“Yes, I know what it means,” he snaps. “I haven’t . . . You know why I had to do what I’ve done.”
“I know, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t understand. Says it’s not like you.”
“I’m doing what I need to do. I have no choice,” he grinds out. “You’re supposed to support me in this, I don’t have anyone else who knows the truth.”
“I do support you, but I just want you to know how the rest of the family is taking it. She’s afraid she’s going to lose her job.”
“She won’t,” he says. “Gautier doesn’t hate her the way that he hates me. She’s useful, more so than his sons. He’ll keep her around. Is that all you talked about? Didn’t she wonder who you were?”
“She said that I was the girl.”
He grunts in response.
“And,” I go on, “she has a theory, and it’s why you need to talk to her, because even I have a hard time telling you.”
“Tell me what? What’s the theory? Theory about what?”
He looks so pained already that I think telling him will only hurt.
“You’d better ask her yourself. She needs to talk with you, not through me.”
He sighs and settles back into the bed. “Okay, I will go see her tomorrow.”
“Promise me,” I tell him, holding out my pinkie finger.
He stares at it. “What are you doing?”
“Tell me you have pinkie swears here in France.”
“Children do . . .”
“Just touch your pinkie with mine.”
Finally, a smile cracks on his face, and for a moment I see the old Olivier. “Touching pinkies. I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”
I laugh and reach over, wrapping my pinkie around his. “I’m serious. Now it’s official. Promise me you’ll talk to your sister.”
“Don’t mention my sister when I’m thinking about the dirty things I want to do to you.”
I blush. “Dirty things! You got that from a pinkie swear?”
He shrugs lazily. “You must admit, there is something sexual about it.”
I shake my head. “I’m admitting nothing.” But I’m still giggling.
He brings my pinkie to his mouth and slowly sucks on it, his tongue warm and wet, immediately sending shivers down my back. I manage to swallow. Okay, so I’m never looking at a pinkie swear the same way again.
Olivier slowly pulls my finger out of his mouth, and all the thoughts leave my brain. He grips it tightly in his hand, another hand cupping my chin.
“I never told you how grateful I am that you stayed,” he says to me, his tone soft and rough all at once. “Never told you how much it means to me that you’re here. That you’re really here.”
“I’m here,” I whisper, kissing him softly on the tip of his nose. “I’m here.”
“I was so scared when I came back, I thought maybe for a moment you would be gone. I imagined what that would be like, to come in and see your backpack missing and the bed empty, like you decided to catch your plane after all. And I was paralyzed from the fear. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. It was like my heart stopped, and that’s when I knew that my heart no longer belonged to me. My heart belongs to you.”
Oh, damn. There’s a nest of hummingbirds inside my chest, just taking flight for the very first time. I’m almost afraid of what he may say next, afraid because to say it is to feel it, and what if the feeling is too big for my soul to contain?
“Sadie, mon lapin, je t’aime, I love you,” he says. “I love you so very much that I don’t even know if you can feel it from these words, because there are no words really to explain it.”
He loves me.
I love him.
“I love you,” I whisper. “You don’t have to explain it. I know it. I know it like I know your heartbeat. I know it like I know the breath you take, the world you see. Since the beginning, I thought I was crazy to feel the way I felt about you.”
“And how did you feel about me, ma chérie?” he whispers, his hands disappearing into my hair.
“Like . . . there was something deep inside me that saw something familiar deep inside you. Like my very being recognized yours, and like your cells and my cells were almost the same.” I look away, grateful for my hair falling over my face. “It sounds so stupid to say it out loud, but it made sense