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“What is he talking about?” I whisper through tears, looking at Liam. “What is Alexandre talking about?”
I’ve never seen a man look as defeated as Liam does in that moment as if his world is falling apart around him. “I’ll tell you everything,” he says quietly, like a man beaten. “But not here. We’ll go home and talk.”
“What?” I whisper, staring at him. It feels like an ocean has opened up between us, miles separating us instead of the inches between the side of the bed where I’m standing and where he is at the foot. “What do you mean?”
“Ana, please.” Liam looks miserable. “Just come home with me, and I’ll tell you. I don’t want to talk about it here.”
“Go with him, Ana,” Max says gently. “I’ll stay with Alexandre for now, until he’s stable again—for your sake,” he adds. “Not Alexandre’s. Liam can give me the contact for his doctor, and Niall can help with Yvette’s body. We’ll deal with everything here.”
There’s a groan from the bed as Alexandre briefly comes back to consciousness, and we all turn nearly as one to look at him. “I heard you giving me—last rites—” he manages hoarsely, looking up at Max. “Are you really a priest?”
Max frowns. “I used to be,” he says flatly. “But any layperson—”
“I know that.” Alexandre’s jaw clenches against the pain. “What did you do, Maximilian? Kaito and I talked about it, you know. He had theories.” Alexandre laughs, a thick, pained sound. “The fallen priest. Was it love? It usually is—love or hate.”
Max hesitates. “It was revenge,” he says quietly.
“Ah, so love.” Alexandre pauses, clearly out of breath from saying so much, and I cut in quickly.
“Alexandre, you need to rest. This doesn’t matter—”
He ignores me, though, still focused on Max. “Was it a woman?” Alexandre asks with some difficulty, though a small smile is playing at the corners of his lips. “It couldn’t be, though. You were a priest. You have never loved a woman.”
“It was my brother,” Max says, his voice still quiet, and I look at him, startled. He’s never said so much about it before. I wonder why he’s chosen now, if it’s because he feels some kinship with Alexandre, if he understands the lengths that someone can go to, the things he’ll do, and sacrifice for someone he loves. “But I have loved a woman,” he adds wryly. “Two, in fact. Love can come without physical intimacy, you know.”
“I am a Frenchman,” Alexandre says with one eyebrow raised. “So no, I do not know.” He goes quiet for a moment, his jaw working as pain blooms across his face again. “What happened to them?” he asks. “Talk to me, Maximilian, so I don’t pass out again.”
Max glances at Liam and me, the tension still hovering between the two of us, and then back at Alexandre. “The first one,” he says quietly, “I was wise enough to know that someone else could love her better and when to let her go. And the second—” Max hesitates. “I’ve broken every vow but one,” he says finally. “And I hope the distance will keep me from breaking the last.”
“A man who is truly in love will breakeveryvow,” Alexandre says, his gaze flicking to Liam, who is still standing at the foot of the bed, looking at Alexandre as if he’d like to kill him still, here and now. “Except the one he’s made to the woman he truly loves.”
Alexandre’s head turns towards me, and his hand slides forward, seeking out the tips of my fingers as his eyes find mine with something like pleading in them. “L’amour s’en va comme cette eau courante,”he whispers. “L’amour s’en va,comme la vie est lente,et comme l’Espérance est violente.”
The room goes completely silent as he speaks, Niall at Liam’s side as Max stays by mine and Alexandre’s, all of us watching him. I can feel tears sliding down my cheeks all over again, silent and warm on my skin as the whispered French takes me back to Alexandre’s library in Paris. I can almost smell the firewood, hear the crackling in the fireplace, taste the rich port on my tongue.
“All love goes by as water to the sea,” Alexandre murmurs, repeating the poem he’d once read to me in English on that romantic night in Paris. “All love goes by, how slow life seems to me.”His fingers tense against mine. “Look at me, Anastasia,” he whispers. My gaze has dropped to our hands, and I can’t bring myself to look at him, the tears dripping off of my cheeks onto our fingers, and yet he doesn’t move his away. I know the next line, and even as he says it aloud, I can’t bring myself to meet his eyes. I can’t.
“How violent the hope of love can be.”
“Apollinaire,” Max says quietly. “I know his work.”
“A priest as cultured as a Frenchman,” Alexandre smirks, a look I know so well. “How pleasant. It will be a pleasure to have you at my side tonight, as I wait to see if I will make it until the morning.”
“Ana, please.” Liam’s voice floats towards me, as cracked and pleading as Alexandre’s now. “Let’s go home, so we can talk. Weneedto talk.”
I lick my lips and taste salt. “You read me another poem, too,” I whisper to Alexandre, still unable to meet his eyes. “Tomorrow, at dawn,” I start to recite, the words catching in my throat as I try to say it through my tears. “at the hour when the countryside whitens, I will depart. You see, I know you wait for me. I will go through the forest and over the mountains.”
“Petit,” Alexandre whispers because he knows the last line as well as I do—better, even. How many nights had he read that poetry in his library, alone, wishing for someone to recite those words to, someone to make them come to life?
I had been that person for a little while. But I know, to the depths of my soul, that I can’t any longer, even as my heart cracks apart once again with the knowledge. In the weeks between loving Alexandre and leaving him, I have felt my heart break over and over again. But I know, too, that he can’t be the one to heal it.
I cannot stay far from you any longer,the last line goes. But when I finally raise my eyes to Alexandre’s, looking at him and seeing the grief and pain written across his face, that’s not what I recite.
“I cannot stay with you any longer,” I whisper.
His hand flinches back, the realization of what I’ve said filling his eyes as they glisten, and he looks away. “Petit,” he murmurs. “Anastasia—”
But I’m already turning away from him, walking towards Liam. “Let’s go,” I say quietly to him, and then without waiting, I walk out of the hotel room.
