Chapter 7 #2
Because of her. Because of this woman who showed up a week ago and rearranged my entire goddamn life without moving a single piece of furniture.
At four o'clock, Madeline's waiting in the foyer.
The pink sleep shirt is gone. She's changed into a wrap dress, the kind that ties at the waist and moves when she moves. Her hair is down now, falling past her shoulders, and she's done something to it, something deliberate that's pretending to be effortless.
"You look—" I stop myself. Professional, I should say. Appropriate. "That dress suits you."
The words come out lower than I intended. More honest. Damn it.
Her lips part. Just barely. She recovers fast.
"Thank you," she says. "I wasn't sure what was appropriate for—"
"—It's perfect."
She blinks. I don't clarify.
"Ready?" I ask.
"Ready."
The gallery is a disaster when we arrive. Two installers arguing about a piece that's clearly meant for the east wall, a lighting tech who's adjusted the same spot three times without fixing it, and my assistant looking at me like I'm supposed to solve all of it.
I am. That's the job.
Midway through the afternoon, a shipment problem threatens the entire east corridor.
A key piece arrived with damage to the frame—not the work itself, thank God—but enough to throw off the visual line I've been building for weeks.
I feel the familiar spike of pressure, the pull to fix what's broken before anyone else sees it.
I rework the layout in my head. Redistribute weight. Shift focal lines.
When I glance back, she isn't anxious. She isn't trying to fix it. She's just steady. Trusting I will.
Everyone else looks for solutions. She looks at me like I already am one.
It centers me, but I don't examine why.
By six, the worst of it is handled. The damaged frame will be replaced overnight, the lighting tech has stopped fussing, and my assistant has finally stopped hovering.
We get coffee at a café nearby, one of those places with mismatched chairs and a barista who knows my order because I've been coming here since before Luc was born.
Madeline orders in perfect French. The barista compliments her accent and she lights up, and I feel an unreasonable stab of annoyance at a twenty-year-old barista for making her smile like that.
"So," she says, settling into her chair. "Does every day involve a lighting crisis and a grown man arguing with a wall?"
"Only the good ones."
"And the bad ones?"
"Two walls. Sometimes a ceiling."
She laughs. Not the polite kind she gives me in the apartment. A real one, surprised out of her, and she covers her mouth with her hand like she's embarrassed by the volume of it.
I want to hear it again. Immediately.
"You were good in there," I say. "When the frame cracked. Most people panic."
"I don't panic," she replies. "I reorganize."
"étienne must love that about you."
She looks at me over the rim of her cup. "Are you fishing?"
"Always." I don't pretend otherwise. "Is it working?"
"No."
"Liar." I take a sip. "You paused before you said no. That's a yes with better manners."
"That's a no with a pause." But she's smiling. Trying not to, and failing, which is better.
She wraps both hands around her cup even though it's not cold. I watch her fingers, the way she holds things, careful and certain. She catches me looking.
"What?"
"Nothing. Your hands. They're interesting."
"My hands are interesting?"
"Everything about you is interesting." I say it before I can edit it. Too honest. Too fast. I watch it land on her face, the slight widening of her eyes, the color climbing her throat.
She takes a sip of coffee. Doesn't respond. Doesn't need to.
"Claire never came to the gallery," I say. I'm not sure why I'm offering this. Maybe because this woman makes me want to explain myself, which is new and not entirely welcome. "She found it tedious. Said watching me work was like watching someone count grains of sand."
"That sounds lonely."
"It was accurate." I set down my cup. "She saw the obsession. She just didn't see the point of it."
"I think the point is that you care," Madeline says. "About getting it right. Even when no one else notices."
The words land somewhere I wasn't guarding.
"The divorce was messy," I say. "I learned one useful thing from it though."
"What?"
"That I see everything except what I don't want to see."
She's quiet. Then: "Maybe that's not seeing. Maybe that's choosing."
I look at her across the table. A drawn-out pause ensues. The café noise fades, the clatter and the hiss of the machine, and it's just her face and the uncomfortable realization that this woman has known me for days and is already saying things that took Claire years to figure out.
"You're annoying," I say.
"Thank you."
"It wasn't a compliment."
"It sounded like one." She finishes her coffee. "You should buy me another one for being so annoying."
I signal the barista. "Two more. And whatever pastry she's been staring at for the last ten minutes."
"I wasn't staring."
"You looked at it three times. That's staring with intermissions."
She takes the pastry when it arrives and bites into it without any of the delicate pretense I've watched other women perform around food.
She wipes crumbs from her lip with her thumb.
I am in so much trouble.
We walk back in the late afternoon light. Her shoulder brushes mine twice and she doesn't correct it. I don't either.
When we step into the apartment, the warmth she's built wraps around us immediately. Kitchen lights on, Luc's sketches open on the table, faint citrus in the air. Evidence she exists everywhere now.
She sets her bag down and turns to me.
"Thank you for bringing me," she says. "I understand your world better now."
There's admiration there. Professional but real. And underneath it, the connection I've been watching form all week, the kind she thinks she's hiding.
I step closer without planning to.
She doesn't step back.
We're close enough now that I can see the freckles across her nose, the way her breathing has changed. Close enough that I can smell my own soap on her skin again and it does something primal to my brain.
I should step back. I should say something professional and distant and let her walk upstairs carrying nothing from this moment.
I kiss her instead.
My hand cups her jaw, tilts her face up, and I press my mouth to hers. She inhales sharply against my lips and her back hits the wall. For a second she's still, surprised, and then her hands grab my shirt and pull me closer.
She tastes like espresso. Like the afternoon.
I kiss her slowly at first. Learning her. The shape of her mouth, the softness of her lower lip, the spot just below her jaw that makes her breath hitch. Then she makes this sound, quiet, almost private, like it escaped without her permission. And I'm done being slow.
My fingers slide into her hair, tilt her head back, and I kiss her deeper. She opens for me, tongue warm against mine, her body arching off the wall into me. My hand drops to her hip and I pull her flush against me. No air between us.
"You're trouble," I murmur against her mouth.
"You started it." Breathless. Her fingers tightening on my shirt.
She feels incredible. Warm and comforting, her breasts pressed to my chest, her hips against mine. I'm hard and she knows it, and instead of pulling back she rolls against me. A groan slips out of me before I can stop it.
I drag my mouth down her neck and she tips her head back against the wall. Her skin is warm and she smells like my soap, which is doing things to my brain I can't undo. I press my mouth to the hollow of her throat and feel her pulse hammering.
My hand slides down her thigh, finds bare skin below the hem of her dress.
She shivers and rocks into me again, deliberate this time, and I grip her hip and push the fabric up.
My fingers trace the inside of her thigh, moving higher, and her breath comes in short, shallow gasps.
Her hand grabs my wrist but she doesn't pull it away.
She holds it there, right at the edge, trembling.
"Bastien..." Half my name, half a sound I'm going to be thinking about at three in the morning.
I brush my fingers higher. She's wet. I can feel it through the thin fabric, the heat of her soaking through, and the sound she makes when I press against her is the kind of sound that rewires your brain.
Her head falls back against the wall and her grip on my wrist tightens, not stopping me, holding on.
I stroke her through the fabric, slow, finding the shape of her, and she whimpers. Her hips roll into my hand, chasing the pressure, and I give her more. Circle her clit with my thumb, slow and deliberate, feeling her swell under my touch. Her thighs are shaking.
"God," she whispers. Her eyes are closed, her lip caught between her teeth, and she's grinding against my hand now, small desperate movements she can't seem to control.
I press harder. She gasps, sharp and broken, and I feel her pulse between her legs, hot and slick even through the fabric. I want to hear that sound again. I want to hear it louder.
I want to drop to my knees right here. Push that fabric aside and taste her. Feel her come apart with my name in her mouth.
My fingers hook under the edge of her underwear and her eyes fly open.
Her palms press flat against my chest. Breathing hard. "Bastien." My name sounds different now. Lower. Wrecked.
"We can't. I work for you."
I know. I know that.
I step back anyway. Give her room.
It costs me more than it should.
She stays against the wall for a moment, like she doesn't trust her legs yet. Her lips are swollen, her hair is wrecked from my hands, and she's looking at me with wide, dark eyes that tell me everything her words are trying not to.
"I should go upstairs," she says.
"Yes." Neither of us moves.
"Bastien—"
"Go." The word comes out harsher than I intend. "Before I stop caring that you work for me."
She holds my gaze for one more second. Two. Then she grabs her bag and takes the stairs fast, not looking back.
Her door closes. The sound echoes through the apartment.
I stay where I am, back against the wall she was pressed against thirty seconds ago. I can still feel the warmth of her on the plaster. I press my palm flat where her shoulders were, which is pathetic, and I don't care.
I've been wrong about these last two years. I thought wanting was the dangerous part. Turns out wanting is easy. It's the moment the other person wants you back that ruins everything.
And she wanted me back. She can say whatever she wants about professionalism and boundaries. Her body told a different story.
I won't forget any of it.
I never forget the things worth seeing.