Chapter 2 #2
“She’s on holiday until the week after next, remember,” Mellie pipes up.
It’s true—I decided I needed a break before getting stuck in. It’s Thursday, so I have precisely eleven days.
“Hello, Jackson,” Mellie says, rising to her feet with a smile.
“Hello, Mellie,” he replies amiably, giving her a hug. “It’s been a while. You look well.”
“Thank you. As do you. I’m sorry to hear about you and Chloe. How are you?”
“Getting there,” Jackson replies.
“Champagne?” Albert asks me in an oddly conspiratorial voice, waggling his bushy eyebrows.
“Yes, please,” I reply with a grin.
After dinner, Albert and Mellie retire to the sofas and Jackson and I wander outside to the balcony.
As kids, we often used to sit out here with our backs against the side walls, bouncing a tennis ball back and forth.
As the nights wore on and the conversations inside grew louder and more raucous, we’d find ourselves quietening down and opening up to each other.
“It’s been a while since we’ve been out here together,” Jackson says as he rests his elbows on top of the chunky stone balustrade.
“All we need is a tennis ball,” I reply.
His face lights up and he ducks back indoors.
I smile at the bank of sparkling stars stretched out overhead. There’s a strip of darkness where the mountains are, and below, the twinkling lights of the town. It’s as though the stars are in the valley as well as in the sky.
As I breathe in the scent of the roses climbing up the walls, I realize that this is the exact same place where I was standing when Jackson and I almost kissed—the closest call we ever had.
We were twenty-one, but we’d had other near misses too. Bad timing has been the story of our lives.
When we were seventeen, the chemistry between us had already been building for years.
I was convinced that it would be our summer, that we’d finally move our relationship out of the friend zone.
Jackson had told me that a girl called Chloe was also going to be staying, but I wasn’t worried.
He knew her from back home and he’d said that she was a year older than him and a total princess.
Her mother was a Manhattan socialite—a friend of his mum’s—and Chloe was coming to brush up on her French before taking a degree in the subject.
Nothing Jackson had said had led me to believe that she was a threat, but as soon as I saw her my stomach bottomed out.
I’d always been curious about Jackson’s life in New York. I only knew the version of him that existed in summertime, here at the chateau, but there was a whole other Jackson out there who lived in another space and time zone.
This girl seemed to speak to that Jackson.
She was stunning: long dark hair, tanned skin glistening with oil.
She was wearing a skimpy red bikini and Jackson was stretched out on a sun lounger beside her.
I remember his broad back rippling with muscles as he reached out, handing her a cigarette that she casually brought to her lips.
She took a drag and returned it to him without even glancing his way, and I felt like I was falling as a cloud drifted up from his face. I had never seen Jackson smoke before.
The dread that engulfed me as I watched them endured all summer.
Eventually she took something from him that would bind him to her in a way that I never could. He gave himself to her—physically, emotionally, wholeheartedly—and I thought that we’d never be able to come back from it.
But their relationship was tumultuous: they were always breaking up and getting back together, and I was a passenger on their roller coaster—only their lows were my highs and vice versa.
At university I moved on and met a lovely guy called Nick.
We were together for eighteen months and had talked about getting a place together after graduation, but then I arrived in France at the age of twenty-one to find that Jackson was single.
He was adamant that he and Chloe were over for good, and the more time we spent together, the more I believed him and the less I found myself missing my boyfriend back home.
One night, Jackson and I were out here, looking at the view, and our elbows were just barely touching, but I was so hyperaware of this teeny-tiny point of contact that I was almost too scared to breathe in case he noticed and put distance between us.
I knew I shouldn’t be thinking about him in that way—I’d been imagining a future with Nick—but I couldn’t help it.
I still remember that conversation so clearly…
“I love it here,” I recall Jackson saying.
“Me too,” I replied.
“Chloe has never really got the appeal.”
“No?”
He shook his head. “She got bored quickly, missed city life.”
“She wouldn’t have wanted to settle here then,” I commented.
“No,” he agreed ruefully.
“How would that ever have worked? You need to move here one day, right?”
He didn’t answer, but I heard him when he sighed. I turned to face him, inadvertently breaking the contact between us.
“What’s wrong?”
I can still picture his sad smile. “I don’t know that I’m cut out for all this.”
He meant the business, the chateau, stepping into Albert’s shoes.
The whole reason Sandrine had started bringing him back to France was so that he could build a relationship with his grandfather and the town she’d more or less turned her back on when she married a rich American.
She wanted Jackson to inherit everything, but that put an almost unbearable amount of pressure on his shoulders.
“I think that you are,” I said, and his eyes glinted back at me in the starlight as he waited for me to continue. “You’re one of the most capable people I know, but it’s more than that. You take after Albert.”
“In what way?”
I sensed that he needed my reassurance. “You know when Albert talks about his dad? How strict he was?”
He nodded.
“Albert has such a gentle disposition. He must have found it daunting to take over from his father, but he did it—look at everything he’s achieved.
He runs that factory like clockwork and none of his workers ever strike.
He’s so well-liked. He’s kind. And you are too.
I think you’d do an incredible job. You just need to find the right person to stand at your side, someone who believes in you and everything that you could achieve. ”
He closed his eyes for a moment and let out a slow breath, and when he looked at me again, it was with such warmth and affection. “I like who I am when I’m with you,” he said quietly.
My stomach flipped. “I like who you are too,” I whispered.
“You’ve always believed in me.”
I nodded. “I always will.”
His expression grew serious. I felt as though I was suspended in time as the breath caught in my throat. We stared at each other, and then his hand came up to cup my face and I knew with absolute certainty that he was going to kiss me, and that I would kiss him back.
My blood hummed, the air sparked, and he bowed his head…
…and then Sandrine called from inside and we both leaped out of our skin.
He backed up and dropped his hand immediately, shoving it into his pocket. His eyes were wide as he shook his head at me, stunned. We knew that we had almost crossed a line.
I wasn’t proud of that moment. I had almost cheated on Nick and I was shocked at myself. I went home, told him everything, and we broke up. It was messy and awful, but at the same time that close call on the balcony filled me with hope. Jackson wanted me. I couldn’t wait to see him again.
And then a few weeks later, I found out he’d got back together with Chloe.
I wasn’t just hurt: I was angry. I’d given up Nick for him and Jackson knew it. My pride was in tatters.
I was determined to leave him behind after that, but I guess a small part of me had always held on to hope that things could be different. The pain I felt when he asked Chloe to marry him was indescribable.
I want to keep my cards much closer to my chest this time around. I won’t let myself fall at his feet and risk having the rug pulled out from under me again.