“I mean, I’ll be staying here, for the foreseeable future. At this hotel.”
She frowns. “What about the apartment? Isn’t that expensive?”
“I can afford it,” I tell her gently. “As for the apartment, I’m going to sell it. I want a fresh start, as we talked about, and part of that is getting rid of my old home.” I pause, looking down at her concerned face. “I’m fine with it. I really am. The apartment has too much history, too many bad memories, too many ghosts.” I touch her cheek gently. “I want a life with you, Noelle, and that starts here, with us building a relationship together just as you asked, until we can start a life together, in our own home. Until you’re ready for that. And until that moment comes, I will be here, proving to you that I will do all it takes to be the man you believe I am.”
Noelle nods, quiet for a long moment. My chest tightens with anxiety, wondering what she’s thinking, until she finally looks up at me.
“Can you really let the past go?” Carefully, she disentangles herself from me, reaching for a blanket. “We’ve talked so much about it—but is itreallysomething you can do? What about Anastasia?”
I let out a sigh. “I loved her,” I tell Noelle simply. “I can’t pretend that I didn’t. But my love for her was a part of my sickness, a part of the hellish world I’d created for myself. It was real—but it wasn’tright. She chose someone else—had always really chosen someone else. She was sick, too, and we found common ground in that—but it wasn’t something that could last. It took me a long time to accept that she was meant to be with Liam—but that’s the truth. She was never really mine.”
“And the baby?” Noelle asks softly. “Her child might be yours. How does that work with us, and—”
“All I can do is promise you that I mean it when I say I intend to keep my promise to Anastasia and Liam to leave them and their family alone.” I let out a long breath, looking into her eyes. “They are gone. It hurts to not know, but I can live with that pain. It is my penance, as I see it, for everything I’ve done. But you—”
I reach out, gently touching her cheek. “You are my forgiveness,petite. Mykintsugi.You have filled in every crack in my heart and my soul with gold, and I will do anything, sacrifice anything, and put everything behind me for a chance to have a future with you. But you must believe me,petite. Or else there is no future.”
Noelle is quiet for a long moment. And then, at last, she moves close to me again, her hands coming up to cup my face.
“I do believe you,” she says softly. “It’s a new year, Alexandre. A new beginning. And I want to begin it here, with you.”
When her lips find mine, there’s no hesitation. She kisses me long and slow, arching into me, and as I pull her close, hardening against her belly with fresh desire, I know that she means every word.
This is a new beginning, tonight. And I intend to savor every moment of it.
29
NOELLE
ONE YEAR LATER
Christmas Day
Looking around the living room of the apartment I’ve shared with Georgie for the last year, it’s hard to believe this is my reality.
A huge Christmas tree, the biggest I’ve ever purchased, is in the corner by the glass doors leading out to the snow-covered balcony, covered in ornaments and twinkling with lights. Underneath it is a scattering of wrapping paper, the gifts that Georgie, Alexandre, and I tore through this morning after the breakfast I cooked for them. I’m still no chef, but with Alexandre’s patient tutelage, I’ve become a passably good cook over the last year—at the very least, I won’t poison anyone.
A gold and ruby bracelet is sparkling on my wrist, a first-edition copy ofLes Miserablessitting on the side table by the sofa, the too-extravagant presents that Alexandre had insisted on gifting me. The first I had thought was beautiful and too much, but the second made me cry, much to Georgie’s embarrassment.
Now, as I clean up the living room, I glance over at the two of them, sitting intently side-by-side on the couch as Alexandre and Georgie set up the new laptop that I gifted my little brother, a far more high-powered machine than he needs for university, but apparently excellent for playing games on it as well. Alexandre is more tech-savvy than I would have expected, and both of them are entirely focused on the computer.
It’s hard to believe how much has changed in a year. After our new year’s promises to each other, Alexandre and I forged forwards into a relationship that challenged us both. I can’t say that I was never afraid that he would slip back into the madness that had held him in its claws when we first met, but gradually, over time, my fears lessened. Despite the speech he’d given me the night he told me his story about therapists and pills and their uselessness to him, he’d gone to see a new therapist of his own volition, one more interested in getting to the roots of his trauma and mental illness and less interested in medicating him into oblivion. It took months to find the right balance of sessions and medicine and more holistic therapies that would bring Alexandre peace. Still, in recent months, I’ve felt sure that he’s found it. And through it all, while I searched for a job that wouldn’t wear me into the ground and helped support Georgie as he started university, Alexandre’s commitment to me never faded.
I’d feared, too, that he would drift back to wanting Anastasia, that not knowing the truth about or the future of his child would eat at him. It’s a topic we don’t often talk about, with Alexandre preferring to save it for his weekly therapy sessions, but that fear, too, was assuaged with time. Over and over again, with words and actions, Alexandre has shown me that he loves me, that he’s devoted to a future with me—that the man I found in the kitchen, bleeding out in the wreckage of a wine bottle, is gone for good.
It’s not just his mental health that has improved, either. I’d found Alexandre handsome even at his worst, but the thin, tired man that I met that morning when I woke up in his apartment has vanished, replaced with a robust, muscled, gorgeous Adonis of a man that makes me often wonder how I got so lucky as to have him in my bed as often as he or I want—which is most nights. While he’ll always bear the scars of the gunshots in his knees and shoulders—causing him significant pain in the winter—and the scars on his wrists, he’s healed beyond either of our wildest hopes. The scars pain me to see, but Alexandre tells me often that he doesn’t mind them.
“They are a reminder,petite souris, of the future I almost lost. A future I will never take for granted.”
With no idea of what real domesticity with a man looks like, I’d wondered how Alexandre and I would function in a relationship. But it came to us easily, switching back and forth between his hotel suite and my apartment, evenings spent cooking dinners and sampling French wines or going to the theater—never the ballet—or in bed reading bits of poetry and classic novels to each other by lamplight. I had thought I’d miss London, the city that had been my home all my life, but Paris feels right in a way that I hadn’t expected. London had been a life of difficulty and poverty, struggle and sadness and fear, but in Paris, I have the freedom to discover myself as an adult, a freedom that Alexandre readily gives me. Forever cautious of making me feel as if I’m his pet again, he encourages me to do whatever I wish, alone or with him. For the first time in my life, I feel as if I can truly blossom.
Georgie has flourished similarly. Without the constraints of money, a comfortable home, and no worries about basic necessities, Paris has become his playground. Both Alexandre and I encouraged him to study whatever he wanted at university, and I could tell Alexandre was pleased when he picked art history, something that he and Alexandre have spent hours discussing.
It makes me wonder what it would be like to have children with Alexandre, something we’ve talked about. Alexandre is hesitant, afraid that he’ll pass on the illness that has plagued him all his life, but neither of us are in any rush. I’ve felt for years as if I were mothering Georgie, and with him quickly approaching the time in which he’ll be going off on his own, I’m in no rush to become anactualmother. But looking at the two of them now, I can easily see Alexandre with a child of his own, and the four of us on Christmas mornings together.
As if he feels my eyes on him, Alexandre looks up, his blue eyes twinkling as brightly as the lights on the Christmas tree. “I have one more present for you, Noelle.”
“What?” I blink at him, startled. “No, Alexandre, you already did too much—”