He had never felt like this before and for good reason. Love was a sickness. It wassickening.
It was making him weak, and heaving for breath, and almost losing his mind at the thought of Celine hating him forever after what had happened.
“I should have listened to you.” Throwing his head back, Bastien squeezed his eyes shut. “I shouldn’t have taken it this far. I’ve broken so many hearts before, but this was different.”
“Yes, you should have listened to me,” Juliana said, placing a steaming mug of tea in his hands.
Bastien took a scalding sip and hissed. At least the burning sensation on his tongue distracted him from his heartache for a bit. “Ugh, I was happier when I was philandering about the city.”
“Oh, grow up.” Juliana said, giving his forehead a flick.
He cut her a wry look. “I’m sick, Jules. You can't treat a sick person like this.”
“You’re not sick, you’re just dramatic.” A knock on the door prevented her from saying more.
Juliana was already shuffling away to answer it. Bastien cradled the mug in his hands, breathing in the herbal scent of the steam curling under his nose. Looking down at the leaves swirling in his tea, he strained to hear what was coming from the threshold.
“You’re a surprise.” He heard Juliana’s voice. The answer came muffled.
“Where…my brother…must…until…tell him.”
Despite the apartment being small, the entrance hall was narrow enough for the words to remain there and only fragments to reach him. However, he could tell the voice belonged to his sister. When Juliana returned with the hint of a frown stretched across her face, Bastien asked, “What did she want this time?”
“The same as every other time she has come here this week.”
Bastien was not in the mood to hear Anaïs’s complaints. “You mean besides seeing you?”
Juliana pinched his ear. “For someone who is allegedly sick, you sure tease a lot.”
“You just received proof that it is not an alleged sickness.”
“Your sister means well,” she insisted, rounding the conversation back to Anaïs. “She was only hoping I could convince you to change your mind. I told her you keep moaning about Celine and being heartsick, but she is persistent. She wants you to talk to her.”
“Anaïs can forget about it.” He stared at his hands. “You’ve heard me walk out the door thousands of times, get in the car, then come back in.”
“Yes, I have,” she mumbled. “The door creaks now because of your lovesickness.”
Bastien sidestepped the remark. “I cannot see her.”
“But if you just—”
“Don’t waste your breath, Jules. It’s over now. I ruined it.”
Juliana groaned. “And people wonder why I prefer women over your juvenile species.” Leaving him to nurse his tea, she stalked into the kitchen.
He placed the mug on the coffee table and dropped his head in his hands. Anaïs’s visit tonight was not a surprise, even though Jules had called it such. His sister had come by every day over the week, asking the same thing: for her to see Bastien and for him to see Celine. Juliana had intercepted her at the doorway every single time, because even though she believed it was all nonsense on his part, she still liked mothering him. So, if Bastien didn’t want to hear about Celine, she wasn’t going to force him to.
But Anaïs’s visits still carried Celine’s name with them, drilling its way through his mind and compelling him to replayevery interaction between them, only to come to the same result: he loved her.
Helovedher.
He loved Celine and he had been a coward and an idiot to run away from it. Night and day Bastien had turned the thought over in his head, hoping it would stagger somewhere, prove false, and release him from this feeling of having his heart on the verge of bursting at the sound of a name. And every time had been a fail. He knew now that if he opened one of those romance books he’d deemed foolish, he would simply find in them the contents of his heart translated into words. His mother had read countless tales to him when he was young, French and Persian alike. She’d told Bastien to believe them; that love existed and it did make people feel the way it was described in them. And she was right.
Grandfather was right, too.Find what’s meaningful in life, because believe it or not Bastien, not all pleasurable things are worth chasing after.Bastien had been so petty and vindictive at proving his grandfather wrong that he had built an entire lifestyle on lies and rumours and meaningless purchases. And now that he wanted something substantial, something actually worth having, he couldn’t possess it. He had ruined it. Both Celine and the hope of reopening his mother’s studio had slipped his grasp.
Juliana’s footsteps padded back into the living room. “God, I cannot stand to see you like this. This defeated.” She started pacing in front of him; the qipao brushing her ankles with every step. “I told you karma was real. I told you to forget your whole vendetta with Jacques, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“Okay,I get it.”
