by Chloe Liese
Elodie laughed, a full, happy belly laugh. A smile tugged at my mouth, and I realized how rarely I smiled anymore. But looking at Elodie, seeing I’d given her even a moment’s reprieve from her pain and earned a grin that drew out both her deep dimples, I realized I could get used to making her smile and smiling in return.
When she took my hand and stood, she pressed a soft kiss on my cheek. I closed my eyes and drank in her jasmine perfume, the warm sweetness of her body. “Thank you, Loulou.”
I knocked on the door to the bath, knowing what I was about to see and wondering whether I’d gone barmy or simply discovered my masochistic streak. I knew what awaited me behind there. Elodie, naked. Thing was, I didn’t really have an option, since I wanted to feed her and she was holed up in there, trying to dispel her cramps in a steaming tub. God, just saying it in my head made my body taut as a bow—Elodie in a steaming tub. I had to bank on dim lighting and ample bubbles.
“Come in,” she answered, as if it were perfectly natural, her lounging in the tub while I strolled in with a tray of pasta and a generous pour of chianti.
It was indeed dim in the room, and there were bubbles everywhere, so I couldn’t see much except her beautiful face and a pile of massive curls atop her head, frizzy with the humidity in the room.
She sighed happily as she looked up at me. “Oh, it smells incredible. Thank you.”
“But of course.” I set the tray on the stand next to the tub, then turned to leave.
“Lucas?”
I froze, hand on the doorknob. “Yes, Elodie?”
“Would you mind staying? Talking a little, like you said? I feel better in here. I don’t want to get out for a bit.”
I turned her way and had to bite my tongue as she sat up a bit and the water level drifted lower to reveal the top half of her breasts. “Okay.”
She lifted a hand from the water and patted the wide edge of the tub. “Sit, then. Talk.”
I sat, picked up the pasta and twirled a forkful, hand underneath as I fed it to her. “Eat first, then I’ll talk.”
“Mmm, it’s delicious. Talk while I eat, how about that?” she said around the bite.
I knew what I planned to tell her; I’d told myself I would, yet my stomach knotted at the prospect. I picked up her wine and had a long drink before I tipped it to her mouth. Her eyes locked on mine, and when I brought the glass away, the faintest sheen of chianti darkened her lips.
The room felt hot and small and suddenly all I could think about was kissing that wine right off her mouth. Tasting her, filling her body with mine. I cleared my throat and lifted a leg so one foot rested on my knee. It also happened to hide the raging stiffy I had from being in her naked proximity.
“What were you talking about with Dad and the office oafs?” I asked.
She laughed. “A number of things. Our internal hiring practices, some ideas for what to pitch to our first prospective Diversity and Inclusion Consultative Services clients. They’re blockheads, but they have some good ideas here and there. Pierce and Harry, of course, not your father. Jack is wonderful.”
I chuckled as I spun another bite of pasta on the fork and fed it to her. “I knew what you meant. You and Dad seem chummy already. He adores you.”
“I like him, too,” she said around a mouthful. “He’s a good listener like you, Loulou.”
That compliment went straight to my heart.
When she took a sip of wine, I watched her throat, how she licked her lips. I unbuttoned my shirt at the collar and tugged it gently from my chest where it was sticking. Fuck, it was hot in here.
“Essentially,” she continued, “I proposed that the cornerstone of our D and I consulting should center on customized inclusive conditions. I think a lot of organizations know how to broaden their pool and at least somewhat correct bias in their hiring, more so than even a few years ago, but the problem persists once their diverse workforce is in-house. They need an environment that actually welcomes their viewpoints, experiences, and skillsets. Otherwise, diversity is a formality, nothing more. It also becomes horribly costly, because diverse hires who don’t feel included quit and quickly. And everybody knows turnover’s a money-draining nuisance. I think it’s a really good sell. You flatter the client with how well they’re hiring from a diversity standpoint, then pitch tweaking their best practices for inclusion.”
That was probably the most I’d gotten out of her about work since she’d started. It was brilliant, and she sounded exuberant about it. She looked joyful. “So, you’re happy there?” I asked. “So far at least?”
“Oh, yes. I love it.” She sat taller and served herself a bite this time. Now the water was precariously low. One deep inhale and I’d see her nipples. I had to get out of here, before everything went to hell and I was hauling her out of the water, stripping down and taking her on the tile floor, impending menstrual cycle be damned.
“Are you still okay with me being there? I know it must be odd for you,” she said quietly.
“I love that you’re there. That you’re happy and you feel like you fit in.”
She smiled, and those deep dimples popped in her cheeks. “I am happy. I love the family atmosphere. It’s comforting. Until I started at Farthington, I didn’t realize just how unhappy and lonely I was at home, even after everything with my parents…” Her eyes widened, and she lifted a hand to her mouth.
I’d been monumentally patient, letting her go without an explanation. Partly because she’d thrown the not-unreasonable justification that I was withholding my own information about my life from her, too. Too bloody bad. I needed to know.
“What did they do to you?”
Elodie spun a web of pasta on the fork and brought it to my mouth. “You need food too, Loulou. Why don’t you eat?”
“Answer the question, Elodie.”
“No, Lucas. Not until you trust me as well.”
I stared at her, face defiant while she held a bite of pasta to my mouth. This was what I adored about Elodie. She was unrepentantly stubborn, and it was always driven by her heart.
I’d promised Dad I’d tell her. I had to, or he would. I could put it off until Sunday, or I could find my bollocks and own up tonight. And if I did it now, I’d get the truth from her as well.
“Fine.”
Her lips parted as she gasped, but otherwise she hid her surprise. I accepted my bite and watched her pull the plate into her hands, then settle back in the tub. “You first,” she said.
“Nice try, Bertrand. Out with it.”
With a longsuffering sigh, she shifted in the water and picked at her food. “The morning of Jamie’s baptism, Maman called me and asked me to meet her and Papa for lunch…”
“And?”
She shrugged and took a bite of food. “We never do that. Meet for meals. Talk.”
My heart ached. I thought about Sunday dinner at my parents’ house. How Kai tended to pop around my place every week for a meal. How Sarah was forever nagging me to come to Cornwall more often. And Elodie’s parents never made time to even sit and eat with her.
“You don’t need to pity me, Lucas. I’m used to it.”
“I’m not pitying you. It’s just a little sad, dearest.”
Another gallic shrug. “Il n’ya a rien à dire.”
What’s there to say? she’d said.
“So, I did as they asked,” she continued. “When I arrived there, they were acting very odd…”
Water dripped from the faucet as I waited. Elodie seemed to struggle with what to say next.
Suddenly she picked up the wine, threw half of it back, and swallowed with a gasp before saying in one solid breath, “They told me I needed to marry the son of their competition to secure a merger between our two families’ businesses. I refused. They disinvested me for it.”
I had to have misheard her. “I’m sorry, I think—” I wiggled a finger in my ear and leaned in. “I didn’t get that right. I just heard you say your parents told you to marry someone they chose f
or their business interests and when you didn’t, they impoverished you.”
Elodie was chewing a massive bite of pasta and spoke around it. “No, that’s it in a nut sack.”
I barked a laugh, despite how nothing should be funny at a time like this. “Oh Christ, Elodie. It’s nutshell. Nut sack’s something else entirely…” She looked at me quizzically, so I gestured to my groin.
She choked on her pasta and sat up, clearing her throat. After I thwacked her on the back, I handed her the wine, which she finished in one gulp.
“Elodie, I can’t believe they did that.”
“Well, I can. And they did. But as Nairne said, it’s an opportunity for me to make my own way, and tell them to slip it up their arse. Did I get that one right?”
I cupped her cheek, emotions at tug of war inside me. I wanted to eviscerate her parents. I wanted to grin so hard my face hurt at her hopelessness with English idioms. I wanted to kiss her bloody senseless. “Close. Generally one says shove but I think stick also works. Slip sounds a little…” I softened the blow by using her mother tongue. “Érotique.”
Elodie blushed. “Oh.”
“Yes, oh.”
Our gaze locked until Elodie shook her head and started to pick at her pasta. “That’s my sad story. But it has a happy ending. I’m here, starting fresh, so much in thanks to you, Lucas.”
She clasped my hand and squeezed it. “You’ve been a truly good friend. I’m sorry I’ve imposed on you so much. It’s just with Jamie, I don’t want to bother Nairne and Zed. But good news is after a few pays I should be prepared to let my own flat.”
My stomach dropped at the thought of her leaving. But of course she would. I’d planted us in the fucking friend zone, and here we were. I stared down at her hand and traced its delicate veins with my finger. “Take as long as you need. I like your company. I’m not eager to lose it.”
When I glanced up at her, her eyes were on my mouth. She shivered. “The water’s getting cold. I think I should get out.”
I shot upright. “Course. I’ll just take your food and—”
“Can we talk more downstairs, Lucas?” She glanced carefully up at me. “Since it’s your turn now.”
“Yes. It’s my turn now, isn’t it?” I sighed as dread sat heavy in my stomach. Backing toward the door, I drew it open. “I’ll just be in the sitting room.”
She nodded. “Okay, Loulou.”
I walked down the steps like the doomed approaching their sentencing. “It’s not that bad, mate,” I said to myself.
Wouldn’t know it by the amount of gin I poured into a tumbler. I added some ice, a splash of tonic, and promptly knocked it back. After making myself another, slightly less boozy this time, I made Elodie’s just how she liked—lots of ice, light on the tonic, extra lime.
Her soft footfall carried above me. This wasn’t what I wanted, to confess my brokenness to her, to be weak in front of the woman I wanted to be strong for. I felt maudlin and doomed, so my g-and-t and I traipsed over to the piano.
As I sat at the bench, a blade of moonlight knifed across the raised piano lid. I looked up at the sky, and felt the weight of darkness swallowing up that small orb of light. How bloody apropos.
“No. No wallowing.” I cleared my throat and began playing the first thing that came to me.
Elodie swung into the room, a breath of fresh flowery air and bouncing curls.
Slowly she walked the length of the sofa, then sat on its arm. Scooping up the gin and tonic I’d left on the side table for her, she watched me seriously.
“Claire de Lune,” she said approvingly. “You play very well, Loulou.”
I shrugged, because I’d fall apart if I spoke—if I told her I played this almost every night because it captured something I’d lost and this song helped me remember.
When I finished, she smiled at me sadly. “That was beautiful. But you played it so mournfully, Loulou. Why?”
I turned toward her, searching her eyes. They held such tenderness and patience. This was it.
“I’m going blind.”
Elodie’s eyes widened and filled with tears. “Lucas,” she whispered.
“You promised.” I pointed a finger at her. “You promised you wouldn’t cry.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not that terrible, really, I’m just a stubborn arse, and I’d rather not have to go through with it, so I’ve been sulking while living in denial.”
Elodie inhaled deeply, slowly shutting her eyes. When she opened them, they spilled with silent tears. Sad but devoid of pity. She sat tall, steeled herself. I wanted to kiss her for being strong for me when I couldn’t handle my pain making her fall apart.
“When?” she asked quietly.
“When will I be blind or when did I get it?”
“Both.”
“It’s genetic, so I’ve had it my whole life. Choroideremia, it’s called. Kai doesn’t have it; I do. I’ve always had weak far-sight and sort of fuzzy peripheral vision, which I know is comical given my former profession—”
“Instead I’d say it’s wildly impressive, Loulou. It speaks to your raw talent—your work ethic—that you became spectacular at something that you weren’t even operating at full physiological capacity for.”
No one had ever done that—laid my weakness and strength side by side and shown me how they made something compatible, rather than mutually exclusive. My throat felt thick with emotion, and I turned toward the piano again, fiddling among the quiet, high notes.
“Thank you, Elodie.”
She nodded as she sipped her drink. “I’m sorry. I interrupted you,” she said. “Please go on.”
I had a sip of my own drink. More like a gulp actually, because this was the part I least liked discussing. “I’ve been incredibly poor-sighted at night since I was a child—night-blindness it’s called—but I thought that was how it was for everyone once night fell—only faintest shadows and deep d-darkness.” I cleared my throat, emotion hitting me as I vocalized something I hadn’t before, except once to Jo. Thank Christ she’d chosen ophthalmology as her specialty. I really didn’t know how I would have gone through the diagnostic process without her friendship.
“When did you know, Loulou?”
“About six months ago.”
“This past winter,” she whispered.
“Yes, last winter.”
Elodie exhaled shakily and set her drink down. “That’s when you grew distant.”
I stared at the ground, chastened. “Yes.”
“Because you didn’t want me to get close to you. Because of this.” Disapproval dripped from her voice. “That’s how poorly you think of me, that I wouldn’t want you because you’re losing your sight?”
“Of course not.” My hands traveled down to low, heavy keys and began playing. Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Angry, melancholy. Those dark chords felt fitting. “It’s just that it would be wrong to pursue you when I knew I wasn’t going to burden you with my condition later in life. I’m going to have to relearn…everything. From how to cross the street to answering my blasted phone without cocking it up. Cooking. Cleaning. Writing. Reading.” I jabbed the keys, then ran my hands in a glissade down the bass. “Not what most women sign up for.”
She sprang off the sofa and marched toward me, looking like a vengeful goddess, wild curls flying, her eyes burning like blue flames. “I’m not most women, Lucas. I’d hope you of all people would know that.”
Then she grasped my neck and kissed me.
Ten
Elodie
I couldn’t stop kissing him. His hands cupped my cheeks, sliding back until they tangled and tugged my hair, knocking my curls loose so that we were surrounded by them.
“You stubborn man,” I whispered. I shoved the bench back, then straddled him. “You bloody stubborn man, pushing me away. I’ve wanted you.”
And he wanted me. But Lucas had been pushing me away to protect me from something I was completely unwilling t
o be shielded from. I wanted to be by his side. His friend, his partner, his love. Blindness was immaterial to that.
I pushed my hair back ferociously, pent-up anger, depth of feeling for this infuriating man pumping through my body like the purest of cocktails.
“God, Elodie. I wish it were different.” Lucas kissed me harder as he grasped my hips and pulled me flush against him. Christ, that man had a cock. I felt it, hard and thick, pressing between us. I didn’t have knickers on, and I slid shamelessly against him.
He groaned. “What are we doing?”
“What we should have done all along, no matter how obstinate you were.”
He pulled back. “Elodie, be reasonable. We’re both going to end up miserable if we go down this road. This is why, don’t you understand?”
“No.” I locked my thighs around his lean waist, pressed my body against him.
“Oh God,” he muttered. His lips swept the shell of my ear, down my throat, whispering over my chest, while one hand pressed down my back and cupped my arse. With his other hand, he plumped my breast before sucking my nipple through my shirt so hard it sent a jolt straight down to my clit. “I can’t think straight, I want you so badly.”
I smiled as I tipped my head back and gave him my body to taste and feel. “I want you too, Lucas.”
“Elodie,” he whispered.
“Lucas.” I wrapped my arms around him, holding him tight against me. I love you, I wanted to say. I love you, just as you are and as you will be. But I couldn’t, not yet. He wouldn’t hear it. Because Lucas didn’t love himself as he was, as he would be. He didn’t love the Lucas that was losing his sight.
So I said it with my body. Holding his face, I brought our mouths together, tenderly, gently. I sucked his bottom lip, dragged it between my teeth, earning a curse. His grip tightened on my hips. I slipped my tongue inside, where it slicked against his and earned his low moan. It was dark, and we were clothed. I wanted us naked and illuminated. I wanted to press Lucas on his back with sunlight pouring over him so I could memorize every inch of his body.