat, blowing out a breath. “Je ne regrette rien.”

I don’t know French, but I understand context clues. “I regret nothing,” I translate.

“Oui,” he says, then nods to my empty cup. “Do you need another?”

I’m grateful for the shift in mood. “I want to explore the city today, so I think I do,” I say.

Finn calls the waiter over and, as promised, orders in French. When the waiter leaves, I narrow my eyes. “That was unfair.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you sound sexy even ordering in your bullshit French.”

He laughs. “Maybe I was trying to impress you.”

“It worked.” I take a moment to soak in the atmosphere, the vibe of the hilly neighborhood. Across the street is a boutique with Les Jolies Jupes scrolled across a window display of short dresses and trendy ankle boots. Beside that, a narrow staircase with a wrought-iron railing. Posters line the brick wall, advertising the Moulin Rouge. This was on my list too—just soaking in the ambiance.

“Have you been here before?” Finn asks.

I turn back to him, shaking my head. “First time. But I’ve wanted to come here. I planned out many fictional visits.”

“What do you think so far? Does this compare to the trips you took in your mind?”

I pause for a few seconds, tapping my chin playfully. “I think I need to see more of the city to draw a conclusion. And I’m pretty busy the rest of the week…”

I don’t want to presume he’ll join me. His words were clear at McCoy’s in Manhattan. His actions, too, the next time I saw him at the bookstore. Even if he held my hand minutes ago, that doesn’t mean he’ll spend the day with me.

The furrow in his brow and the intensity in his eyes tell me he’s debating something. Then he’s decided. “I’d love to show you the Luxembourg Gardens.”

This man can read my soul. “I want to go there,” I whisper.

“I know, Jules,” he says in a throaty voice. “I know.”