Chapter Twenty-Five
The text came when Layla was getting out of the shower.
She was not supposed to shower, the masseuse said; she was supposed to let the oils or whatever else soak in; she was supposed to give the energy from the massage time to settle throughout her body.
Manon said, “Layla, you can’t go shower!
” and Layla lied and feigned a need to scratch at her neck, saying she thought she might be allergic to something.
But really, the massage made Layla feel restless and uncomfortable: the troubling conversation with Em too fresh in her mind, the traces of Griffin too fresh on her body.
She felt as though she spent the whole ninety minutes clinging to both—worrying over whether to tell Griffin what she’d heard, and resenting every touch that covered over one of his.
When the massage finally ended, Layla dressed hastily, relieved that the rest of today was intended as “free time” for the guests to rest before tonight. She took out her phone before even clearing the spa’s doors.
Text me when you’re back, she wrote to Griffin, which, on reflection, might have read as overeager in a vague but still somehow too-specific way: a real Please let me into that hotel room again plea.
That he hadn’t replied right away had perhaps driven her more quickly into the blazing-hot shower. A new reason to rinse—the shame of accidentally coming off as desperate.
So when she heard the pinging notification at the same time she shut the water off, she purposefully did not rush over to read the screen.
She wrapped up her hair carefully, toweled off completely, tied herself into the room’s now-familiar white robe.
She tried to ignore the hope that his reply would be a simple Come up, that she would follow his instructions, that he would draw her into the faerie kingdom of his room, that he would make it so she wouldn’t have to think about any of his secrets and what they might mean for Em and Michael’s wedding.
But when she finally checked, she had a sinking feeling.
We need to talk, his text said. Then, an address for a café a few blocks away.
Much like her own text, it was vague but still too specific.
A prologue to We made a mistake if she’d ever seen one.
She sent back a curt OK, which was how Doctor Layla Bailey replied to texts that annoyed her, and this felt good to do—armoring and appropriately defensive.
When she dressed, she did so without a care for all the concerns she’d had earlier in the week about the chicness of Parisian café culture; probably if she’d had access to Rosie’s neon-green crop top, she would’ve put that on in some kind of petty defiance.
As it stood, she still only had neutrals, but she picked her slouchiest ones to wear.
She left her hair wet and slicked it back into a bun, put on her sunscreen and her lip balm and nothing else, shoved her feet into her sneakers.
She put on her sunglasses in the elevator and didn’t smile once as she crossed the lobby.
She thought, I’m not even going to let him say it was a mistake.
I’m going to make it about Michael and Emily, because that’s what I said today would go back to being.
It took her ten minutes to walk to the café, a nondescript corner spot with a faded awning and tables and chairs that were a little shabbier than she was used to seeing.
It was crowded—not with tourists, she could tell, but with people who looked as comfortable as if they were sitting in their own homes, with family or friends they had over.
So it took her a few seconds to spot Griffin.
Obviously, he was alone. All-black, his hat on and his hands clasped loosely on his lap.
Remote and magnetic, his own whole universe.
He did not have his phone out; he was not reading.
There was a bottle of Perrier on the table, two empty glasses, and another tiny cup of what was probably decaf in front of him.
Layla thought he looked so strangely like he belonged there.
Like he had somehow nailed Parisian café culture, no cigarette necessary.
“Annoying,” she muttered to herself, shoving down the unruly twist of desire in her stomach, striding gamely toward him and thinking about how she was going to start by saying, Actually, I think you need to fix this wedding now.
But before she even got to his table, he stood. A column of smoke himself, and when she reached him—when his gravity had succeeded in pulling her to him—he set his right hand beneath her elbow, cupping it in the softest touch.
And he leaned in and kissed her. Right at the corner of her mouth. A Parisian kiss, but more possessive. He smelled like butter, butter and sugar and cinnamon, and he said, “You look pretty,” in a voice so low she could not be sure whether she’d dreamed it.
She practically slid into the chair he held out for her.
Emily and Michael, she said to herself desperately, not wanting one single kiss, one simple compliment—You look pretty—to stop her from preempting this gently delivered We made a mistake business.
“Jamie knows,” Griffin said—not gently—as soon as he sat down across from her.
She blinked.
She was so startled that it almost felt as though she had no idea who Jamie was.
“About Michael and Emily?” she finally said.
Griffin shook his head. “About us.”
For what felt like a long time, Layla didn’t say anything at all.
She was thinking about something Griffin had told her yesterday as they’d searched for a comfortable place to sit in the elegant, secret-seeming Jardin du Palais Royal.
He’d said, Usually, I’m scanning for a feeling. I’m making sure I’m not too far gone.
That was what she felt like now. Like she was scanning for a feeling. Something that would tell her whether it mattered to her that Jamie knew.
She could not, for the life of her, find one.
“Michael knows, too.”
Oh. There was a feeling. A nervous one, an uncomfortable one.
She’d come here to talk about Michael, about trouble between Michael and Emily, and whether or not she cared about Jamie knowing, she still didn’t want what had happened with Griffin to become a sideshow when things were already strained.
Griffin said—as though he was reading the scan himself—“He won’t tell anyone.”
She reached for the Perrier, poured herself a glass, and sipped. Steadying herself, even though the water sparkled joyfully in her mouth. The bubbles tasted better in France; she didn’t know how to explain it. She licked her bottom lip, liking the tingly feeling.
When she looked up again, Griffin’s gaze was there. On her mouth. Dazed and hungry.
I’m too far gone, she thought.
She straightened, cleared her throat. “How did he find out?”
Even as she said it, she realized she wasn’t sure which of the men she was talking about.
Jamie, Michael, it didn’t really matter.
But as soon as she asked, Griffin blinked out of his haze, shifting in his seat.
Arranging himself so his left leg was straight.
He looked uncomfortable, but she got the sense it had, for once, nothing to do with his body.
“He overheard a part of the conversation. With”—a long pause, like he was about to swallow something bad—“your ex.”
Layla almost laughed. Laughed! Instead, she smiled, hoped it looked sardonic. “You can say his name, you know. It doesn’t bother me.”
Griffin looked to the side briefly, his jaw flexing. “Well. It fucking bothers me,” he said bluntly.
She took another sip of her joy water. Waited for the bubbles to ping their way through her before speaking again. Wondered why she felt so…so effervescent about this.
“Did you argue?” she finally asked.
“We…had words.” Another shift in his seat. “Guess he was in the hotel lobby when we came back last night.”
Here, he paused. Took a sip of his dark black drink and set it down with a clink.
“He’s worried about you,” he bit out.
Later, she would think so much—over and over—about this simple, specific thing Griffin said to her. Not even his own words, but someone else’s. Not even something new, because hadn’t she heard it, some version of it, a hundred different ways, from all of the MacKenzies, since the separation?
And yet in that moment, in that shabby corner café, said to her by this man—
It suddenly sounded so insulting.
It was the beginning of having a curse broken.
Her dark, cruel-seeming fae prince, jolting her into a different reality than the one she’d been trapped in for the last two years.
“It’s not his job to worry about me,” she said. She sort of wanted to take out her phone and type it into the translation app so all these French people could hear her say it in their language, too.
Griff’s face softened, one side of his mouth tipping up. “That’s what I said, too.”
For a second, they looked at each other, as though both of them had just taken a big gulp of bubbly water. As though they were both thinking, This is simply delightful!
Then, wanting another hit, she said, “And what did he say to that?”
Griffin’s smile faded, his body shifting again, his eyes lowering.
She thought, at first, that she might’ve miscalculated—showing too much interest in Jamie himself, when really what this was about was how little it mattered to her that Jamie was worried, how she so thoroughly felt that she did not want that from him, not in any area of her life. Not anymore.
But after a few more seconds of silence, she could tell it wasn’t that. She could tell there was something Griffin did not want to say to her.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“It does. Tell me.”
Griffin cleared his throat, made a flicking gesture with his right hand, as though he was trying to preemptively swat away what came next. “He said you were family.”