Chapter 11 #2
But can you handle it, Tara, being hidden, being careful, pretending?
“The last man I was with…. He cheated on me. I haven’t dated since.”
“Tara, I’m so sorry.” He genuinely is. I can feel it. “That kind of betrayal is…impossibly difficult.”
I meet his gaze, mulling over my thoughts. “Yes, it is, but…the truth is that after we were done, I didn’t spend much time wallowing over it.”
He regards me steadily. “He wasn’t important to you.” It’s not a question.
“True.” I let out a quiet chuckle. “Regardless, it soured me. Then I came to Paris. And that, too, on Valentine’s Day. And I met you.”
His expression softens. “Oui.”
“What I’m saying is that I’m not looking for a long-term or even a short-term anything. I had no intention to….” I sigh. “You’re my first one-night stand.”
He raises both eyebrows, looking smug. “I am?”
“It’s just….” I flush. “You came and talked to me…and you’re handsome, so….”
Now, he smiles wide. “You think I’m handsome?”
I roll my eyes. “Please. Humility doesn’t suit you.”
“I thought you were—and still do think—charming and stunning. You stole my breath away. I had to talk to you.” He looks at me sheepishly. “I’m not a saint, oui?”
“I’m sure you’re not,” I reply dryly. Especially, considering how he dirtied me up in his hotel suite.
“I’ve had a few one-night stands since my marriage ended. Only outside of Paris…France, really. You were an exception. With you, I broke my rules.”
My breath catches in my throat.
“And now I’m ready, it seems, to break more rules.”
He shrugs off his scarf and throws it next to his beer bottle.
Warmth builds in the pub, tempting me to shed my coat, but I don’t dare get comfortable. I have to leave soon—before I say yes to something I’ll regret.
“You want to have a secret affair.” The words come out harsher than I intended—but I think they convey how I feel about being a mistress to a wealthy older man. This isn’t a book or a movie. This is my life, and I don’t want to be anyone’s dirty secret.
“Not secret but discreet,” he corrects.
I let out a long exhale. “That’s semantics.”
“Maybe so. But it doesn’t change facts.”
“Gustave, it feels…diminishing.” There, that’s the truth. “Like I’m a character in a Zola story, doomed before the first page turns.”
He tilts his head and gives me that panty-melting, charming smile of his. “If you insist on Zola, chérie, you must know that I refuse to play the doomed aristocrat. I want the role with all the kisses.”
I appreciate his effort at banter. But it’s not enough to pull me out of the conflicting emotions tearing at me.
“I don’t know, Gustave,” I finally admit. My voice cracks on the words. “I don’t know.”
For a moment, he’s silent.
“You don’t have to know, chérie, not right away. I understand.” He’s disappointed, I can see that, but there’s something else there as well…hope, I think.
His hand finds mine, warm and steady, an anchor against the storm inside me. “I wish that we could date like normal people. I could take you out to dinner and then to my apartment, where we could talk, make love, and get to know one another.”
I’d like that, too. Very much.
Too much.
“But I’m only here until the end of July, Gustave. I have to go back to Philly after that.”
“Maybe when I’m in the US then….”
He trails off, and I know he’d feel safer in another country with a woman than he does in Paris, where he doesn’t know what scandal will knock on his door, his son’s door.
I did do my research on Gustave.
He wasn’t lying when he said his life is a shitstorm of constant gossip, a never-ending soap opera played out in glossy magazines and tabloids.
Every move dissected. Every expression photographed and analyzed.
When he was going through the divorce, there were camps, people who sided with him, others with Simone, and the ones who wanted blood from both.
Even his son wasn’t spared.
Aubert’s school photos had been splashed across websites, dissected for likeness—does he look more like his mother or his father? And how is he feeling about the divorce? Was there a reason Aubert is an only child? Is that the reason for the divorce?
Simone was a piece of work!
She’d been recorded on the steps of their h?tel particulier screaming at Gustave, calling him a ‘cheating sack of shit’. That video went viral, igniting a firestorm of hashtags and trending threads.
Overnight, Paris was speculating on what the de Valois marriage truly looked like behind the gilded doors, and who Gustave was stepping out on his wife with.
His world is lived under glass, where every mistake is amplified and every slip-up is sold to the highest bidder. No wonder he’s careful. No wonder he hesitates.
But a relationship lived in the shadows feels sordid. It’s less than what I want, less than what I deserve. I’m not asking for forever—but I’m also not willing to be someone’s secret.
If Gustave were an ordinary man, someone the gossip pages didn’t orbit like moths around a flame, none of this would matter.
But he isn’t ordinary.
And maybe that’s the problem.
Because I’m not sure if I want to stand beside him under all those watchful eyes…or if I’m terrified that I do. The thought makes the air inside me contract sharply. I ease my hand out of his, needing space to breathe.
“I’m going to go.” I hop off the stool, and give him a tentative smile. “Thanks for the beer.”
“It was my pleasure, chérie.”
The warmth of the pub evaporates the moment I push open the door and step outside. The cool, damp March air slaps my cheeks.
I tighten my scarf and start walking, the Seine glimmering like a black ribbon beside me.
Somewhere behind me, Gustave is still at the bar. I don’t look back because, if I do, I’d go running to him and tell him that I want him, too, and to hell with the cost.