“You’ve been on your feet all week. You should be taking today to rest.” It wasn’t just admonishment. It was meant to be a kind of distraction.
It would not work. “Alexandre, tell me what happened back then. I know he says you stopped him from murder.”
Alexandre shook his head. “I do not know that it would have been murder. It’s…complicated. And in the past.”
“Not his past. He’s so convinced he’s a danger. Something that’s patently ridiculous as the worst he’s ever done is speak a few harsh words to me—out of this same fear that he is bad. I just don’t see it. He is so good, and Ilovehim, Alexandre. I truly do.”
She thought of the way he’d reacted to those words. By not really reacting. By essentially despairing of her. Calling it amistake. But he did not seem blindsided by the admission. He did not deny those feelings.
“I’ve had my reservations about the two of you, but I am glad to hear you say so. You both deserve…the warmth in each other.”
For a moment, she considered asking about Ines, aboutwarmth—or lack thereof, but she could only deal with one problematic relationship at a time.
“So what am I missing?” Evelyne demanded. Maybe begged. “What isn’t he telling me? Why can’t I understand this?”
“What was his version of events?” Alex asked, very patiently.
She went through what Gabriel had told her, hoping she didn’t leave anything out. She used the same words he’d used. Described it just as Gabriel had, without any of her own commentary.
“Do you feel like you are the only thing that saved him?” she asked.
Per usual, Alexandre took his time answering, but this was how Evelyne knew he would tell her the truth, not just pat her head and tell her not to worry.
“It is impossible to say. He did harm that man, but considering the man had been dragging Gia into hiscar, I do not see what the alternative in the moment would have been. I always thought… He was much too hard on himself. In that moment, there was only reaction.”
“You told him he was the same as Father.”
Alexandre’s eyebrows drew together. “That isnotwhat I said. I told him the man was unconscious—something he didn’t realize because he was trying to neutralize a threat. All I said was that continuing was something our father would do.”
It was Evelyne’s turn to frown. It was essentially what Gabriel had said Alex had said, but…the way Alex said it now was…softer. Not an accusation. A reminder.
“Gia called him a monster.”
Alexandre’s expression flattened. A hint of his rarely freed temper flickered in his eyes for a moment. “He did not tell me that.”
“And that is what he has thought of himself all these years. You were there, but you do not believe him a monster, or he would not have been in our lives. You certainly wouldn’t have trusted him to save me from marrying the general.”
“We know what a monster looks like, Evelyne.”
“That’s what I told him.” Feeling despair that this wasn’t actually getting her anywhere, just the same conclusions, she looked up at Alex imploringly. “Why won’t he listen to me?”
Alexandre moved across the room, and back, pacing with his hands clasped behind his back. As though he was going over it all in his mind. “It has been many years, Evelyne. I have not been able to get through to him. I assumed marriage meant… He had dealt with it finally.”
Evelyne looked down at her baby bump in spite of herself. She could tell Alexandre the truth of how her and Gabriel had come to be married, but it seemed neither here nor there. “I suppose a child…brought those feelings back instead.”
Alexandre made a noise Evelyne didn’t know how to characterize, and worried if she asked, he might start poking into places she didn’t want him to be. Like how exactly she had come to marry his best friend.
“Regardless, Gabriel is not a monster,” Evelyne said firmly. “He was not in the wrong.”
“I do not agree with his characterization of events, but thereisviolence in him, Evelyne. I have seen it. I cannot deny that.”
“To protect. Not like Father.Iwould have killed Father if given the chance. What does that make me?”
“Human, Evelyne,” he said very gently.
“You wouldn’t have.”
Alex sighed. “It was certainly a thought that occurred to me a time or two. I am not immune. But I always knew…it would create more problems than it would ever solve. And lo and behold, a blood clot did the work for me instead.”
