She’s blazing with passion, glowing like a star on my couch, but the last sentence is a curl of smoke—less like a flame extinguished and more like one about to be born.
She needs me to breathe on it to keep it alive.
She needs me to make sure I don’t blow it out.
“You wanted to ask me something?”
The question comes out wary, like I’m not sure if I’m willing to meet her demands. I wish that weren’t true, but it is. I have no idea what she’s going to say next, but this feels all too much like those times Fleur would beg me to stay home or to take the damn money from the trust fund so both of us wouldn’t have to keep sacrificing for the things I wanted to build.
Only that’s what success is made of: sacrifice. At least that’s what I thought. I thought it for so long it’s sliced a path through my neurons. It’s seeped into my synapses. It clouds the signals sent between my eyes and my brain. It’s not something you simply shake off, and just like Monroe, I wish we had more time. I wish she didn’t need to ask me this now. I wish we had weeks, months even, to let this fire between us burn away the past and make way for a future, but the future has already arrived.
“Don’t buy the bar.” Monroe lifts my hand off her leg and wraps both of hers around it. “But...could you pretend like you’re going to? Just for a bit?”
“What?”
That is not what I was expecting.
“I need you to stall them. Pretend you’re taking the bait. Tell them you want to bring some experts in to have a look at the place. Drag out the negotiation on the price. I just need a few weeks of you playing hard to get before I can make my own offer.”
“An offer?”
She nods, that visionary glint coming back into her eyes. “I looked into what it would take to buy a share. All I really do is work, so my savings have been piling up for years. I talked to the bank about business loans. I know what Taverne Toulouse is actually worth. I can cover a big share. I thought the owner would be willing to go in with me, but since that’s not happening, I’ll...I’ll find investors, or something. I’ll make it work. I just need a little more time.”
I hate how condescending it is to think it, but she doesn’t know what she’s getting into. She’s a brilliant manager, and I know she has everything it takes to be a brilliant business owner too, but lack of experience is making her blind.
She’s not going to find investors. Anyone she talks to is going to take one look at that property and snap it up for themselves. Places on Avenue Mont-Royal don’t go up for sale often; I would know. If I don’t take the offer they make me, somebody else won’t waste a moment saying yes—somebody else with enough money to crush everything I’m trying to build next door at the wine bar.
If I don’t buy it, we both lose.
“Monroe, what if...”
All the flaws in what I’m about to suggest start flashing like warning signs so bright and insistent I don’t bother voicing the idea. She won’t work for me. I could give her double the pay she’s making now, and she still wouldn’t manage my bar. This isn’t about her stepping down or to the side; this is about her steppingup.
I consider what would happen if Taverne Toulouse became what I know she could turn it into. Every customer who walked into her bar would be one who didn’t walk into mine. No matter what else we might be turning into, we’re still what we’ve always been since the very first day we met: rivals. My success doesn’t leave room for hers, and hers doesn’t leave room for mine.
“Julien.” She moves closer to me on the couch, both her hands and mine now pressed to her heart. “We went into this knowing there would always be a major road block at the end of it.”
I know bythisshe meansus. She means the thump of her heart beneath my palm and the heat of her body beside mine.
“We knew our goals would always get in the way of any shot we had to...to be...something. I didn’t know you would come to mean this much to me. I didn’t even want you to, but you did. I think about you all the time. I’ve told you things I tell almost no one else, and you’ve trusted me the same way. I care, Julien. I care too much to just let it go so soon, and maybe you don’t feel the same, but—”
She’s opening herself up to me. She’s laying all she has on the line, and it’s shaking the very earth I stand on, the very ground I’ve built my life upon. I don’t have the words to match hers. I only have the pressure of my lips, the sweep of my tongue in her mouth and the cradle of my hand around the back of her head as I pull her into me for what feels like hours and still far from long enough.
“Okay,” she says breathlessly, once she’s finally broken the kiss and lays her forehead against mine, “so I guess that means you do feel the same.”
I taste her laughter as she breathes it into the space between us, and it’s a taste too sweet to give up. I’ll do whatever she asks. How could I not?”
“Julien, give us a chance. Give yourself a chance. I...I’m not good at asking for favours. I don’t do it a lot, even when I really should, but I need to ask this, and I think part of you needs it too. You’ve always seemed so trapped, so stuck inside this life you’ve built for yourself, and I want to see you be free. I want to be free too. You make me want so much.”
Her voice cracks, and I pull her even closer. She’s in my lap now, her hands releasing mine to grip my shoulders.
“I’m not going to claim to know everything about you; it’s way too soon for that, but I think I know you well enough to understand what this will mean to you, and I’m going to ask it anyway.” She looks me straight in the eyes. “Sell the wine bar. I know you’ve invested a lot in it already. I know it will be a hard thing to do, but...you have the money from your family. You can get an even better location. You can build a better bar somewhere else and make sure the place next door goes to some bakery or cafe or something else that won’t run me out of business, and we can...we can actually give ourselves a shot.”
She makes it sound like the easiest thing in the world, like jumping over the fence and finally wading into that green, green grass on the other side. It shouldbe easy. It shouldn’t even be a decision at all, but the dread that’s made me push away from anyone I’ve had even a shot at getting close with over the past six years chooses now to rear its head.
I don’t why I thought she’d be different, why I thoughtI’dbe different this time. I’ve been in this exact same situation already. I know how it ends.
“I can’t.”
