Chapter Twenty-Five
Shelby was woken up just past eight in the morning by Brandon’s aggressive snores.
She’d forgotten just how loudly he snored. Sleeping beside him had always been like sharing a bed with a dying water buffalo. But it was one of those things she’d overlooked, which was what you were supposed to do when you loved someone.
So why, then, was she feeling so irritable this morning?
Was it just the snoring? Or was it the fact that he’d insisted on putting off the conversation about the state of their relationship so that he could take her to go see the Eiffel Tower on his first night in Paris, despite the fact that she’d already been there with Vanessa and Corinne earlier in the week?
Was it because she’d wanted the two of them to meet up with her friends, but instead, they’d wound up alone at the hotel bar, sharing a bottle of wine?
Was it because they’d managed to talk about Alabama’s upcoming football season, a new restaurant that had opened in Tuscaloosa, the renewal of their country club membership, and Brandon’s decision to switch gyms, while avoiding anything that resembled a real conversation about their future?
Or was it because, deep down, she was beginning to wonder if she was making a terrible mistake?
As he snored on, she rolled over and grabbed her phone from the nightstand. There were no missed calls from Russ, but there was a text, and as she opened it up and read it, she felt even worse. He wanted to talk, but Brandon was back, and there was really nothing else to say.
So why was it taking every ounce of her self-control not to text him back?
Beside her, Brandon snorted loudly and stirred, cracking an eye open. “Babe?” he croaked.
Instantly, Shelby softened, pushing away thoughts of Russ.
“Morning, babe,” she said. How many nights had she prayed that she’d be waking up beside Brandon again?
That he would come to his senses and remember how much he loved her?
And now here they were, and she was worrying about some other guy? She needed to get it together.
“Water,” he rasped, and she hopped out of bed to fill a glass for him from the tap in the bathroom. By the time she returned to bed and handed him his drink, he was sitting up, holding his head. He cracked open one eye and peered at her suspiciously. “What time is it?”
“Just past eight,” she said brightly. “It takes a few days to adjust to the time difference.”
He muttered several expletives and then took a giant sip of the water she handed him, draining the glass.
“More, please,” he grunted, and she immediately hopped up to refill his water, wondering halfway to the sink why she instantly leapt up to do his bidding whenever he snapped his fingers, even after everything that had happened.
She refilled the glass, but instead of bringing it back to him, she set it beside the sink and turned. A thousand questions—the ones she’d wanted to ask last night—were running through her head, but she started with the most important one. “Brandon? What are you doing here, really?”
He squinted at her. “What do you mean, babe?”
“I mean, why are things so different all of a sudden that you felt like you had to cross an ocean?”
His eyes narrowed further, like he was having trouble processing her question. “Wait, are you mad? I was trying to make a grand gesture.”
“Right, and that’s really nice. But, like, why now? You filed for divorce six months ago. I know things just ended with Alexis—”
“This has nothing to do with her.”
“But it kind of does, doesn’t it?”
“Look, babe, I’m man enough to say I messed up. Can’t you just take me at my word? I want you back, Shelb.”
“But… why?” She couldn’t resist. Talking to him was like picking a scab.
“Because we’re a perfect team, aren’t we? Me and you? I love you.”
“Did you love me when you left?”
“Babe, I told you, I was wrong.” He swung his legs out of bed. He was wearing only boxer briefs, and for a moment, she was distracted. Why did he still have to look so good? “What’s on the agenda for today?”
She looked away. “I told the girls we’d meet them for breakfast at nine.
They have a tour of the Louvre booked today.
” She refrained from saying that she was supposed to be along on that tour, that as an art major, it was, in fact, the part of this Paris vacation that she’d been looking forward to the most.
“Why don’t you just go meet them without me? I want to get some more sleep.”
“Neither of them are going to believe your intentions are good unless you show up,” she said bluntly.
He groaned and pulled a pillow over his head. “I don’t have to prove anything to them, Shelb,” he said, his voice muffled by the pillow. “I love you, you love me, end of story.”
“But is it?” she couldn’t resist saying.
He removed the pillow from his face and peered at her suspiciously. “What are you talking about, babe?”
“Is it the end of the story? I mean, I thought the story ended when you filed for divorce, and now you’re here telling me it’s not over after all. But you can’t expect to just waltz back into my life without me and my friends asking some questions.”
He looked away. “This has nothing to do with your friends.”
“Actually, it has everything to do with them, because they’re the ones who picked up the pieces when you broke me.”
He half laughed. “Broke you? Wow, that’s dramatic.”
Anger rose in her chest. Did he really not know how deeply he’d hurt her?
That there had been weeks where she could hardly get out of bed?
That she had wondered—after learning about his new girlfriend and her pregnancy—whether there was even any point to living?
It sounded pathetic and ridiculous now, but that was the kind of hold he had over her and, truth be told, she hated it.
She hated that she had handed over control of her feelings and her sense of security to someone who didn’t treat those things with care.
“Get dressed, Brandon,” she said, not recognizing the steel in her own voice. “At the very least, you owe me breakfast with my friends, and if you can’t do that, then you can go to hell.”
She slammed the bathroom door, but not before she saw the look of shock on his face.
Two seconds later, she could hear him scrambling to gather his clothes and shoes from the floor, and she knew without opening the door that he was doing as she asked.
Maybe it was time to turn over a new leaf.
To actually ask for what she needed. To remember that he was living in her world just as much as she was living in his.
And to realize that if they were going to be together, things would have to be different this time around.
Russ had respected her. He had listened to her, considered her feelings, truly cared about what she had to say.
Why shouldn’t she expect the same from Brandon?
Maybe the reason Russ had come into her life was to remind her that she mattered, and that if Brandon was going to be with her, he needed to prove that he knew that, too.
Julia woke up with her head pounding and her eyes raw from crying.
It was her last full day in Paris with Piper, the day they’d be attending the Jackson Quick concert together, and already, she felt a sense of grief over the end of the vacation, which had been all too short.
She sat up in bed and glanced over at Piper, still asleep in the bed beside hers.
Her daughter was beautiful, her long hair splayed out on the pillow, her cheeks pink, her skin smooth and flawless.
Piper would age one day, but Julia wouldn’t be here to see it, and that broke her heart as much as anything else.
She would miss every future version of who her daughter turned out to be; she would only know Piper as she was today.
She wiped her eyes and got out of bed, padding quietly into the bathroom. She shut the door, flicked on the light, and regarded herself in the mirror with dismay.
She looked awful. Her mascara had melted off overnight and settled into her lines.
Her eyes were bloodshot, and her hair looked like a rat’s nest. She’d faked her way through dinner with Piper, pretending that everything was fine and smiling so hard that her face had ached, but her insides were twisted with hurt.
She was dying, and Sam was a random man she’d met in Paris.
That was all. What had she expected from him?
Still, she had hoped that he would have had the decency to at least look her in the eye and tell her that it was all too much for him.
Instead, he had slunk off to the bathroom and never returned.
He clearly wasn’t the man she’d thought he was.
She shook her head at herself and turned on the tap. No use shedding another tear over Sam. She would never see him again. This trip was about her and Piper.
She splashed water on her face and dried off, then she faced herself in the mirror again. “Enough,” she told her reflection. “Enough.”
She had no time to think about Sam today. Piper would be up soon, and it would be up to her to turn today into a day of memories. Piper would need a day like today to hang on to when Julia was gone, and she couldn’t let anyone—least of all a virtual stranger—take that from them.
“Enough,” she said one last time, and then she headed into the shower, vowing to herself that when she emerged, she would put Sam out of her mind once and for all.
Kayla took the RER C from Pont de l’Alma to the Gare d’Austerlitz station in eastern Paris, thinking of how at ease she felt with Nadim, whom she’d only known for a few days.
She wondered if today was meant to be a date or if she was reading into things.
Surely she hadn’t imagined the spark between them, though.