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She swallows, the column of her throat moving, her eyes haunted.
‘I’m going to Paris.’ It’s soft, yet determined. And, before my eyes, she straightens, looking at me without a hint of doubt. ‘I’m leaving.’
‘Why?’
‘Because my plane is boarding.’
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘Why are you going?’
She lifts a hand to my chest and her voice wobbles. ‘Because I need to. If you care for me at all, you’ll understand that.’ Her eyes spark with mine and my heart drops to my toes. ‘I need to do this.’
I’m screwed. Because she’s right. This was always going to happen. She needs to live her dream, and her dream isn’t me. She wants something else and I have to let her go, because I’m not my dad. Loving someone isn’t just telling them you love them. Loving them isn’t just words. You can’t love someone but act against their best interests.
I love Millie. I love her with all my heart—and that means letting her go.
I nod, scanning her face then lifting a hand, running my fingers lightly over her cheek.
‘If you ever need anything, I want you to call me.’
She closes her eyes and sucks in a breath, breathing me in. ‘Okay.’
We both know she won’t.
‘I have to go.’
She steps backwards, away from my hand, out of my reach, turns her back on me and walks away.
I watch her go. I stand there until she’s boarded. Until she’s on the plane. Until the plane takes off. I stand there, surrounded by milling people, happy travellers, and I have no idea where to go, what to do, or who the hell I am in a life post-Millie.
I just know I made the right choice. The only choice I could have made.
I let her go.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MY FRENCH HAS IMPROVED, but I’m still a long way off being fluent. I smile at the shopkeeper and hand over my euro. More than three weeks after leaving Dublin, and even the sight of freshly folded bank notes is enough to make my stomach drop with a blinding ache.
Michael.
I close my eyes and he is there, his tanned, powerful fingers peeling notes from his wallet and placing them on the bar. I’m holding his change on a silver tray, standing beside him. So close that if I sway forward just a little my knees would brush his...
‘Mademoiselle? You are okay?’
I’m startled out of my memories, my longing, to find the middle-aged man selling me flowers is looking at me with bemusement.
‘Oui.’ I nod awkwardly, take the tulips and my change and step backwards, into the stream of people milling through these bright, fragrant and beautiful markets. Three Saturdays since I arrived and I have a routine and a rhythm.
I know which vendors sell the best apples and raspberries, the best brioches and croissants, the creamiest butter and cheese, the driest wines, and tulips that will last almost a week, if I change the water and trim their stems.
Somehow, this feels important. I’ve been in Paris longer than I was in a...whatever I was in...with Michael Brophy. A relationship. Why bother pretending it wasn’t? When did it move from ‘just sex’? Or was it always more than that?
From the minute I propositioned him, did the playing field somehow begin to change without my knowledge, without my consent? No, that’s a cop-out. I was with him all the way. I consented to everything. I put boundaries in place when I needed to, and he respected them.
He understood them.
It was only at the airport that all those walls came crushing down, the walls I thought I’d built shook and fell.
I carry the tulips around the corner, pushing into the small rental apartment without looking, without taking note of the surroundings. I climb the three flights of stairs and shoulder the door inwards, arranging the flowers in a vase, admiring them with the same half-hearted enthusiasm I have for life in general these days.
