Page 17

The Cost of Jealousy

élise pulled the dough and folded it over, pressing her palms into the creamy, gooey mess.

The ache in her shoulders told her she couldn’t do it anymore, but she pressed on.

Her fingers ached as did her feet. She wanted to rub her neck but feared Gabin would return and see the flour wasted.

He had taken the day to seduce another woman who wanted to be his.

Little did that woman know about his raging temper.

Gabin had never been kind to her since Rollant, forcing her to work double shifts every day while he took off doing whatever it was he did.

She believed deep down he knew she was attracted to Rollant and wanted to leave him.

It had gnawed at his stomach. She had betrayed him and there would be no forgiveness.

She had lied to Gabin, but he couldn’t prove it.

It ate at his ego, and he took out his frustrations on her.

She had to hurry her rounds to the children and the widows and Madame Marie, now forced to the nighttime, which cost her hours of sleep.

The days had turned into months and months into seasons.

Rollant had lived with her in her mind and dreams, though his face began to melt away into memory.

She knew then what he meant when he had told her Amée’s face was a blur.

The wish to be able to afford a painter to capture a loved one’s likeness in a portrait to keep for all time would have been nothing short of a miracle.

Though she mused, Rollant may not recognize her with the dark circles under her eyes and her waist and arms being thinner than they already were.

Her lips were cracked from the heat of the oven.

She wanted water, but it was empty. There was no time to fill it.

As the world spun around her, she hoped no customers would come in. She fell against the bread counter, pressing the weight of her whole body into her hands on the dough.

“Is Monsieur Roux around?” a man’s voice startled her, and she stood up straight. She rolled her neck without looking over her shoulder.

“He is out,” she said, groaning and folding the dough once more with considerable effort. “May I help you?”

“I wanted to borrow his apprentice again,” the man said, his voice becoming more familiar.

She stopped.

It couldn’t be.

It had been more than half a year. The joy in her heart sprouted, but she plugged the spring. She blinked in rapid succession, trying to clear her vision. Her arm dropped to her side as she hesitantly turned around.

Rollant’s brow furrowed as his eyes ran down and up her body.

She was repulsive to him, she figured. Hollow cheeks and threadbare clothes adorned her once full face and semi-healthy body.

He saw the woman Gabin had hollowed out, a shadow of what she’d been.

But maybe it was better this way. It was better for Rollant to see how broken she was so he wouldn’t stay long enough to get himself hurt. Her gaze dropped.

“You don’t want me,” she whispered and turned around to the dough again. She expected his footsteps to leave, not come closer. In an instant, he was beside her—his deep eyes staring into her soul.

“Has Gabin done this to you?” he asked. “Because of me?”

She wanted to cry, but there were no tears left to fall.

But she wobbled, and he steadied his hand on her lower back.

There was his touch, as gentle as always.

He hadn’t changed. She lowered her head to his chest. Her body betrayed her, a reminder of how little she had left to give.

For so long, she had carried the weight of survival, her will being the only force keeping her upright. But it had its limits.

“I’ve missed you,” she said without answering his question. She expected his arms to fold around her, but instead, a rigidity formed beneath his shirt, and his hands remained as they were.

“What has he done to you?” His hand hovered over her cheek.

She wished for his embrace but took his lack thereof as rejection. She was too miserable to be touched. She couldn’t lean on him. Depending on anyone was dangerous. If she let herself trust Rollant, she wondered what would happen when he left.

No, she had to stand on her own, no matter how much her body screamed otherwise. She lifted her head from his chest. “Nothing to bother you with. I am just a weak woman, unable to bear life,” she said, pushing him away to no avail.

He scoffed and turned her face to him with a soft touch of her cheek. “élise, if you believe what you just said, then you are not the woman I have been thinking of all this time.”

Her eyes softened. She had been on his mind, but she doubted she would take up space in that big, beautiful head of his any longer.

She steadied herself against the counter, feeling dizzy.

The heat from the oven was too much, though winter seemed to have come early, and its freeze had set in her bones.

Rollant glanced at the dough. “I have eight days until I am on a boat to the port,” he said, meeting her gaze that drifted to his. “I have saved enough to take you away from here, give you a home.”

A home. She had never had a home. She’d had a bed and a blanket on nights she was lucky.

“Will I live with you?” she asked, steadying her other hand against his chest.

His face pained. “I don’t know. Tensions are high, and all military men must be in the service or risk treason.” He cleared his throat to signal what the penalty was for treason. “I will be gone most of the time, and I may not come back alive.”

Her heart crumbled at hearing she would be alone, and Rollant might be dead. She shook her head back and forth, the pain bouncing between her temples.

“I can’t do it.” Both hands shot to her head, leaving her body unsteady on her feet. He caught her again with one hand to steady her against his chest. “I’ve never been on my own before,” she whimpered.

His lips brushed the top of her ear. “I think you have always been on your own,” he whispered. “You just didn’t know it.”

Her knees buckled from exhaustion, and he caught her under the arm, swung her weak frame into his embrace, and then studied her face with an intensity she had never seen.

“Why do you stare at me? Is beauty fleeting?” Her head rolled to his shoulder. “I’m so tired, Rollant.”

“Can you breathe?” he asked in a timid whisper.

She took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said softly.

He visibly swallowed and nodded. “Good. Where is your bed? I’ll take you to it.”

“I can’t. I have to work, and Gabin is out at the brothel.”

Rollant’s face fell slack. “Gabin is at a brothel, while you work here at the brink of death?”

Her lips drew thin, teeth bared in defiance. “But he feeds me.”

“Not well enough,” he said. His grip hardened on her flesh. “Do you want another life, élise? One without me in it but one out of this?”

She might have answered the question differently had she had water or food to think clearly.

She shook her head. “This is all I know.” Leaving meant freedom, but it also meant facing Gabin’s wrath—a wrath that would not stop at bruises.

She couldn’t disappear, not yet. Not without knowing the streets better, not without knowing who to trust. She had to have a plan, and she had none.

“Say the word élise, and I will have you a new life,” he said, his whispered words fluttering the frizzed strands of hair by her ear. He started for the door, but she held on to his shirt.

“No,” she whispered. Leaving seemed as impossible as staying, a life where each day blurred into the next, where survival outweighed freedom.

Further, if she escaped, Gabin would indeed find her and make her life even more unbearable, and she doubted he would do her the good service of killing her quickly.

The fact she couldn’t imagine life without Gabin or Rollant made her feel weak and insignificant, not worthy of Rollant’s time or coin.

She had to find the independence and freedom she rallied behind without either man, but the path to that reality was lost on her. In frustration, she gnashed at Rollant.

“Leave me here. Live your life. Forget me.” She wanted to be angry at him for leaving, but he was only guilty of trying to help.

The bitterness in her words was not directed towards him, but towards herself.

In her most significant moment of weakness, she found she was a woman of hollow ambitions, tied to a life she knew, a life she had become a shadow within.

She didn’t know how to leave—hadn’t the courage or the strength.

“élise.” Rollant’s voice dropped and filled with pleading. “I made a promise to remember you always. I cannot forget you. You are my friend, élise. I cannot watch you suffer.”

“Then leave.” She swatted his arm and stared unfocused at the ceiling. “It’s what you are good at.”

He had left her there. She blamed him, but she didn’t. Fear rooted her in a pathetic life. “Now, now, before someone sees you,” she groaned and kicked her legs to force him to let her down.

Her words were slurred. Each time she blinked, her vision blurred.

The shadows crowded her sight as if the world was darkening.

Her heart beat too fast and yet too slow.

She still had so much to do. Upon uneasy legs, she tried to make her way to the counter but slumped, and her knees almost hit the floor.

Rollant’s arms were quick to wrap around her and hoist her up.

“You are in no shape to work, élise.” His hand gingerly cupped her face. “You need rest.”

She half-laughed. “Rest shall never be mine,” she muttered and regained the strength to stand, knocking his arms off of her. Her life wasn’t horrible before Rollant, but it had become unbearable. She only imagined what it would be like after this second encounter.