Chapter 14 – Ariane – The Perfect Fiancé
The sheets are warm, heavy with that slept-in smell of detergent and skin.
Julian’s breath ghosts the back of my neck in even little huffs; his lips graze my hairline like he’s unconsciously refreshing some invisible brand promise: I am here, I am safe, I am yours.
His palm is spread over my sternum as if he thinks he can keep the pieces in place by sheer press.
“Hey,” he whispers when I shift, voice rough with sleep. “You’re awake.”
“Mmh.” It’s a sound, not a word, because I am not cleared for heavy lifting before coffee.
He tightens his arm, pulling me closer so my back is flush to his chest. He’s warm, steady, the human equivalent of a weighted blanket. There is a very familiar ache between my hips that says last night happened.
He kisses that spot behind my ear, soft, not asking for anything, and says, “I love you.”
The sentence lands like a quilt and a stone at the same time. I close my eyes and let myself sink into the gentleness because it’s either that or come apart.
“I love you, too,” I murmur, and I mean it; my mouth doesn’t lie about those words.
But my traitorous body remembers the wrong tryst. It still aches for Finn, like it was in the car.
Finn’s mouth, greedy and demanding, consuming me one kiss at a time.
Finn’s hand on the side of my throat, anchoring me like he’d command my pulse with the sheer force of his will.
The way my name sounded when he said it like a warning he’d chosen not to heed.
My stomach twists. Guilt claws up between my ribs and digs in with its mean little nails.
Julian and I had sex last night.
Grief and fear have a way of kicking open doors you thought were locked.
Julian was gentle with me, and I let him take care of me the way he wanted to. I wanted… I don’t know what I wanted. To feel something that wasn’t a ventilator? To prove to myself I am still alive, maybe?
And here I am, the world’s worst fiancée, still thinking about that one stupid, reckless kiss with my stepbrother in a car on a dark road like I’m starring in a cautionary tale. That kiss had more passion than the hour we spent in foreplay and sex.
Well, there wasn’t much foreplay, considering Julian doesn’t really believe in it.
“What’s wrong?” Julian asks, because apparently my internal weather system shows on my face. His hand rubs slow circles under my collarbone. “You just went way too still, hon.”
“Just thinking.” I swallow the rest, about how thinking is exactly the problem. “About the hospital. About… everything. I’m stuck in my head, I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t question a single word.
He doesn’t know how sorry I am. How much more I have to be sorry for than he thinks I do.
“We’ll get through it,” he replies. “I shifted my schedule, by the way. I’ll be here all weekend.
Monday is a maybe, but I’ll push it if I’ve got to.
I already texted Megan to cancel the fundraiser breakfast. Your mother needs us.
You need me.” He doesn’t say it to brag, I know that.
But something about the way he says it makes me itch.
Maybe I’m losing my mind. “I’ll make you breakfast in a sec?
Think Eleanor’s help will let me in the kitchen, or will I be shot on sight? ”
A laugh escapes me in surprise. “I honestly can’t say. You may get swatted by a spatula.”
“Kinky,” he teases.
He props himself up on an elbow and looks down at me. He is ridiculous in the morning, sleep-tousled, eyes soft, all that sophistication dialed down to something human. He touches my cheekbone with his thumb. “Hey. I’ve got you.”
I want to believe him. I want that to be the whole truth. I nod, because nodding is easier than the eighteen explanations and disclaimers in my head.
He kisses me again. It’s chaste and sweet.
Not the kind of kiss that starts a whole axis spinning and slides out of bed.
He moves around the room with an economy I used to find soothing.
Shirt, belt, cufflinks, all neat in a small, controlled storm.
He pulls one of my sweaters from the chair and drapes it over my shoulders like he’s covering a birdcage to convince the bird to sleep.
“Fifteen minutes,” he says. “Don’t move.”
I do move. I shuffle to the bathroom because mascara is a hell I am not revisiting today.
I pull my hair into a low knot and splash cold water on my face until I can pass for someone who has slept.
The mirror is rude anyway. My mouth is a little swollen.
I know why. I grip the sink and tell myself: we’re not doing that.
We’re not thinking about Finn’s mouth in a mirror while my fiancé is making me eggs like a rom-com boyfriend of the year.
The kitchen smells mouthwatering when I pad in with bare feet and an old pair of sweat shorts. Julian has coaxed the stove into a truce: eggs scrambling in a pan, toast in the toaster, coffee dripping into a carafe like salvation.
The lake winks beyond the windows, all postcard and lies.
A bunch of roses slump in a vase on the counter, party leftovers, browning at the edges, too much doing their best today.
Julian turns and grins. “I found them. Eggs. Hidden behind two jars of capers and what I think might be a taxidermized lemon.”
“You’re a hero.”
“Put it in writing.” He plates eggs and slides them over. “Eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” I sigh.
“Eat anyway.” He hands me a fork. “You need fuel. And water. Gallons. Your mother is going to drain you today.”
“That sounds vampiric.”
“She is a very well-dressed vampire,” he says, straight-faced.
He pours coffee, just the right amount of cream, no sugar.
“We’ll go to the hospital after. I’ll talk to the nurse manager about visiting blocks.
We’ll make a schedule so you’re not sitting there for twelve hours and hating yourself for needing a shower. ”
He is perfect. He is so perfect it makes something in me itch. The perfection has edges today though, brittle, like a glass sculpture you admire with your hands behind your back because you know one wrong move and you’re picking shards out of your fingers for a month.
“I appreciate you, you know?” I tell him, because I do. I don’t deserve him. “And the eggs.”
“Consider it step one in my campaign to keep you from collapsing.” He kisses my temple and then his phone buzzes and he glances at it with that particular focus I recognize as a donor in distress. He silences it.
###
We drive to the hospital with more coffee in travel mugs. I lean my forehead against the window for a second and watch trees blur by in a dizzying haze. I’m seized by both a yearning to be by my stepfather’s side and trepidation over it.
Once we get there, we find Richard’s floor awake with the endless racket of machines.
While she refused to leave the hospital, she had supplies brought to her last night.
Julian stepped away after sex to take things to her.
Now, she is sitting in a corner with a legal pad, two pens, and a perfectly straight spine. Her makeup is perfect.
“Darling,” she says, seeing me and standing at the same time because she does not greet sitting down. She kisses the air near my cheek. “How are you?”
“Fine,” I lie, because I’d rather not be admonished for having emotions in front of Julian right now. “How is he?”
“Resting,” she says. Her voice is porcelain. “The doctor will update us again at ten, he said. He really is exceptional. Top of his field. I’ve already called the board to expedite the specialty consult. We’re not waiting on red tape.”
Julian kisses her cheek with appropriate delicacy. “You look… well,” he attempts, then pivots to safer ground. “I spoke to Senator Kline. He sends his love and says anything you need.”
“I need him to mind his own business,” she says, and there, there’s the hairline crack, quick and real. She snaps it shut. “Thank him, of course.”
“I will.” He slips a hand to the back of my neck, thumb gentle at the base of my skull. It’s a very nice touch. I want it to be enough to calm the small Rovio bird of panic that’s been ricocheting between my ribs since last night.
We scrub into CCU. The smell hits, bleach and a metallic scent I refuse to label, and I nearly lose that breakfast Julian made me.
Richard is there under the thin hospital blanket, smaller than he has been since I met him.
His skin is the color of paper left in a desk drawer too long, his lashes rest on his cheeks like tired commas.
Tubes, lines, numbers. The monitor ticks off his heart’s geography with merciless calm.
The ventilator exhales and inhales in a rhythm that is its own quiet tyranny.
I take his hand because I can’t do anything else that feels like doing. It’s cool, but his fingers twitch when I curl mine.
“Hi,” I whisper, and my voice comes out like I just learned how to use it. “You promised me Sunday pancakes, remember? I’ve been very patient. This is me calling in my debt. Again.”
Mom stands on the other side of the bed, nodding. Turns out, I’ve said something appropriate for the setting, then she pivots to the nurse with the voice she reserves for vendors and people who don’t know her last name.
“We will not be doing any press updates on the floor,” she says. “All statements go through me. If any media attempt to…”
“Mom,” I say, soft. Not a scold. Not today. She’s a shark who swims or drowns. Let her circle the boat. “Not now.”
Her eyes flash, then soften a fraction when she really looks at me. The fraction is a mercy, and it makes me want to cry into the crook of her neck like I used to do when I fell off my bike and opened my knee on gravel.
She squeezes Richard’s shoulder as if she can push him back into his body by force.
“Come back to me,” she whispers to him, and it’s the most human she’s sounded in two days.