Kissed in Paris (40 page)

Paul crumpled up a piece of paper in his fist and threw it at the trash can, missing by about an inch. Then he lifted his eyes to mine, a mixture of anger, hurt, and sadness passing through them. But he didn’t answer me.

“Before all of this happened, before this past week, were you happy with our life together?” I pushed.

“What exactly are you getting at?”

I wrapped my arms around my chilled body, goose bumps still prickling my skin, and summoned up the courage to keep going. “Just answer me, Paul. Was this the life you’ve always wanted? The two of us working non-stop, doing project after project on this townhouse—”

“I thought you loved the townhouse.”

“I do, Paul. But you’re missing my point. I know we’ve been together eight years, and I know it’s normal for some of the passion, or the romance so to speak, to die down.” I locked eyes with him then, wanting to be sure he really heard me. “But, was it ever really there to begin with?”

“That’s what this is about? Passion? Romance? What do you think this is, Chloe? A goddamn romance novel?”

“No, Paul. I don’t think our lives are supposed to mirror a romance novel. I just think that . . . well, we’ve been living like we’re business partners for years now! All we do is work, fix up the house, talk about work and talk about fixing up the house.”

“Don’t forget the hours—or
years
rather—you’ve spent fixing your family. Maybe if you didn’t spend every waking minute on the phone with your sisters and your dad, counseling them through every single crisis that comes up, there would be more time left for us.”

I wanted to slap him. Tell him he had no business judging what I’d been through with my family, and the way I’d chosen to handle it.

But there was truth to what he was saying. And I couldn’t deny it any longer.

“I’m sorry for the way I’ve let their drama overflow into my life . . . into
our
lives
.
It’s all I knew how to do though, after losing my mom.”

“Chloe, your mom died like twenty years ago. Don’t you think your dad and your sisters should be able to manage their own lives by now?”

 “It’ll be eighteen years tomorrow. And yes, they should be able to run their own lives without my constant help, and that’s something I need to work on. I know that. But I love them, Paul. They’re my family. They’re the most important people in my life. And if we’re going to get married, they’re going to be your family too. I guess I always thought you’d warm up to them. Maybe even become excited at having a big, crazy family since you grew up as an only child. But I see now that that’s not the case.”

“Whatever,” Paul mumbled, his tone like a pouty little five-year-old.

“My crazy family isn’t going anywhere, Paul. And I’m not going to distance myself from them just because things get a little chaotic sometimes.”

Paul huffed out another angry breath and crossed his arms over his chest. The disdain he harbored for my dad and my sisters was yet one more glaring red flag which I’d chosen to ignore for years now.

“Just answer my original question,” I snapped, unable to skirt around the issue at hand for another second. “Are you happy with us? With this life?”

“Why do you think I took the Pennsylvania job?”

“You think moving to the suburbs and popping out kids is going to fix this? Fix us?”

“I didn’t realize we were so broken,” he said coolly. “But I’m seeing pretty clearly now, after this week, that apparently there were a lot of things I didn’t know about you.”

I hugged my legs to my chest and felt cold drops of water slipping off the ends of my hair and sliding down my back. “I’m sorry, Paul. I’m truly sorry for everything that happened this week. I should have never lied to you. I should’ve told you the truth right from the beginning instead of always trying to handle everything on my own.”

Paul leaned back in his chair, his mouth drawn shut, his eyes tired.

“But I need you to be honest with me,” I continued. “If I had told you what really happened, right from the start, do you think you would feel any differently than you do now?”

When Paul’s cool gaze leveled with mine, I finally recognized the look I’d been seeing in those dark black eyes for months, years even. And I’d just been so good at ignoring it, so skilled in seeing only what I wanted to see, that it was as if I was seeing it for the first time.

He wasn’t in love with me either.

“What do you expect me to say, Chloe? That if you’d called me right away and said, ‘Hey, listen honey, I let some French guy get me drunk last night, then I
voluntarily
brought him up to my room and passed out while he stole my things. Can you help me?’ that I would’ve been on the first plane to France? Is that what you want me to say?”

A cold tear stung the back of my eyelid. “I told you, Paul. I was drugged. I never would’ve taken him to my room unless I had no idea what I was doing.” But as the words flew out of my mouth, a vision of Julien’s lips pressed up against mine flashed through my mind. I’d known what I was doing then, and I’d done it anyway.

“It’s all too far-fetched. Ever since this happened, I just don’t feel like I know you anymore,” Paul said, staring past me out the window.

When my mind refused to stop thinking of Julien, I looked to the ground. “Maybe you don’t.”

An excruciating silence hovered over us in the small office, until, a few moments later, Paul broke it. “Is that where this is coming from? Your sudden concern with the apparent lack of romance in our relationship? Did your stint running from the cops with that ex-con make you realize you needed more
passion
in your life? More excitement?”

Paul’s dry, sarcastic tone stung me to the core. But, if I was honest with myself, and with him, that was exactly what had happened.

“Don’t you ever wonder if we were headed down the wrong path? If we were just working and saving and working and saving for a life that we weren’t really
living
?” I asked.

“No, that’s not how I feel, Chloe, or how I’ve ever felt. I wanted to go to law school, so I did. I wanted to become a lawyer, so I did. I wanted to get that job at the firm in Pennsylvania and move to a smaller town, so that’s what I’m doing.”

I could almost hear Julien’s voice in my head.
Boring, boring. Where’s the passion
?

And now, thousands of miles away from Julien, from all of those conversations where he’d accused me of not really being in love, of having no passion, I realized I agreed with him. Where
was
the passion?

“Paul, think back to when we first started dating, back in college. Do you remember feeling like you just had to be with me? Like you couldn’t live without me?”

Paul’s eyebrows knitted together in confusion.

“Was there even a spark?” I asked.

“Not all relationships have to be like that, Chloe. Some relationships are stable.”

There it was again.
Stability
. My life vest.

But I didn’t want it anymore. I didn’t need it.

“But to sustain a marriage, there needs to be more than just stability,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter anymore anyway. After this past week, whatever stability we had is gone now.”

“So, your mind is made up? You’re moving to Pennsylvania.”

“Yes, I took the job because I want to go there!” he shouted, the veins in his forehead popping out. “I thought we wanted the same things. I thought you would realize what a great opportunity this could be for us. I thought you would want a bigger home and a family, just like I did. I mean, isn’t that what you do after you’ve been together eight years?”

“I might want all of those things . . . one day. But I’m not ready yet. And I told you that. I’ve been telling you that all along.”

“Or maybe you’re just not ready for those things with
me
,” Paul said, his face hanging, his eyes weary and beaten down.

One lone tear rolled down my cheek. And I knew that he was right.

“I’m sorry, Paul. I’m so sorry.”

He rubbed his fingers along his brow line, hiding his eyes from view for a few seconds before lifting them up to meet mine.

“So this is it then? All these years, and this is what it comes down to?”

I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t even look him in the eye. I felt like I was breaking in half, and once I let him go, I wasn’t sure who would be there, if anyone, to sweep up the pieces.

“What should we do then, about the wedding?” he asked, his voice deflated.

“I’ll take care of it,” I said. I’d cancelled weddings before in my event planning career . . . just never my own.

He nodded and stood to his feet. “I’ll stay with my parents for the weekend, then I’ll be back next week to move my things out.” His voice had switched into the same formal tone I’d heard him use with his clients over the phone.

“Okay,” I said as I watched him head toward the door, feeling the urge to say something else, to keep apologizing, but knowing in my heart that I’d said enough for one night.

He turned, gave me one last tired look, then left the office. Two minutes later, the front door slammed shut, its echo sounding through the empty house.

Paul was gone, and with him, all of the stability I’d stored up for the past eight years.

I sank back into the couch, wrapped the blanket tighter around my shaking arms and hoped with every fiber in my body that I’d made the right decision, and that somehow, after this rain had finished pouring down on me, I would find the strength to pick myself back up and move on to sunnier skies.

Twenty-five

Hushed whispers filled my ears. Was I dreaming?

I rolled to the side and peeked through the unwelcome slit in my eyelids. All three of my sisters stood over me shooting worried glances at each other.

I shut my eyes again.

“Chloe, why are you sleeping in the office? And why are you all damp?”

Sophie knelt down beside me, removing a strand of hair that had been matted to my cheek. “We couldn’t find Paul anywhere,” she said softly. “Did you guys talk about things last night?”

Oh, God. Last night. How was I going to tell them that the one relationship they’d been able to count on for the past eight years was officially over? That their older sister had completely lost control of her life.

Had it all really happened?

But as I remembered watching Paul’s thin frame walk out of the office door and hearing the front door slam shut, I knew it was real.

I pushed myself up, the lack of food in my stomach making me dizzy. And I turned to face my sisters. There was no avoiding it. No running away.

“Paul’s gone. The wedding’s off,” I said, unable to believe the words even as they walked, mechanically, right out of my own mouth.

“The wedding’s off?” Lily screeched from behind Sophie.

“Lily,” Sophie hissed. “Get it together.”

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

I braced myself for Sophie’s typical hundred and one questions as she sat down next to me.

But instead, she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into her chest. “I’m sorry, Chloe,” she said, stroking the back of my head. “I’m so sorry.”

And while my first instinct was to pull away and tell her I was fine, that I could handle this, I found myself collapsing in her arms, grateful for the strength they provided on a morning when mine had been zapped.