Chapter Twenty-Six
He took her to a perfume shop.
A parfumerie, he thought the French word was, which was better for the place he’d seen on his walk over to the café: a tiny space, deserving of that -ie ending that sounded small to him, tucked neatly and cozily into a row of stores in the shopping district of the Marais.
What made him notice it first was not its smallness but its color—his favorite color, which formed the shop’s facade, a striking matte black contrast to the pale stone above and around it.
The lettering above the door was small, simple, no showy script or fancy logo.
Through the glass, he saw a wild display of boldly colored flowers, deep reds and magentas and jewel greens, and because he’d been with her all day yesterday, because he’d walked by and in countless shops with her, he immediately thought—a relief from what had otherwise been pounding through him with each step—Layla would like that.
But he’d forgotten about it once he got to the café, once he sat and fully took stock of the smoldering remains of the morning. He waited and thought about how to tell her that Jamie knew, that Michael knew.
About whether to tell her that there was something else, too.
A secret Michael was keeping, something that would matter so much to Emily.
The woman who was about to marry his best friend. The woman Layla thought of as a sister.
He’d forgotten about the shop even more once his conversation with Layla took a different turn.
For a while, he’d forgotten everything, ever; he listened to her and lived only inside the cocoon of hate he seemed to be constructing around himself, the whole thing made up of every detail Layla told him about her ex-husband.
What a fucking idiot, to lose her. To lose the reality of Layla, all for some imaginary kid.
What an asshole, to try to convince her. To make family a bargaining chip. To use the thing she wanted most in the world against her. To change the meaning of it after you’d made your vows.
But the memory of the shop came back to him almost as soon as Layla brought Emily up again—her doubts, her doubts about Michael, Michael who’d shouted at him on the street, Michael who’d not spoken to him for the rest of the morning, Michael who’d left the patisserie with a basket of croissants that Griffin had made and a look on his face like he barely knew where he was anymore.
He did not know what to do about Michael. About Emily.
Not yet.
But when he thought about that perfume shop, he knew something he could do for Layla.
He walked her back there, holding her hand the whole way, even though he could genuinely not remember the last time he’d held hands with someone outside of a nurse in a hospital hallway, clutching and desperate during weight-bearing exercises that made him feel subhuman, gawked at, pitied.
He kept Layla close on his right side, like a bulwark against what was still hurting on his left—seven out of ten, he was pretty sure—ever since this morning in Montmartre.
He didn’t mention it to her, because mentioning it to her meant explaining what’d happened with Michael, and in the end this detour was for him, too: a little more time, like he’d told her, even if what he was letting himself forget for a while was his best friend.
When they got close, she looked up at him, said, “Perfume?” and he was nervous for a minute, worried it had been a bad idea. He knew some women didn’t wear it, didn’t like it, and maybe she was one of them.
Except he had a sense that she wasn’t. He had a sense this was right.
So he took her inside the shop: dimly lit and den-like, the flowers on display highlighted with some hidden glow coming from somewhere tucked away.
He said, “Bonjour,” to the woman dressed in all black who stood inside behind a long marble counter, because Layla told him yesterday that you always had to say Bonjour when you walked into a shop here, always.
She said Bonjour back, but also asked in English whether she might help them, so clearly he had not mastered his pronunciation.
He took out his wallet, slid out a credit card, and handed it to the woman, whom he trusted instinctively, what with her outfit and all. He said, “For her,” gesturing at Layla. “For whatever she picks.”
“Griff,” Layla whispered, like she was absolutely scandalized, and he could not help but smile, especially given what he’d done to her last night.
“I can’t stay in here,” he said, which was true—the aroma was overwhelming, the kind of sensory overload that would get his wires crossed, especially at a seven out of ten.
It was more than that, though: It was that he wanted her to pick something only for herself.
He wanted her to go to that open house tonight wearing something she’d picked because she liked it, and not because it looked a certain way for the MacKenzies, not because she wanted to blend in or be appropriate or fucking amicable.
“But I—” She broke off, at a loss for words, as though no one had ever done something like this for her before, which added a layer to that cocoon of hate he’d been working on.
“I can pay for it myself,” she finally finished.
“I know,” he said.
It struck him that knowing it—knowing that he was buying her something comparatively small, something she could buy for herself—was part of why this mattered to him.
He’d had his money for a long time now, a complete fluke after all these years, the kind of money that grew without him doing a damn thing worthwhile with himself, and the only way it’d ever felt okay to him was when he was buying his mother a farm or paying for most of this insane, over-the-top wedding.
If he wanted that sort of feeling, he would’ve found a way to get back to that clothes museum Layla loved from yesterday; he would’ve tried to get someone to sell him one of those starlight dresses, straight off the mannequin, or he would’ve leaned into his hate-cocoon-driven urge to buy her some hulking, unmissable piece of jewelry, just to stick it to Jamie MacKenzie.
He might not be good; he might not be reliable. But he was rich.
This, though. This was different.
So he leaned down quickly, set his lips against her for one of those corner-mouth kisses he liked to give her, and ducked out of the store before she could object again.
Back outside, he tucked himself off to the side of the building, and almost immediately—as soon as he was out of sight of the shop’s window, no longer able to see Layla—the forgetting part was over.
In his mind, he was away from the Marais, back on the hill in Montmartre with Michael.
He was staring down at a heap of debris and ash; he was thinking, What happened here?
; he was sorting through the answers that were too numerous and too quick in coming.
He realized now that he’d been wrong about this wedding—about the risk to this wedding—from the beginning.
He had not known how far Michael had already gone to ensure it would happen, and in the not knowing, he had simply blamed Layla.
And then he had grown close to Layla, closer than he’d let himself be with anyone in years, only to be reminded—first by her ex-husband, and then by Michael, too—that he was not good enough for her, that he was unreliable, a hermit who never left his house, a man who had no room to judge.
It rang in his ears, that You don’t judge me for this, that broken note in Michael’s voice as he said it, and the worst part was how much he understood it.
He understood how long Michael had grieved for Sara Beth, how much harder and heavier the grief had been for how close Griffin had come to dying, too, how challenging Fitz and Paula had been in the aftermath.
He understood, too, that Emily was a miracle to Michael, a balm to him. He understood that Michael genuinely loved her, and that’s why he was so afraid to lose her.
And he supposed he also understood—now that he’d been with Layla—why the whole truth was sometimes so hard to say.
You didn’t break up the best feeling you’ve had in forever to say, Let me tell you about the worst thing that ever happened to me?
He hadn’t. In all the time he was with Layla, yesterday and last night, he hadn’t.
Except…except it wasn’t the same.
He knew it wasn’t the same, no matter if now, he thought maybe he could tell Layla about the fire, about Sara Beth and how he hadn’t been able to save her. It wasn’t the same because he hadn’t been with Layla for over a year, hadn’t proposed to her, wasn’t going to marry her tomorrow night.
That thought—marry her—sent a shock through him, an unfamiliar sensation that didn’t show up on the pain scale.
He shoved it aside.
He thought of Emily finding out about Sara Beth later. After the wedding.
What it would do to her, to find out later.
And then he thought of Layla again, across from him at that café table, telling him about her divorce.
That’s not the same, either, part of him thought. All right, I still fucking hate him, but I can see that he didn’t really lie. Not like Michael’s lying. He changed his mind, like Layla said.
But a bigger part of him—a better part of him, maybe—thought, It’s the same. Emily could get hurt the same.
And when she did—when she got hurt from finding this out, after she’d already married him—Michael would lose her.
From his spot against the coal-black building facade, Griffin raised a hand to his forehead, pressing his fingers beneath the brim of his hat, rubbing at the tension there. Distantly, he thought, Do I have a goddamn headache, a regular-person headache? How strange.
It was more complexity than he had allowed into his life in ages. For years, he had been guided by only a few things. Managing his pain, making sure his mother was taken care of.
And Michael. Seeing Michael happy, and settled.
The way he would’ve been, if it hadn’t been for the fire.
Now, though, it was different.
He thought of Michael looking at him, hard-eyed but scared, Michael saying, You, never leaving your house, and he wished Michael was here right now.
He wished he could say back what had just come to him, bright and blinding and so terrible that there was no one he wanted to tell except for his best friend.
But I did leave the house. I left the house; I crawled out of the bell tower, out of hell itself, and it hurt almost the whole fucking way.
And that’s how I know what you’re doing isn’t right.
“Hi,” Layla said, and he straightened up, turned to face her—the warm, smiling aliveness of her, something pleased and sheepish in her eyes.
He did not forget about Emily, about Sara Beth, about Michael.
But he did focus.
“You get something?” he asked, and she nodded, the sheepishness in her expression turned more teasing.
More tempting.
She had a small bag dangling from her fingers, swinging gently, but she said, “I’m wearing it.”
He took her elbow, drawing her to him and spinning her so her back was pressed to the building, so he could crowd her again like that first time he kissed her.
He dropped his face, tucked it against her neck, and took a deep inhale.
The best breath of his life.
She sighed with pleasure. He recognized the sound of her pleasure now, and it sent blood straight to his groin, but he didn’t press that part of himself hard into her, like he wanted to.
“Lily,” she said, not too close to his ear. “White musk, and—”
He pressed his lips against her neck.
“I forget,” she breathed.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, because it didn’t. He thought she would smell good to him no matter what. She could’ve said, lily and ash heap, and he would’ve thought, It works on you.
“Do y—” She broke off when she felt his tongue touch gently, quickly, against her neck, then tried again. “Do you like it?”
He had an answer. Of course he had an answer. But he thought maybe it was the wrong question, the amicable question, and after everything she’d told him, Griffin didn’t want Layla to ever feel like she had to ask him any of those.
“No,” he lied, but he kept his face right there. He breathed it in again.
He felt her smile. She said, “Well, I don’t care. I do.”
He lifted his head and kissed her once, hard.
“Good,” he said, and then kissed her again, and again and again, too much for the street, no nighttime, no doorway to protect them now, but neither of them seemed to care.
When they finally stopped, both of them out of breath, Layla glassy-eyed with her head tipped back against the black facade, he knew their hour was up—they had to get back to the hotel, get changed, get over to the open house.
He sensed that she knew it, too; he watched awareness gather back into her eyes.
He felt as though they were standing still against some threshold, a gate he didn’t want to give a name to: on the other side, Emily and Michael, the ghost of Sara Beth.
Jamie and what he’d seen last night, Jamie and the rest of the MacKenzies and the way they looked at Layla. The way she looked at all of them, too.
The column of her throat moved in a swallow.
She said, a slight catch in her voice, “You do like it, though, don’t you?”
He looked at her, long and searching. He thought something he had not thought in years and years, or maybe ever.
He thought, You need me, but for once, it didn’t have anything to do with his money.
It had to do with how he would answer this question.
It had to do with his shrewdness, his ability to see her, his opposite-of-amicability way of moving through the world, which had only ever been a survival tactic until now, him I don’t care–ing himself through the half-life he’d been clinging to.
It had to do with the way she needed to be reminded of what she didn’t owe—what she would never owe—to anyone else.
It had to do with how Layla, for too long, had been telling people what they wanted to hear: It’s okay that you changed your mind; of course we’ll still be family; yes, I’ll come to the wedding.
He thought, I am needed, and for all the scanning of his body he’d spent all these years doing, he couldn’t decide, in the moment, whether it made him feel heavy or light.
So he just smiled at her, for once not thinking of what it did to his face.
“I hate it,” he said.
He watched as she smiled back, slow and revelatory and satisfied, the I don’t care written all over her face. He watched as she realized his answer was the most beautiful, loving lie she’d ever been told.
And he wondered, as he walked back to the hotel with her, how hard it would be—how heavy it would be—to tell someone else he loved exactly what they needed to hear.