Chapter 23 #2
Papa groans. “They were both pale and citrusy!”
Freja smirks. “One had the elegance of a ballerina, the other the charm of a golden retriever. Come on, Papa.”
My father throws his napkin dramatically. “Philistines, all of you. And I blame your mother. She distracted me.”
Mama rolls her eyes. “You don’t even know what wine you’re drinking unless I whisper it to you first.”
Arguments break out and finally fall silent when Papa raises his hand. “Shh. We’re down to the final card.”
It’s between us, and Aksel and Latika. We’ve both gotten two wines wrong, far less than everyone else. This last one will be the decider.
Papa lifts their card first and then nods appreciatively. “Aksel and Latika say that this is a Beaujolais Cru. Fleurie 2018.”
Ransom and I hold our breath.
Papa picks up our card. Raises both eyebrows. “According to Ransom and Ember, this is from Corsica. Ajaccio AOC. 2020 vintage. Domaine Comte Abbatucci. Rouge Frais Impérial.”
Aksel jumps up, pump fisting. “Yes!”
“Settle down,” Papa admonishes.
“Come on. We won! Latika, darling, we’re going to have the—"
“Really, Aksel?” Papa chides. “The wine was practically sunbathing in the Mediterranean. This is from Corsica, not Lyon in a flowery hat. Did we teach you nothing?”
“Corsica is not France,” Aksel objects. “You said French wine.”
“Corsica is in France, dumbo,” Freja mocks.
Latika laughs. She’s tipsy, maybe even a little on that side of drunk.
I grip Ransom’s hand under the table. “We’ll think of you, Aksel, when we drink the Montrachet.”
A cheer breaks out.
Ransom squeezes my hand tight and lets out a relieved laugh. I grin back, feeling a little drunk on wine, and a lot drunk on how his eyes light up when he looks at me.
Aksel throws his napkin down. “Who even drinks Corsican wine?”
“People who win,” Ransom says, smug and warm. “People with excellent palates.”
Papa retrieves the bottle of Montrachet and hands it over to Ransom and me with great ceremony. “Treat it like a firstborn. You understand?”
Ransom bows slightly. “I plan to.” He turns to me. “And I plan to find the perfect time—and the perfect reason—for us to drink it.”
“Like what?” I tease.
He leans in, voice low, eyes steady. “Something worth celebrating.”
My breath hitches.
Everyone around us is still laughing, playfully arguing over scores and debating who should have really won. But in that moment, it’s just him and me, the bottle between us like a promise.
And somewhere in my chest, something soft and long-held begins to thaw.
I raise an eyebrow. “You sure?”
He leans closer. “Certain. And I plan to drink it with you. Slowly. Somewhere private.”
My face warms. So does the rest of me.
Across the table, Aunt Tanya slaps Bob’s hand away from the cheese plate. “You’re supposed to cleanse your palate, not coat it in Brie!”
Uncle Bob grunts. “I regret nothing.”
We laugh and, in a room filled with clinking glasses and laughter echoing through stone walls, something between us—trust, hope, love—begins to uncork itself again.
After dinner, I take a shower and go for a walk by the gazebo, because I’m feeling restive.
I have been thinking a lot about all the things Ransom told me.
He wants us to date, start again, and this time with the knowledge that we already love each other. I know I love him—have since the start—but I’m not so sure about him. I don’t know why he’s pursuing me, us.
It’s confusing me.
As an astrophysicist, I spend most of my time constructing models to explain why things behave the way they do. I look for patterns. Evidence. Proof.
Ransom is chaos. Messy, painful, unquantifiable chaos.
But in the past few days, he’s been doing something unexpected.
He’s been persistent and patient, even when I’ve been prickly and distant.
And Ransom Marchand is not a patient man.
He doesn’t write apology notes. He doesn’t apologize quite so much.
He definitely doesn’t remember the exact chocolate I loved from a tucked-away shop in San Francisco five years ago, and somehow deliver it across an ocean.
This version of him—one who listens, who doesn’t push, who owns what he did and doesn’t try to spin it into something more palatable—isn’t the man who broke my heart.
And maybe that’s the point.
I’m not stupid. I’m not a woman who leaps blindly just because someone says they love her.
But I am someone who can recognize when a man is trying, really trying, in the way that counts—not with grand gestures or perfect speeches, but with uncomfortable honesty and inconvenient vulnerability.
He’s showing me who he is now, and not once has he asked for a reward in return.
He’s just…there. Every morning. Every evening. Steady as the rotation of the earth, reminding me that he’s not running anymore.
So maybe the question isn’t whether he’s done enough to deserve me.
Maybe the question is whether I’m willing to let go of the version of him I stored away—filed under painful, unsalvageable—and see what’s standing in front of me now.
But it’s been a handful of days…shouldn’t it take longer to come to such important decisions?
I’m standing by the gazebo when I hear footsteps crunching behind me. But they’re not his. They’re slower.
Papa.
He catches up, gently falling into step beside me. “Too much wine?”
I laugh. “Not hardly. I was going to stroll up to the woods.”
“May I join you?” he asks.
I nod.
We walk in silence toward the edge of the woods where fairy lights fade and starlight begins.
“You looked like you may be forgiving him in the cellar.” He’s not judging. Just stating.
I wrap my arms around myself. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Good,” he quips. “Because if you knew exactly what you were doing, it wouldn’t be love.”
I blink at him.
“Want to know about the time I messed up with your mother?” he offers.
“We know about all the times you messed up with her. She tells us.”
He grins, and then sobers. “Not this one. This one hurt her.”
I glance at him, surprised. “We’d been together for a couple of years. I got jealous after a party. I accused her of flirting with a mutual friend. Jealousy. Ego. I was…awful. Said some horrible things to her. She didn’t talk to me for sixty days.”
I don’t ask him what he said. That’s private, but it must’ve been pretty bad if she shut him out like that. My parents love each other. No question about it. But no relationship is up and up.
“How did you…fix it?”
“I wrote her sixty letters. One for every day. Delivered them to the bookstore where she worked. I even bought books to hide them in. Nearly went bankrupt.”
I smile. “And?”
“She let me buy her coffee. Then dinner. Then she told me if I ever pulled that crap again, she’d throw a bottle of bad wine at my head.”
“She still might.”
“Oh, definitely.”
I laugh. Then the ache returns.
“I’ve never been in a real relationship. The others were just…me passing time,” I confess. “Except with Ransom. And now I don’t know what it was. What it meant.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder. “You love him?”
I nod slowly.
“Then you owe it to yourself to see if this is the car you want to buy.”
“What?” I ask, confused.
“Love is like being on a long drive. Sometimes the car’s transmission is weird. Sometimes it breaks down. But if you can see yourself in that seat for years…you owe it a test drive.”
I stare at him. “What kind of car?”
Papa thinks about it. “A Volvo?”
“A boring Volvo?” Laughter bubbles out of me.
He wraps an arm around me. “Better than a flashy convertible that breaks in a snowstorm.”
“Are you saying Ransom is like a Volvo, Papa?”
“Sturdy, older, expensive to repair if he breaks your heart, but…if he sticks around, you’ll be safe for life.’”
I lean into him.
“I’m still mad at him.”
“Good. He deserves it.”
“But….” I trail off.
“But,” Papa says with a twinkle in his eye.“But is hope.”
“I thought butt was his ass,” I tease.
“Which you should kick,” Papa says confidently.