Chapter 12 – Ariane – Perfume and Promises
I’m in a stiff plastic hospital chair that could double as a medieval torture device, my neck screaming at me for the position I apparently passed out in.
I shouldn’t even be here in fresh clothes.
I shouldn’t smell faintly of lavender detergent instead of smoke and champagne.
I shouldn’t have hair that looks brushed or a cardigan soft against my skin.
But I do. Because last night, after the world cracked open on the lawn, I didn’t stay. I left the hospital. I left with Finn.
Finn.
That’s the part that makes me want to crawl out of my own skin.
We drove home together. His car, the console, the kiss, God, that kiss, and then silence so loud it could have drowned me.
He dropped me off without a word, and I went inside on legs that didn’t feel like mine.
I showered, changed into shorts and a sports bra, stared at myself in the mirror until my reflection blurred, and finally crawled into bed with wet hair and a heart that felt like it had been dropped down a flight of stairs.
I didn’t sleep much, just drifted in and out, replaying everything like some cruel movie I couldn’t switch off.
Now I’m back, in fresh clothes, pretending to be a dutiful daughter while Richard lies motionless under too many machines.
My mother looks like a zombie across the hall, still in last night’s dress, pearls glued to her throat like armor, lipstick smeared, face gray under her makeup.
She shoved a change of clothes into my hands this morning but never bothered with her own.
That’s Eleanor Wagner for you: appearances first, even if she looks like death warmed over.
Me? I look fine. Presentable. Respectable.
A woman who knows how to keep herself together.
Except I don’t. Because the only thing running through my mind, while my stepfather fights for his life and my fiancé paces outside with perfect, political calm, is the heat of Finn’s mouth on mine, the rough scrape of his hand at my waist, the way I didn’t stop him.
I curl my fingers tighter around Richard’s hand, as if he can anchor me back to who I’m supposed to be. “You promised me forever,” I whisper. My throat stings, my chest twists. “Don’t you dare get out of it now.”
The only answer is the mechanical chorus, plastic sighs and electronic beeps. No witty comeback about how he burns the first batch every time. No dad-joke about the coffee being “rocket fuel.” Just silence, except for the machines. My stomach twists so hard it feels like it’s folding in on itself.
And then the guilt comes barreling in, as relentless as the monitor.
I lean forward, pressing my forehead to Richard’s hand, trying to scrub the memory out, but it only sinks deeper.
The way Finn pulled the car over abruptly like he’d made up his mind and nothing in the world could stop him.
The way his eyes found mine in the dark, storm-gray and unreadable, but telling me everything anyway.
The way I leaned in first, like some reckless stranger had hijacked my body.
And when our mouths crashed together, messy, wild, and desperate.
It was fire and ruin, his hand fisting in my hair, his other anchoring hard at my waist. The console digging into my hip, my knee jammed awkwardly against the cupholder, it should’ve been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t.
It felt like the only place I was supposed to be.
His mouth opened against mine and I swear I forgot what air was.
I should’ve stopped. Even if it isn’t by blood, we’re still related, for the love of God.
If nothing else, I should’ve remembered Julian—remembered the ring on my finger and the promise I made when I accepted it.
I should’ve thought of the man lying in this hospital bed, who would be sick to his stomach if he ever found out what we did.
Yet I lost myself to primal hunger, all-consuming heat, and the sounds Finnick Wagner elicited from the depths of my soul.
But that was last night.
Today, the shame burns hotter than the kiss ever did.
“I am a disaster,” I whisper against Richard’s hand. My voice cracks, half-laugh, half-sob. “I have a fiancé who endlessly adores me. I have a father figure fighting for his life. And here I am, still thinking about my stepbrother’s mouth.”
I almost laugh again, but it catches in my throat and turns to tears. What kind of sick person does this?
Me, apparently.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but the flashbacks keep coming in jagged fragments: the heady smell of his cologne, the scrape of his stubble against my palms, the sound of him swearing when I pulled at his shirt and popped a button.
And then the moment after, the silence thick as tar when I pulled back and gasped, “We can’t. ”
His face… God, his face. Like he wanted to argue. Like he’d already decided we both knew the truth: we’d crossed the line, and there was no uncrossing it.
I sit up abruptly, wiping my face with the heel of my hand.
“Get it together, Ariane,” I scold, furious with myself. I deserve to go to hell. “No one cares to hear about your existential meltdown. Selfish, sick, wretched…”
The sound of footsteps saves me from spiraling further.
It’s Julian. I know from the sound of his footsteps, that gait I have learned over time and would know anywhere. This man, who adores me, who I have betrayed like a soulless whore.
He slips into the room like he’s arriving for a press conference, suit immaculate even this early, hair combed, and his tie knotted perfectly. His eyes soften the very instant they land on me. In his hand, he carries coffee like an offering. He’s wonderful. I feel sick to my stomach.
“Double cream, no sugar,” he says sweetly, placing it into my hands before I can object. “I thought you might need it, sweetheart.”
I blink at the cup, then at him. “Why are you so good to me?”
His smile is small, warm, practiced. “My beautiful girl deserves a beautiful life,” he returns, his words as smooth as a line made for the silver screen.
My chest constricts beneath the avalanche of needling guilt. Guilt, that stabs biting and searing, because here he is, the perfect fiancé, and I’m sitting here reminiscing over the taste of another man in my mouth.
Julian, totally unaware, presses a kiss to my hair and drags his hand up and down my back, soothing me with small, concentric circles I don’t deserve the loveliness of.
“He’s strong, Ari,” Julian comforts, killing me one word at a time. “He’ll make it. The doctors are optimistic.”
Every word he gives me is exactly what a woman in my position should want to hear.
And yet.
Julian’s touch is soft, careful, protective. It feels safe. He is good. He loves me.
But I can’t help noticing the difference. Julian’s touch is gentle with me, and Finn’s touch burned like a firebrand. One dotes on me. The other claimed me.
I hate myself for even daring to compare.
I force a smile, squeeze Julian’s hand. “Thank you,” I whisper. “For being here.”
His answering smile is flawless. But deep down, my stomach flips, nausea flooding my senses.
Here is a fact: last night cracked something open, and no amount of careful coffee or shoulder circles can stitch it shut.
###
If Julian is refined comfort, my mother is brittle chaos wrapped in pearls. She’s terrorized every nurse on the floor since sunrise.
“No lilies!” she snaps at one poor woman carrying a vase. “They’re scream funereal. Do you want the room to look like a wake?”
The nurse mutters an apology and retreats.
Mom paces the hallway with her clipboard, fielding calls from reporters, dictating who can and cannot visit, even instructing the nurses on which flowers are “appropriate.” Control is her oxygen. If she stops for even a second, she’ll drop to the ground, undone.
But when I duck down to the vending machine for a Coke, I catch her at the end of the corridor. She’s not as elegant then.
Her pearls are still there, but her shoulders shake. Her lipstick has bled at the edges. She presses the heel of her hand hard against her eye, like she can erase tears by force. For the first time in years, she looks human. Small and terrified.
It reminds me of the day she got married, which was probably the last time we actually connected.
“Mommy?” I try, careful as I approach her.
She startles, straightens, swipes at her face so fast it’s almost violent. “Don’t.”
I step closer anyway, Coke forgotten in my hand. “You don’t have to hold it all together.”
“Yes, I do.” Her voice cracks once, then sharpens. “One of us has to stay alert.”
I stare at her, at the brittle mask that slips like water over her spiky grief, and I want to scream.
I want to scream at her that all this—her guise of perfection, the way she works so hard to smooth every edge that life erects—won’t keep Richard alive.
That this isn’t the time to care about all this stuff that doesn’t even matter.
That I’d rather have her messy, terrified, human.
But it’s already too late.
She’s already turned her face away. The moment has already disintegrated.
Just like that, it’s me who is fighting tears, messy and terrified and human. And so alone. “Fine,” I choke out. “Then I guess I’ll fall apart for both of us.”
I watch her mouth purse into a line, and her eyes squeeze shut.
For a moment, I almost think that I’ve gotten through to her.
And then she is shaking her head, coolly dismissing, “Enough with the theatrics, Ariane. I don’t have the patience to coddle you right now,” before sweeping past me, heels ticking like punctuation.
I watch her go, take a sip of Coke, and whisper to myself, “Love you too, Mom.”
###
The thought of sitting here one more second, staring at the beige linoleum while Richard fights for breath behind a glass wall, makes me want to scream.
I make a beeline for the sliding doors, past the smokers’ corner, into the bite of cold morning air. It’s almost violent against my lungs, and I welcome it.
And there he is.