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No. Never again.
He’s taller. He’s filled out considerably from when he was a rangy teenaged boy; he has broad shoulders and biceps that his suit can’t hide. His lips quirk up in the faintest hint of a smile. He knows I recognize him.
“He’s here.” I point at him with a trembling finger.
She starts with alarm and leaps to her feet, then looks at where I’m pointing. Her eyes narrow and lips pinch. She doesn’t recognize him. “That man does not resemble Bastien in the slightest. My God. You’re truly having a breakdown.”
I want to cry, to scream. I feel as if someone yanked a rug out from underneath me, and I’m falling and falling. She and Landon, never believing me, always trying to control me with veiled threats about my mental health…
Bastien walks toward us.
My heart stutters in my chest. Part of me wants to run, and I would, but my feet are somehow bolted to the floor. “Bastien.” I spit the word at him like a curse.
He looks down at me. “Excuse me, have we met?” he says in perfectly accented American English. “I saw you were looking at me.”
It takes all of my strength to speak without stammering. I stare straight at him, trying not to let him see how intimidated I am. “What are you trying to pull here? I don’t care how much plastic surgery you’ve had, I recognize you. You’re Bastien Durand.”
He shakes his head, smiling politely. “I’m sorry, no. My name is James Miller. I have one of those faces. People always seem to think they know me. Plastic surgery? That’s a good one.” At that, he wrinkles his forehead in a concerned frown, glances at my mother, and inclines his head at her as if in sympathy.
He turns and leaves, but when he’s standing outside, he looks at me through the window, raises his hand, and makes the hand gesture he used to do for me when he wanted me on my knees. Then he vanishes around a corner.
“Did you see that?” I choke out.
My mother grabs her phone. “I am calling 911, and I’m having you committed,” she says, her voice rising to a high, unnatural tone. But there’s an ugly spark of triumph in her eyes. It’s like this is the moment she’s been waiting for. The moment when she can regain complete control of her wayward daughter, and she’s so happy it’s finally here.
What a bitch.
I’m panicking, but I force myself not to give in to hysteria. It won’t help. “Go ahead,” I tell her, my voice steady. “Waste their time by telling them I need to be committed because of a case of mistaken identity.”
“Excuse me? Waste their time? Are you mad?”
I hardly react to her. Instead, I continue with my defiance.
“Go ahead. Call,” I goad. “I’ll be perfectly calm. I’ll answer all of their questions correctly, and you’ll look like a fool.”
“You just said that it was him,” she splutters.
“I was wrong.”
“Since when do you speak to me like this? I won’t have this. No daughter of mine is going to… going to—”
“Going to what? Embarrass you?” I grab my purse, clenching my hands on the strap extra tight so they won’t shake.
Bastien is back.
I have to get the hell out of here.
Furious, frustrated, my mother shakes her phone at me. “I will call them. I will. Unless you voluntarily check yourself into a mental health facility immediately.”
“Do it. And know this, Mother, you just crossed a line you can’t come back from.” I hurry from the restaurant without looking back. I know she won’t make the call. I’m not acting crazy, and if EMS showed up, I would just lie to them.
I’m numb with fright and confusion. Bastien showing up at the café means he knows where I work, and he’s deliberately messing with me. He changed his appearance so much that nobody would recognize him—and he’s using a false name.
How can he still be so obsessed with me after all these years? Why come back now?
The wedding.
That must be it. He must have somehow found out I was getting married. Maybe he’s been stalking me all along and this pushed him over the edge.
