Chapter Thirty-Three #2
Layla laughed, remembering some of the greatest hits: Cara’s angry-face emoji response to the long email Manon had sent to Layla after Paris, part apology and part guilt trip over Layla’s “unceremonious departure,” her doubt about Layla’s decision to talk to Robert and Manon on the phone one day a few weeks ago, a painful but necessary conversation in which Layla had set some new boundaries, and, finally, her gasping proclamation of the MacKenzies as cheap-ass motherfuckers when Layla revealed that Griffin had been the one to pay for most of the wedding.
Layla thought that last one was pretty unfair, but now, she didn’t always so readily push back on anything negative about the MacKenzies.
Sometimes, she’d learned, you had to let your friends—your family—howl at the moon for you.
Especially when you weren’t capable, at first, of doing it for yourself.
“You have,” Layla said.
“But I have to admit, I’ve been wrong about your sister-in-law. Ex-sister-in-law, whatever.”
Layla smiled, thinking of Em at dinner last night. A tearful reunion. A happy one. She did still think of Emily as a sister; that was the nice thing to come out of all of this.
Separate from anyone else in the MacKenzie family, she still felt that way about Em.
“Oh?” Layla said. “What brought this on?”
Cara’s steps slowed, more like a stroll now. She shrugged casually, was quiet for a few seconds, clearly distracted by something on her phone. She slowed to a stop, and Layla figured it was work.
Then she tucked her phone away, looked up at Layla, and said, “I think she really cares about you. Just for you. Whether you’re sisters or not, you know?” She was smiling widely, excitedly. “I really think that.”
“Okay?” Layla said, but also—she felt it. A warmth moving inside her.
Not from Cara’s smile. Not from the nice things she said about Em. Not from the sunny day or the not-cigarette smell of the Esplanade or the breeze off the water.
A crackle in the air, like lightning.
A fae prince, a column of smoke, a shade from heaven.
Come to get his mortal girl.
She turned, and there was Griffin.
* * *
Cara left with only a brief explanation: a text she’d gotten late last night from Emily, the two still in each other’s contacts from way back when there were still pre-wedding events for Layla being scheduled; some hasty planning to make sure Layla would be here when someone else—someone special—would be waiting.
After that, a quick blown kiss, an assessing gaze at Griffin in his all-black, his baseball cap.
A declaration that she had not, in fact, enjoyed a stroll, and actually she did have a destination to get to, thankyouverymuch, and Layla would need to call extremely soon, okay?
Then, Cara left them alone together.
Or as alone together as you could be in a city of people, which—as Layla and Griffin both knew—was actually quite a lot.
“Hi,” she said, half disbelieving. Him, here. She had never seen him here.
She had never seen him anywhere but in the air, and then in Paris.
She found herself profoundly, overwhelmingly relieved to know that he had the exact same effect on her in this place. She knew for certain now—in a way she couldn’t possibly have known three and a half months ago—that he would have this effect on her anywhere.
After any amount of time.
“Sorry it took me so long,” he said, which, as an opener, was not particularly profound.
But he had his ball cap low, his hands in his pockets. Nervous, and maybe also feeling some pain. Travel, a new place, a walk from wherever. It could be pain.
“It wasn’t that long,” she said.
He blew out a breath. “It felt long to me.”
She smiled. Part of her wanted to say, Oh my god, for me, too; it’s felt like forever; part of her wanted to close the distance between them now, to throw her arms around him and squeeze and squeeze until she could assure herself that he wasn’t a hallucination, that the magic heaven of him wouldn’t simply disappear into the air.
But another part of her felt a Not yet from him. That’s what she was reading in his ball cap, his hands tucked away.
So she stayed quiet. When her smile started to feel unwieldy, she lifted her coffee to her mouth, and watched as he tracked the movement: her lips around the lid, her careful sip on an indrawn breath, her throat moving in a swallow.
He said, “Back to American habits already.”
A teasing note. She heard it.
She shrugged. Still smiling, probably. “Maybe it did take you too long.”
At that, he looked suddenly…stricken.
Absolutely stricken.
“No!” she said, overloud, way too loud for being alone together. She took a step closer to him, and repeated it. “I was kidding. I only meant—”
He took off his hat. Turned and tossed it onto the dark green bench behind him, which she hadn’t even noticed until now.
He took her hand. No step-by-step, no careful braiding. His warm, damp palm pressed to hers, a clasp. He tugged her closer, still keeping some space between them.
“I can make you these promises,” he said firmly.
And then, he listed them. Like he’d been practicing and practicing. Like he’d had a hundred conversation partners since he left her.
I can promise that I’m learning to take better care of myself.
I can promise that I’ve accepted it’ll always hurt.
I can promise to admit when it does.
I can promise that I want to be here. That I want to have a life. That I deserve a life.
I can promise that I’ll want that even if you don’t want to share some of yours with me.
“But god,” he said, after that last one. “God, Layla, I hope you do.”
She would not risk that stricken face again.
She would not, even for a smile.
So she leaned in, and pressed her mouth to his. She said, “I really, really do.”
At that, he let go of her hand. He wrapped his arms around her, hugged her close, so close that she could feel his heart beating and burning in a new way, not at all broken.
They stood that way for a long time, holding each other along the banks of the Charles, both of them probably pretending that they could somehow be somewhere else together, too—a different river in a very different city.
She smiled against his chest, the smooth, soft, seamless shirt she would not miss her next opportunity to steal. She said, “I have a list, too.”
She looked up at him—his handsome, sculptural, perfect face, god. Her whole list flew out of her mind for a second, and she thought maybe she would have to do it later. When she did not want to kiss and kiss him, to remind herself what her mouth could do when it was pressed against his.
But Griffin had not forgotten. “What kind of list?”
“Not promises,” she said, scrutinizing him as she did, waiting to see if he was disappointed.
But he wasn’t. She could tell that even before he said, “I didn’t expect any. I think the thing about us is, it’s me who’ll need to make the promises at first. I think maybe you’ve had enough of making your own for a while.”
She lowered her head again, let him kiss the top of it. He rubbed his palm down her back as she let out a relieved breath.
“List,” he finally said. “Go.”
She couldn’t help her laugh. He still talked like Griffin—Paris Griffin, the man she’d met all those months ago, curt and commanding and impatient.
She was so glad for that.
So she did her list, too.
Every French word and phrase she’d learned over the last three and a half months that she’d longed to say to him.
The places they’d gone together, the things they’d seen and done, the way she’d felt.
She said things like flaner but she also said manquer; she said la souffrance, la joie, la tristesse, l’espoir.
She said all the words she liked the sound of and the meaning of; she thought Sabine would probably hate it all, as a list, but also she thought her pronunciation was getting better and better.
There was one more thing, too—something she hadn’t dared to ask Sabine if she was grammatically correct about, something she’d checked and double-checked so many times online.
“J’ai envie de toi,” she said against his skin, along the right side of his neck.
She hoped she’d said it with all the longing and desire she felt.
Hoped that somehow, underneath it, he could feel the other thing—the bigger thing—she wanted to say waiting just beneath the surface.
Waiting for sometime later, sometime in the future, when she would be ready to make promises again.
He held her tighter, dipped his head close to her ear. Let her feel what all that French did to him.
“Jesus,” he breathed. “I haven’t been learning any more French.”
“No?”
“No. I’ve built a few model trains.”
She laughed and pulled back to look at him. “Really? You’ll have to show me.” She frowned dramatically and added, “Le train. Not much of an effort there.”
He kissed the word from her mouth.
“I will show you,” he promised. And then he added, seriously, “I’ve done some other things.”
“I can tell.”
She could see it in him, those things. She could not quite articulate how she could see them, because he looked the same: the clothes, the coiled tension, the care he still took with his movements.
But she could see them. In his eyes, or in the set of his mouth. Something.
It was ineffable. Untranslatable.
She said, “You look so good. Tu es si beau.”
He gave her a specific smile. The Versailles one. Grudging but earnest.
“You have no idea how you look to me,” he replied.
“How?” she said, and he took her face in both his hands, a more complete holding than he’d done that last day in the Marais. He looked at her for so long.
Not memorizing, though.
Not looking as though he was getting ready to say goodbye.
He was looking at her as though he was making a promise.
“A city of light,” he said. “A tower of gold.”
He bent his head and kissed her. Long and full of promises she knew he would never break.
“Like Paris,” he said, when he took a breath, and then he kissed her again, before adding something else. A final, perfect set of things, maybe the only things she ever wanted a man to promise her, ever again.
“Like yourself. Like the woman I love. Like Layla Bailey.”