I startle and glance at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know if you wanted me to know.”
Luc turns toward me and smiles. “Iwantyou to know everything about me,Petite. I was just waiting for you to be my friend so I could share my deepest, darkest secrets.”
I huff, looking out the window, trying to bite back the ache in my throat. “You were always my friend.Iwas… the problem.”
“Yeah,” he says lightly. “I know that now.” There’s a beat of silence before he continues, “My dad, he was a lot like me.”
I glance back at him, and he’s watching the road, but his voice has changed to something more distant.
“Or rather, I’m like him. He was loud, funny, charismatic. Everyone loved him. He did weird shit all the time. Adrenaline junkie, I think I got it from him.”
“Youthink?” I echo with a raised eyebrow.
Luc smirks. “Okay, fine. Iknow. I always wanted to be like him so much so, I jumped from roofs when I was a kid, only to show him how fearless I was. I tried so hard, until I realized I was already way too much like him.”
“What do you mean?”
Luc exhales through his nose, fingers tightening slightly on the wheel. “I mean, I get it. What he felt. Why he couldn’t stay.”
My stomach sinks again. He doesn’t say it directly, but the weight of it is heavy enough to fill the whole car.
“How come?” I ask quietly.
“Because the highs…” he starts, then falters. “The highs aresohigh. And the lows… fuck, they’re like a black hole. I need the highs to keep me from falling too deep into the lows.”
I nod slowly. “I-I think I get that. At least a little.”
The feeling after races, the blood pumping, the wind, therush, and then the drop. The quiet and the hollow when nobody is cheering or watching anymore, but I always had Dane and Finn there to fill the silence afterward.
“And I get you.” Luc glances over at me again. “I’m struggling too. I’m not saying it’s the same, or that my pain’s bigger or worse than yours, but Igetit. Maybe not all of it, but I can imagine.”
I look at him, at his profile lit by the dashboard, jaw tight, eyes tired but open. He’s not trying to fix me, just trying to say he’s here in it with me.
Luc is struggling, and maybe I knew that somewhere deep down, but hearing it makes me want to hold all his sharp edges in my hands, even if they cut.
It also forces me to acknowledge the truth that I have figured out for myself.
“Youknow…” I say, voice quiet, “… it got a lot better since you came into my life.”
Luc glances over. “It did?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Same, before you, I had no one.”
I scoff. “What are you talking about? You’reLuc-fucking-Delacroix.”
He gives me a crooked smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “No.Luc-fucking-Delacroixis the brand,ma Petite. That’s not me. It’s the guy people want to take pictures with, the one they name-drop or want to beseenwith. Not because they likeme, but because they think they’ll get something from it. Fame by association. I never had someone I could talk to, not the way I do with you.”
My heart aches for him, and I want to say it’s not true that, of course, he had people. But Iknowthat feeling too well to pretend it’s not real.
“What about Élise?” I ask.
“Sure, I had her,” he says softly. “But I never told her about the lows. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to drop that weight on her.”
I think about how she told me what the loss of her husband did to her, and I nod. “I get that.” And then I hesitate, but I ask anyway, because Ineedto know. “What about Mason?”
Luc’s hands tighten on the wheel again, just for a second, but I see it. “Payne…” he says, thoughtful. “Mason was different, yeah, but I never considered him a friend.”
