“I won’t lie,” he says, running a hand over his beard in a way that always gets me going. “That was incredibly sexy.”
“I mean, I possibly broke your sink forever.”
“Worth it to see you doing some handiwork.”
“Now you’re justtryingto speak in euphemisms.” I do my best to sound unamused, but I know I must be blushing.
“Come here.”
I step toward him, heart hammering in my chest, but when I reach him, all he does is pull me into his arms and hug me tight against his body.
“I’m sorry,” he says against my hair.
“For what?” I asks, startled by the words.
“For interrupting our night. For never being able to be completelytherewhen we’re together.”
“Julien, how many times do I have to tell you that it doesn’t—”
“But it will.” I can feel how shaky his breaths are. “One day, it will. It’s different for you. Youchooseto be pulled away to help people. I’m always here because...well, because what else do I have? I’m here because I can’t stop. I don’t know how. There’s always more to do, more to accomplish.”
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to accomplish things,” I soothe.
“There is when it rips everything else away.”
As gently as I can, I pull away from the hold he has on me. He lets his arms drop to his sides.
“Julien.” I reach up to place a hand on his cheek. “What happened to you?”
“I...” His voice goes hoarse. “I doubt you want to hear it.”
“I do.”
I let my free hand reach for his. This is what I’m good at. This is what I know how to do. He needs someone to listen, to coax him to speak. I can be that person.
“Somebody hurt you.”
He shakes his head, my palm still cupping his jaw. “Ihurt somebody.”
“Was it...a girlfriend?”
He hesitates. “We were engaged.”
I try not to let that sting, but it does. He’s five years older than me; of course he could have had time to become engaged. It shouldn’t be so much of a shock. It’s not like we’ve talked about exes yet. He didn’t lie to me.
But he did love someone enough to ask her to marry him. As much as I don’t want it to, that’s the part that hurts.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” he offers.
Now I’m the one shaking my head. “I want to. You can tell me what happened.”
He draws in a breath and then slowly lets it out before leading me over to the counter. We both lean up against the edge as he starts to speak.
“We met when I was in Paris. Her name was Fleur. She was studying public relations. We just...We worked well together. Very well—at that point in our lives at least. We were long distance after I went back to Bordeaux, and I think that distance made us realize how much we truly cared about each other. I proposed. Then my father died, and she came to Canada with me. We hadn’t actually lived together before that.” He laughs ruefully. “We probably should have done some sort of trial run before moving across the world.”
“Probably,” I admit.
“She felt...I think she felt isolated. She started to feel like she’d given her life up for me. She tried to fix things, to talk to me, but...I never had time to listen. I knew we weren’t heading anywhere good, that I wasn’t giving her what she needed, but in my head there was this—this future that I was always so close to reaching. I just had to go a little bit further, do a little bit more. I thought she would wait. I was stupid.”
