“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about them.”
“No, it’s fine.” I manage a quick smile. “My father’s out of my life. We never heard from him again, so if he exists still, I don’t really know, and I don’t really care.” There are more people to fear than him.
“Did your father ever beat you?”
“No, actually,” I say, remembering the smell of booze on his breath, how red his face was when he was enraged. How scared I was, but it was more for my mother than for me. I could handle the insults. “He was cruel, but he didn’t touch me.”
“You’re lucky.”
“I’m guessing yours did?”
Pascal nods. “I’ve never admitted this before to anyone, not Blaise when I know he went through the same thing, not my mother, because I felt she wouldn’t care, that she would blame me somehow, that she would make an excuse. But yes. He hit me. Hurt me. A lot. And I just took it. Like a fucking wimp.”
“Because you had no choice.”
“What did I say about choices again?” he asks, his voice low.
“You didn’t have a choice in that,” I repeat, hoping he can at least understand that. “No kid does.” God, I hope he doesn’t blame himself, but if he grew up thinking he deserved it, then it explains a lot.
My blood starts to run cold at the thought of Gautier ruining Pascal’s psyche in that same way. Pascal is a smart man, funny, cunning, charming. And he can be kind when he wants to be. Sweet, even. Raised by someone else—say Ludovic, for example—Pascal probably wouldn’t have turned out the way he did. Nature versus nurture at its finest.
“You’re feeling pity for me,” he says. His eyes seem a shade darker now, or maybe it’s the candlelight throwing light and shadows.
“I don’t feel pity for you, Pascal,” I say to him. “I just . . . feel.”
He stares at me for a moment, our gazes locked across the table with the flames dancing in between. We’re alone on this beach, and it feels like we’re alone in this world. Alone but still together.
I’m getting in over my head.
He breaks our gaze and has a sip of his wine. Clears his throat. “I like that you feel. It’s probably my favorite thing about you. Those eyes of yours hold so much, but they don’t hide so much. I see you taking everything in, every scene, every word, every look. You take it in, and you feel it right away, good or bad. Even when you try to control it, it’s there all the same. Do you . . .” He rubs his lips together, seeming to think about something.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he says after a moment, shaking his head. “It was nothing.” Then he smiles at me. It’s not quite genuine, it’s more shaky than anything else. “So this is pretty fucking awful dinner conversation. If this were a date, you’d be asking for the check by now.”
“If this were a date, I would have worn something nicer,” I tell him, looking down at my linen tunic and leggings.
“You look beautiful to me,” he says warmly. Then he narrows his eyes. “And before you roll your eyes at me, because that’s what you do every time I try to compliment you—”
“Making sexual comments isn’t the same as complimenting,” I interject.
“Every time I try to compliment you,” he repeats, voice louder, as if he’s trying to be heard above something, “you just brush it off. So don’t do that. Please. I mean what I say. You know I do.”
But I don’t. I don’t know when Pascal is being honest or when he’s just being a womanizing flirt. I trust him to some extent, and he’s been extremely open with me before, but when it comes to that sort of thing between us, I just don’t know where he really stands.
He wants to fuck me, that’s a given.
But then what?
Every woman he’s been with who has ever wondered then what has been thoroughly disappointed. Discarded like yesterday’s trash.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
“You don’t want to know.”
“I don’t? Or you don’t want me to know?”
I don’t say anything to that; instead I busy myself with the rest of the meal.
“So since we’ve discussed your childhood, from your deadbeat dad to my father discovering your mother at a hotel and whisking you and her off to the paradise of the Dumont chateau, let’s move on to something a little .