My throat goes tight, wishing I could give her a definitive answer, but I can’t. Not yet. Not until I talk to Étienne. I can’twalk down the aisle again, even if it’s all pretend, until I face my trauma from the last time I did.
“I’ll let you know,” I murmur. “Get home safe.”
Mika’s sigh does little to soothe me, but the tight hug she pulls me into does the trick. “You better tell that man to kiss your beautiful fat ass. And if he tries anything, I’ll—”
“Kill him and make it look like an accident,” I finish for her, suppressing a smile.
“Damn right.” She gives me one last pat on the cheek. “Give ol’ Frog Legs hell, baby.”
The knock on the front door comes exactly fifteen minutes past the hour.
By Étienne’s standards, it’s early. But by my own, the ones I should have had when he and I were together, it’s too goddamn late. If he had any hopes of this being a productive conversation, then he’s going to have to work harder to make that happen. This is another strike against him.
I’m surprised that my hands don’t shake and my palms are dry when I pull the door open to find him on the other side of the threshold. And even when my eyes land on him, I don’t feel any of the things I expected to. I feel…nothing.
Well, no, that’s a lie. I feel the overwhelming urge to drive my fist into his mouth when his trademark smirk tugs up the corner of his full lips. He’s an objectively beautiful man, but he has the most punchable face. How did I never notice that?
“Stella,” he says, like he’s greeting an old friend and not the woman he ran the fuck away from three months ago. “It’s so good to see you. You look magnificent.”
The effort it takes not to knock him out should earn me an Olympic gold medal, because the audacity of this man isunbelievable. “Come in,” I force myself to say as I open the door wider. “We can talk in the living room.”
He brushes too close when he steps inside, the musk of his cologne nearly choking me. The scent makes my nose wrinkle, even though I know it’s the same one he’s worn for years, the one that used to make me want to bury my face in his neck and inhale. Now all it makes me want to do is puke from how heavy and overpowering it is. It’s nothing like what Thomas—
Now is not the time to think about him. Get through this first.
There isn’t much furniture in the living room, but there’s a couch and a chair, and I take the chair to prevent him from trying to sit next to me. Best if he stays at least six feet away; I won’t be able to take a decent swing at him from there.
The rage simmering in my stomach is unfamiliar but welcome. I knew there would be some sort of anger, though I thought it might be drowned out by nostalgia and the past love I had for him. The heart’s unpredictable, after all, but thankfully my brain seems to be winning out here.
“How have you been?” Étienne asks when we’ve settled into our seats. His posture is infuriatingly relaxed, legs crossed, an ankle resting on his opposite knee. He isn’t wearing socks with his overpriced loafers and there’s too much skin showing past the hem of his pants. Ew.
I scoff but hold his gaze. “You’ve got some nerve asking me that.”
He puts his hands up to show he’s not about to argue. That’s new. His favorite thing to do was argue. I mean, I can give as good as I get, and I think he respected that for a while, but arguing all the time is exhausting. It got to a point where I had to practically tell himI come in peacebefore I started any conversation.
So I can give him the chance to explain himself, lest I be a hypocrite.
“I know,” he says, slowly lowering his hands. “And that’s my fault.”
Is he…is he actually taking responsibility for his actions? Color me shocked. My lips part to give him a real answer to his question in recompense, but then he has to go and ruin it all by saying, “Although, you can’t be doing too bad considering you’re already remarried.”
He says it lightly, like it’s all a joke, but it slams any goodwill that might have been developing out of me.
“Notremarried. Simplymarried,” I correct sharply. “You know, considering you never went through with our wedding.”
That gets him to blow out a breath, eyes dropping to the floor. He looks almost…guilty. Like he knows just how badly he’s fucked up. But I’ve yet to hear an apology, so I don’t put much stock in it.
“I guess I should explain what happened,” he murmurs when he looks back up. His expression is open and earnest and yet I don’t believe it for a second. “About why I left.”
I just don’t want to be with you anymore, Stella.
“You’ve already told me why,” I say, stomach twisting at the memory of his last words to me. “What I want to know is whythen? Why that moment? Why couldn’t you have said something sooner, before we were in a church full of people?”
Why did you have to not only break my heart, but do it so publicly?
“Because I was a coward.” It’s a straightforward answer, said without blinking, and I grudgingly respect the bluntness. “We both knew something was wrong with our relationship before then, but neither of us wanted to say it. That was the last moment I could.”
He’s right that our relationship had been on the rocks and that neither of us had said a word about it. But that being the last moment he could have said something? Give me a break. There were better ways to handle it and he knows it.
