CHAPTER 16
Gustave
Her light has dimmed. I’ve done that. Since Paris Fashion Week, when she’s with me, she seems subdued.
The affair…the secrets, they’re taking a toll on her. The truth is…they’re taking a toll on me as well. But not enough to give her up. I can’t. I’m ready to beg to keep her for as long as I can.
“You sure you want me to come to your apartment?” she asks for what feels like the hundredth time.
“S’il te plaît?*, Tara.”
I can hear her sigh across the phone line. “Fine. I…okay.”
It’s ending—I can feel it. The slow crush of reality pressing down, the inevitability of my worldsmothering hers.
But when we’re together, it’s as if the rest of it falls away. In that small, suspended space, I can breathe. I can be.
It’s selfish, I know. Yet, for once, I want to choose desire over duty.
I want Tara.
My apartment is in the 7tharrondissement, tucked behind a row of trees and a courtyard most people miss unless they know where to look. I like it that way. Privacy masquerading as elegance.
I open the door for Tara. “You look beautiful,chérie,” I say as I kiss her lips softly.
She steps inside, eyes sweeping across the space slowly, like she’s trying to memorize it.
I watch her take it in—the vaulted ceilings, the polished floors, the view of the Eiffel Tower, pulsing gold beyond the windows.
I’ve lived here for the past two years since Simone and I separated.
Her sandals make the softest sound against the wood. She has a bag tucked under her arm, and a white dress, her signature style, floating around her like she doesn’t quite belong in this century.
She doesn’t say anything for a moment. I take her hand in mine and kiss her again. She responds, warmand melting. I feel her mood shift—less brittle than it was outside, less wounded.
“Give me a tour, Gustave,” she says. The brightness in her voice isn’t faked; it’s deliberate. She’s doing what I’ve spent years perfecting—sealing the world outside, staying here with me, suspended in a fragile, borrowed peace.
We hold hands as we walk through my apartment.
I’m barefoot, sleeves pushed up, trying to shake off the heaviness of what she saw and how she feels; the weight of Simone on my arm, of things unspoken.
I show her my home, the one I made for myself and my son. There’s no trace of Simone here, but it screams de Valois.
In the library, she gestures toward an antique mirror leaning against the wall. “That’s gorgeous.”
“It belonged to mygrand-mère. She used to say it saw more truth than people ever could.”
Tara grins and says cheekily, “LikeMirror, Mirror on the wall?”
“Exactly!” I feel relief loosen the knots in my heart, release me from the pain of losing her. I get to keep her a little longer.
“And did it tell her that she was the fairest of them all?”
“Grand-mèrewasn’t into fairytales. Her statement, I believe, was in protest of Voltaire, who said the mirror is a worthless invention.”
She goes on tiptoe, kisses me, holds my gaze. “Goodold Voltaire also said that the only way to truly see yourself is in the reflection of someone else's eyes.”
I want to tell her I love her, right here, right now. She must see it—how could she not? It’s written all over me, the same way her love burns, unmistakable, in her eyes.
