I push her away, though every instinct in me wants to hold her. But that’s weakness speaking, not strength—and strength is what I need now. She dragged Aubert into this, and that’s something I can’t forgive.
She trembles. “Gustave?—”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” My voice rises, fury burning through every word. “My name is being dragged through filth. My family’s name. My son’s face—our photo—is on a gossip site. Every website in France is running this.”
Her tears shimmer as she holds my gaze. “I didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t tell anyone about us.”
“You’re something else, you know that?” I snarl, pacing away from her. “I was going to ask you to stay, to….” I trail away, feeling like a fool.
“Gustave, I…I love you.” Her voice cracks.
“If this is love, I don’t want it,chérie,” I shout.
She stumbles toward me, shaking her head. “Please, Gustave, listen to me.”
“Don’t come near me, Tara,” I warn. “You won’t like it.”
“But—"
“Ça suffit!”
The words crack through the air.
“You’ve humiliated me,” I grind out. “You’ve humiliated my son.” I point to the door. “Sors d’ici?*.”
She stares at me like she doesn’t recognize me. “Gustave…you can’t believe I’d do this.”
I harden myself against her, this woman who’s made my heart ache for weeks, this woman who has wrecked me.
“Go,” I say, my voice low, ominous. “Get out of my sight.”
For a moment, she stands there, shuddering. Then she nods, tears sliding down her cheek, and turns for the door.
When it closes behind her, the silence in my office is deafening.
I sink into my chair, staring at the phone screen still glowing with her name beside mine. I throw it against a wall.
When I pick up my phone an hour and a half a bottle of whiskey later, there’s a crack in the glass, a jagged line running right through her face in that incriminating selfie—splitting her smile clean in two.
* Get out of here (French)
CHAPTER 21
Tara
Icry all night.
Not the delicate, cinematic kind of crying—ugly, hiccupping sobs that leave my throat raw and my eyes swollen.
I don’t call home. What would I even say?
Hi, Mama, remember that dream job I moved across the world for? Turns out I’m the headline scandal of Paris because I had a one-night stand with a count who is a paranoid asshole.
When morning comes, my pillow is damp, and my chest is as heavy as stone.
I get up anyway. I shower. I put on clothes, pull my hair into a bun, and walk through the Louvre’s grand doors because even if Gustave doesn’t want me, the Carriera does.
But the marble corridors feel colder today. The echo of my boots sounds too loud.
