Chapter 14 – Ariane – The Perfect Fiancé #3
She lives in Jersey now, shoebox apartment over a bodega, a place that always smells faintly like coffee and rain, juggling two creative-adjacent gigs and a rotating cast of rescue dogs.
She’s only just showing up in this circus because real life had her on a short leash: end-of-month deadlines, a busted PATH line, and a borrowed Corolla that eats gas like it’s a hobby.
She snagged three days off, stuffed a duffel with chaos and snacks, and pointed herself at Willowridge the second I called her crying last night after Julian went back to the hospital to bring Mom some supplies.
Penny arrives like weather: you cannot schedule her; you look up and there she is, exactly when I need a human bullhorn who loves me enough to tell me the truth and then shove a bag of chips in my hands while I hear it.
I turn and there she is.
Penny’s beat-up sedan honks cheerfully like a sitcom entrance. “Get in loser,” she calls out the window, “we’re getting protein bars and denial.”
Despite myself, I have to laugh.
I wave at her and climb into her car. There is a family-sized bag of Doritos on the seat and a can of Dr. Pepper sweating in the cupholder.
“You look like a ghost,” she says, blunt, eyes kind.
“Thanks,” I say. “I feel like one.”
She squeezes my knee. “Okay, sweet thing. Tell me everything they said, then tell me everything you haven’t told me yet. You weren’t the world’s clearest person last night.”
I open my mouth. Words fail me.
What do I start with? I pick the safest ones first—the doctor’s exactly, the monitor’s relentless, Mom’s new PR job.
I tell her about Julian’s eggs. I do not tell her about Finn’s mouth.
I do not tell her about the way my own skin keeps betraying me.
I do not tell her that perfection feels like a glass I can’t get my fingers around.
I stare at the hospital entrance until it blurs. Somewhere inside, my mother is spinning straw into statements. Julian is saying all the right words to all the right people. Richard is breathing for both of us.
And me? I am parked next to a bag of Doritos, holding a can of soda I can’t seem to drink, realizing I am more trapped than I have ever been—between the woman I promised I’d be, the man who makes safety look like a plan, and the dark pull of someone I shouldn’t want, who keeps appearing where I’m weakest and saying nothing at all.
Penny drives me around the block like I’m a feral cat she’s trying to lull into trusting the carrier.
She nudges me until I open the bag of chips.
I nibble at a Dorito like a rabbit and watch the hospital doors, half hoping, half dreading that the universe will throw me another curveball in the shape of a six-foot problem in expensive shoes.
No curveballs. Just a volunteer in a vest and a child dragging a stuffed tiger by its tail. Reality resumes.
“What’s new with you?” I ask her. “How’s Holden?”
“Who’s that?” she asks with a cocked eyebrow.
“God, Penny… you already broke up with him. He was my favorite so far!”
“Yeah, and he didn’t know anything but missionary. I swear… the guy would get inside me with closed eyes and come before I could even get wet.”
I chuckle.
Penny’s always been adventurous when it comes to having sex.
Toys, BDSM, role-plays and what not. I’ve always been intrigued but I’ve always played it safe.
Julian would be horrified even at the idea of something like that.
But the normalcy of girl-talk about anything but the dire reality waiting at the hospital feels good.
I didn’t even realize how badly I needed the distraction until I have it.
It's nowhere near enough Penny Time before Mom’s calling me back to the hospital, irritated about my having left.
Thankfully, Penny doesn’t offer to fight her this once. I don’t know that I have the willpower to turn her down.
Instead, “Back we go,” she says, reaching over to squeeze my hand before she throws that car back into drive.
###
The rest of the day blurs into a loop: hand sanitizer, beeps, Mom weaponizing charm at a reporter, Julian smoothing a nurse’s ruffled feathers with baked goods he somehow conjures from a vending machine (how?), me reading Richard the first lines of all the poetry I can remember until my voice frays.
The doctor’s evening update is another stack of ifs and maybes tied up with a neat medical bow: Stable for now. Monitoring. Waiting.
By the time the sky goes lavender, and the hospital windows start reflecting their own light back at themselves, even Mom’s pearls look tired.
Julian decides I’m done.
He shepherds me toward the elevator with that campaign-trail gentleness that makes people hand him their babies and their checkbooks. Mom nudges her legal pad into her bag, finally, and announces she’ll meet us at the house after she’s ensured the overnight staff understands which calls to route.
Translation: she’s going to micromanage until the nurse manager fakes a fire drill.
The estate glows down the drive like it’s pretending to be a safe harbor, every window a square of warm yellow someone ordered from a catalog called Comfort.
Julian drops his keys in the bowl by the door.
He and the bowl are getting very familiar, and I haven’t had the time to appreciate the implications of that.
There’s no room for warm and fuzzy left amidst the living, breathing anxiety sitting constantly on my chest. Still, he steers me toward the kitchen.
“Eat,” he says, because apparently that’s the job he’s decided is his now. All he’s done is feed me all day. It’s very sweet. He scavenges some soup Maria must’ve had made earlier. I’m sure it’s lovely, though it turns to sand in my mouth.
I still eat it.
Julian watches me until I swallow the last spoonful like a parole officer.
“Shower,” he instructs, kissing my temple. He’s been spending entirely too much time with my mother, I think. “I’ll get the bed turned down. You need sleep.”
He says it like a promise he can keep with willpower and a spreadsheet.
He’s probably not wrong. I don’t even care anymore.
I nod, kiss him back, and climb the stairs with a pressure behind my sternum.
I feels kind of nice to be given instructions.
I’m not sure I’d know how to keep putting one foot in front of the other without it.
I feel so, so lost. This house feels too empty.
At least Mom is already home when I pad past the landing again, earlier than I expected.
I catch a glimpse of her through the cracked office door: blazer draped over a chair, hairpins on the desk like fallen soldiers, her bare feet tucked under her on the sofa as she stares at a single line on a legal pad.
No pearls. No armor. Just a woman who married her favorite person and is now bargaining with the universe in bullet points.
I hover a beat, my knuckles almost knocking. Then I don’t. I let her have the illusion of privacy and keep walking.
The hallway is dim; the sconces throw soft circles that make the runner look deeper, older, like a river I swam a thousand times in another life. I reach the top and stop because the universe finally decides to be theatrical.
Finn steps out of the shadow like the house realized it had one last trick and wanted to use it on me personally.
Black T-shirt, black jeans, no shoes, like he’s trying to be casual and accidentally auditioned for Brooding at Midnight.
The shirt is thin enough that the planes of his chest show when he moves, defined in that unforgiving, lean way that says stress is a gym you can’t cancel.
The hem clings to the hinge of his hips, and when he lifts a hand to push hair off his forehead (which is not allowed, did the memo not go out?), the shirt pulls just enough to map out the topography of his stomach. Abs. Countable. Visible. Rude.
No, I tell my eyeballs. Like they’re toddlers about to lick a battery. Absolutely not.
He’s my brother. Well. Stepbrother.
Which is like “non-dairy cheese”: technically different, still a terrible idea on pizza.
He sees me seeing him, and for a second, we do that thing where everything else falls away and there’s just the wire stretched between us, electrified.
His hair looks darker in the low light; there’s that streak of silver at his temple, an unfair flourish like the universe doodled on a statue.
The tattoo on his inner forearm, marks I’ve never let myself look at too long, peeks above his wrist. He smells like cold and soap and the asshole decision to smoke once in a blue moon because it makes you look like a painting.
(I can smell its faint scent. Don’t ask me why that makes my knees weird.)
My feet forget how floors work.
Then Julian appears behind me, cheerful timing like a sitcom cue.
“Hey, man,” he says, easy and oblivious, slinging an arm around my shoulders. My face burns. I don’t know why I feel so embarrassed by the obvious way Julian chooses to mark his territory. I don’t believe how casual he sounds when he asks, “Haven’t seen you around today. You good?”
Finn doesn’t even pretend to fall for it.
He shifts his body like he heard a clock and remembered he has somewhere to be.
For a heartbeat, his gaze drops to my mouth, fast, and then his face goes back to stone.
He pivots, silent, and walks past us without a word, the smell of smoke and mint scissoring the air.
Julian watches him go, eyebrows up. “Weird guy, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Weird indeed.”
What I don’t say: weird like gravity, like fire, like the thing inside a storm that cows know to run from.
What I don’t say: Thank God he didn’t stop.
What I don’t say: I want him to stop so badly I might be a danger to architecture.
Guilt-ridden, I turn into Julian’s body, nuzzling my face into his chest. He smells so safe, so familiar to me.
“Let’s go to bed. Maybe you can make me feel good again, okay?”