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I shuffle in the plane seat trying to get closer to the window.
"Careful, what can I get you?"
"Nothing. You can't look out the window for me, Kingsley. I need to do some things for myself," I scold him. He didn't even let me put on my own seatbelt.
Five days after the attack, I’m feeling...okay. The wound is sore, and I was trying to be incredibly careful with my stitches. But the doctor said my vitals are mostly okay, and as long as I don’t exert myself and try to rest as much as possible, then there isn’t really reason I need to be stuck in the hospital bed. Kingsley had to promise to take my vitals a hundred and ten times a day, change my bandages out everyday and take pictures of the stitches to show the doctor as well as make sure I take my medication.
I would've promised to build a thirty foot shrine of him out of spam if it meant getting to leave the hospital.
And now I'm flying over France, and even though I'm inside Kingsley's company plane, it feels like the wind is in my hair.
Two hours later, the wind is doing just that, it’s just him and me, with the convertible top down, driving from the Annecyairport to a perfect little cottage on the far side of the lake, with its own little pier out to the water.
“Oh my god, Kingsley,” is all I can say with quiet reverence when I see the view.
He pushes me in a wheel chair down the path from the car to the house and around the side. "Do you want to go inside or take a quick look at the pier first?"
"Why are you wasting time asking me that question?'
A chuckle as he shakes his head and pushes the wheelchair down a ramp onto the pier to the water.
Even in late winter the water mirrors the blue of his eyes, and I wonder if that's why he likes it here.
I take a breath, too deep to be comfortable with my stitches but I don't care.
Each extra little ounce of fresh air feels like it's ridding my body of its toxins, physical and emotional, and filling my cells with the healing power of nature.
"I love it. It's perfect."
"Yes."
I turn expecting to see him taking in the same view as me, but he's just staring at me.
And I should be scared of how intense it all is, but instead, it feels like I'm blessed.
"I bought this cottage about five years ago, right after my grandfather passed away. I needed a place that was just for me. I have the property in Edinburgh where I go if I take a few days off. But this is where I come when I completely shut off for a whole week. Nobody else knows about it. Not Marcus, not Theodore, not my family. Nobody. I was going for a walk one day and I saw this plot of land just happened just sitting here. I askedaround and found the owners and made them an offer. I paid for everything in cash. And everyone only knows me as Monsieur B here."
It sounds just like him, but yet it still makes me in awe of him. "Why did you bring me though? Didn't you want to save it just for you?"
He lays my hand on top of his and then sandwiches with his other hand on top. "There's nothing like that for me anymore, Luna. No me without you. But, the afternoon before the gala, Clarissa told me that she was worried that she had said something to bother you. Something about how you and I might be in very different places in our lives. And she said you might be worried that there weren't firsts we could experience together anymore. So I just want you to know that everything I do with you, feels like a first. And this place is a place I've never been with anyone else, ever."
Forty-Six
Kingsley
What I didn't tellLuna was that I had named my Lake Annecy property"Clair"after Debussy’s music composed to Verlaine's poem, Clair de Lune. Moonlight.
Mysterious ways.
She is the human embodiment of this place.
Wild beauty, deep waters, but crystal clear.
Fresh and pure.
Everything that has brought me peace and made me feel both human and godly.
Building the fireplace as high as I can, I also turn on the back deck overhead radiator, opening the whole back side of the house so she can sit outside as we nibble on our dinner.
