Page 34

Stella

“I can’t believe you’re actually going to talk to him.”

I shoot Mika a look, not appreciating her bringing this up again when we’ve already been over it. I’m fresh off an eight-hour flight from London and back in the kitchen of my Alexandria house, drinking the last bottle of wine I left behind while my best friend berates me. It’s not where I want to be, but even with her questioning my life choices, I was glad to find her waiting on my doorstep when I got here.

“I already told you,” I say as patiently as I can. “étienne and I have a lot of stuff to settle, including what the hell we’re going to do with this house.” I motion to the vast, empty monstrosity we’re sitting in that I can’t wait to get rid of.

Mika’s still not having it. “Which could have been handled by lawyers without you having to leave behind your sexy-ass husband who’s clearly in love with you, especially since he didn’t want you to leave in the first place.” She narrows her eyes, searching my face, and I wish I hadn’t confessed the whole story to her. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

It’s a great question, because why am I doing this to myself? I could have ignored étienne’s message asking if we could talk, along with the five others that came in after it, all of them begging me to give him a chance to explain himself. I know now, though, that he wasn’t begging. All those words, the Please let me explain , the I want to do this face-to-face , the I just want you to come home so we can handle this were demands wrapped in the shroud of a plea.

But last night, I couldn’t see through it. The sick adrenaline rush of his name appearing on my phone after months of silence was enough to steal my breath, my confidence, and my good sense. Suddenly, I was back in the church, alone and grieving. The woman who waited for hours and days and weeks for him to return had finally— finally —gotten what she wanted. He’d come back.

It was what I wanted all along…except I didn’t feel the relief or the comfort or the joy I thought I would. It was only soul-crushing guilt and self-loathing for staying with him for so long. And worse, for still feeling tied to him, for feeling like I had some fucking obligation . I couldn’t say no to him asking me to come back, because our tie hasn’t quite been severed yet.

The person Thomas saw on the floor of my bedroom was the worst version of myself, hollowed out by the man who I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I was going to see. Yet Thomas knew without me even having to say étienne’s name, as if my reaction was answer enough.

I didn’t want him to witness me that way, so broken and bloodied. But every horrible thing I’d felt in the aftermath of étienne leaving was back full-force, and it made me hurt Thomas in a way I wish I could take back. I can’t, though, so all I can do now is make sure it wasn’t in vain.

étienne made a mistake by leaving me on our wedding day. But he’s about to discover that he’s made an even bigger one by inviting me back into his life.

“Seriously,” Mika pushes on. “What reason do you even have to speak to him again?”

“Because I need closure, Mika,” I snap, setting my wineglass down a little too hard. “Because I want to look into his eyes and finally ask him why he left me like that. I want this over with for good.”

She’s silent for a beat, head cocked to the side. “What if you don’t like the answer?”

“There’s no answer he could give me that I’d like.” I take a breath to ease the anger in my chest, both at myself and at him. “But I need to hear it from his mouth so I can close this chapter of my life and move on.”

“Move on with Thomas?”

I stay quiet, even though every cell inside of me is screaming, Yes, with Thomas, if he’ll have me . I don’t know if he will after the way I left. He may hate me now for all I know.

If you give him a single reason to fight, he will.

Amara’s words ring through my head. So far, the only thing I’ve done is push Thomas away. I haven’t given him a reason to fight, but I’m praying I haven’t made him want to give up on me. I won’t get the answer to that until I’m done here.

“We’ll see,” I say, sliding off my barstool and extending a hand to help her up. étienne is supposed to arrive soon, and the last thing I need is for her to be here threatening to fight him, so she needs to mosey her way back home.

“Well, is the wedding still on?” she asks as she takes my hand. She’s out of her cast and in a brace for the last bit of healing her leg needs to do, but she’s still wobbly on her feet. “You need to let people know if it’s not. The whole family is flying out on Thursday.”

My throat goes tight, wishing I could give her a definitive answer, but I can’t. Not yet. Not until I talk to étienne. I can’t walk down the aisle again, even if it’s all pretend, until I face my trauma from the last time I did.

“I’ll let you know,” I murmur. “Get home safe.”

Mika’s sigh does little to soothe me, but the tight hug she pulls me into does the trick. “You better tell that man to kiss your beautiful fat ass. And if he tries anything, I’ll—”

“Kill him and make it look like an accident,” I finish for her, suppressing a smile.

“Damn right.” She gives me one last pat on the cheek. “Give ol’ Frog Legs hell, baby.”

The knock on the front door comes exactly fifteen minutes past the hour.

By étienne’s standards, it’s early. But by my own, the ones I should have had when he and I were together, it’s too goddamn late. If he had any hopes of this being a productive conversation, then he’s going to have to work harder to make that happen. This is another strike against him.

I’m surprised that my hands don’t shake and my palms are dry when I pull the door open to find him on the other side of the threshold. And even when my eyes land on him, I don’t feel any of the things I expected to. I feel…nothing.

Well, no, that’s a lie. I feel the overwhelming urge to drive my fist into his mouth when his trademark smirk tugs up the corner of his full lips. He’s an objectively beautiful man, but he has the most punchable face. How did I never notice that?

“Stella,” he says, like he’s greeting an old friend and not the woman he ran the fuck away from three months ago. “It’s so good to see you. You look magnificent.”

The effort it takes not to knock him out should earn me an Olympic gold medal, because the audacity of this man is unbelievable. “Come in,” I force myself to say as I open the door wider. “We can talk in the living room.”

He brushes too close when he steps inside, the musk of his cologne nearly choking me. The scent makes my nose wrinkle, even though I know it’s the same one he’s worn for years, the one that used to make me want to bury my face in his neck and inhale. Now all it makes me want to do is puke from how heavy and overpowering it is. It’s nothing like what Thomas—

Now is not the time to think about him. Get through this first.

There isn’t much furniture in the living room, but there’s a couch and a chair, and I take the chair to prevent him from trying to sit next to me. Best if he stays at least six feet away; I won’t be able to take a decent swing at him from there.

The rage simmering in my stomach is unfamiliar but welcome. I knew there would be some sort of anger, though I thought it might be drowned out by nostalgia and the past love I had for him. The heart’s unpredictable, after all, but thankfully my brain seems to be winning out here.

“How have you been?” étienne asks when we’ve settled into our seats. His posture is infuriatingly relaxed, legs crossed, an ankle resting on his opposite knee. He isn’t wearing socks with his overpriced loafers and there’s too much skin showing past the hem of his pants. Ew.

I scoff but hold his gaze. “You’ve got some nerve asking me that.”

He puts his hands up to show he’s not about to argue. That’s new. His favorite thing to do was argue. I mean, I can give as good as I get, and I think he respected that for a while, but arguing all the time is exhausting. It got to a point where I had to practically tell him I come in peace before I started any conversation.

So I can give him the chance to explain himself, lest I be a hypocrite.

“I know,” he says, slowly lowering his hands. “And that’s my fault.”

Is he…is he actually taking responsibility for his actions? Color me shocked. My lips part to give him a real answer to his question in recompense, but then he has to go and ruin it all by saying, “Although, you can’t be doing too bad considering you’re already remarried.”

He says it lightly, like it’s all a joke, but it slams any goodwill that might have been developing out of me.

“Not remarried . Simply married ,” I correct sharply. “You know, considering you never went through with our wedding.”

That gets him to blow out a breath, eyes dropping to the floor. He looks almost…guilty. Like he knows just how badly he’s fucked up. But I’ve yet to hear an apology, so I don’t put much stock in it.

“I guess I should explain what happened,” he murmurs when he looks back up. His expression is open and earnest and yet I don’t believe it for a second. “About why I left.”

I just don’t want to be with you anymore, Stella.

“You’ve already told me why,” I say, stomach twisting at the memory of his last words to me. “What I want to know is why then ? Why that moment? Why couldn’t you have said something sooner, before we were in a church full of people?”

Why did you have to not only break my heart, but do it so publicly?

“Because I was a coward.” It’s a straightforward answer, said without blinking, and I grudgingly respect the bluntness. “We both knew something was wrong with our relationship before then, but neither of us wanted to say it. That was the last moment I could.”

He’s right that our relationship had been on the rocks and that neither of us had said a word about it. But that being the last moment he could have said something? Give me a break. There were better ways to handle it and he knows it.

“But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve regretted it,” he goes on. “Not just how I left you, but the fact that I did in the first place.”

Well, I wasn’t expecting that . My shock must be written across my face, because he takes that moment to uncross his legs and lean forward. If we were closer, I get the feeling he’d try to sweep me into his arms like the hero from a telenovela.

“I miss you, Stella,” he says, just above a whisper. “Leaving you was the biggest mistake of my life.”

The impact of the words pushes me back in my seat, but I don’t actually believe what he’s saying. He was out with another woman two weeks after our breakup—he couldn’t have missed me or regretted his choices that much if he could move on so quickly.

Then again, didn’t I do the same? Sure, mine was all in response to his shenanigans, but I still moved on with my life in the form of accidentally marrying Thomas.

étienne seems to be waiting for me to say something. “I appreciate you saying that,” I force out, but truthfully, I’m lost for words.

There’s a strong chance he’s lying to me, but he could also be telling the truth. I really don’t know. And yet…it doesn’t matter which one it is, because even if I haven’t been able to admit it to myself until now, I’ve been done with this man for a long, long time.

He’s not satisfied with my answer, though. The next thing I know, he’s on the floor in front of me, down on his knees as he grabs my hands. A surprised “Oh shit, okay, here we go” leaves my lips, but it doesn’t deter him any.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” he declares, gazing up at me like I’m his sun and moon and stars. “I shouldn’t have said that to you and I shouldn’t have left.”

He’s talking, but I’m still not hearing the words I’m sorry . Instead, I’m getting the dramatic performance of a lifetime.

“We should start over.” It’s a statement, not a question, as if he expects me to get swept up in his whirlwind. “We can put all of this behind us. It would be a shame to waste all the history we have together, wouldn’t it?”

Maybe you should have thought about that before you did what you did, buddy , I want to tell him, but I’m too busy trying not to shudder from secondhand embarrassment. Like, honestly…is this man for fucking real? Does he really think this is going to have me crawling back to him, all because we have “history”?

I pull my left hand from his grasp and hold it up so he can see the ring on my finger. “I’m married, étienne. There’s no starting over for you and me.”

He scoffs, some of the act falling away. “I’ve heard your marriage isn’t real,” he says, and there’s a hint of a threat in it that I absolutely do not care for. “That you met and got drunkenly married in the same night.”

Ding, ding, we have a winner! But just because he’s correct in his assumption doesn’t mean he knows anything about what’s happened between Thomas and me since then.

“Maybe you need to stop listening to rumors,” I shoot back, tempted to toe him in the ribs to get him to stand up. “Because my marriage is very much real.”

In fact, I have the marriage certificate to prove it, sitting right on the kitchen counter, because Drunk Stella wrote down this address when filling out the license. When I opened it earlier and saw my name printed next to Thomas’s, I cried because I missed him. Less than twenty-four hours apart and my ass was bawling.

If the certificate isn’t enough to prove that it’s real, then what I feel for Thomas is the smoking gun.

“Stella, you barely know the man.” étienne drops his voice, low and persuasive. “Be the smart woman I know you are and come home.”

It strikes a chord deep in my chest. I want to go home. Desperately. But this isn’t my home anymore. I don’t think it was ever more than just a place I lived until I found where I belonged.

My home is in London with a man who knows I prefer gold jewelry. Who holds my hand even when my fingers are freezing. Who outfitted his whole kitchen with my favorite appliances in my favorite color and requested that I make the place a mess. Who let me leave to handle the things haunting me, because he would never stand in my way.

The life I built in DC was a beautiful one—until it all came crashing down. And I don’t want to rebuild it on top of the ashes. I want that fresh start étienne was talking about, just…not with him. I want it with Thomas. I want us to begin again as if none of this is fake. No rules or guidelines or mandates to follow. Just us. Together. Whatever that looks like.

“I’m getting to know him,” I answer, tugging my other hand away so I can grab my phone. I’ve got a flight to book. “And I’m going to keep doing it.”

étienne lets out a mocking laugh and sits back on his heels. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m a very serious woman, étienne,” I say as gravely as I can, though I’m seconds away from grinning in his face. “You know, you actually did me a huge favor.”

His face contorts in confusion. “Excuse me?”

I nod and stand. It’s like a thousand tons have lifted from my shoulders. “You left when I couldn’t,” I explain. “Don’t expect me to say thank you, but it’s the best thing you’ve ever done for me.”

He makes a sound of offense, like he can’t believe I’d ever be grateful that he did what he did. And while I don’t love it, and I’ll certainly carry the scars for the rest of my life, this really was for the best. He was never the man I was meant to be with. I just hope the one I want will wait a little bit longer for me.

Because I’m coming home.