The first cup of coffee works wonders, but it tastes awful. “I think I need to learn the French word for mud,” I say, lifting the empty cup.
“The French are not known for their coffee,” he says.
“You’ve been here before, right? Paris?” I ask, since he said the city was wonderful at that lunch. A man like him, inking deals around the globe, probably speaks French too.
We’re sitting at a tiny round table on the sidewalk as fashionable Parisians stroll by. French words drift past my ears but mean nothing.
“A couple times,” he says, lifting his espresso. “But always for work.”
He’s quick to answer, and the subtext is clear—he never came here with his ex-wife or with another woman.
Don’t read anything into it.
“Do you speak French?”
He finishes his small cup, then sets it down, his green eyes sparkling. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he whispers.
A shiver runs down my spine. “I’m listening.”
“I can bullshit my way through any restaurant or store, and that’s about it,” he says.
This makes me unreasonably happy. I like that he doesn’t know the language. That he’s brutally honest about his lack of language skills with me, but that he tries to finesse his way through it. That fits him, swaggering through life, pursuing what he wants with guts and brain and charisma.
“So, sort of like how you bullshitted your way through playing the piano,” I say.
He leans back in the chair, looking smug in the best of ways. “I wanted what I wanted,” he says, owning his choice to pursue me relentlessly that night.
But in retrospect, does he wish we’d been unmasked? That we’d both had all the facts before we scurried off to the library?
Maybe it’s the jet lag that makes me want to ask. Or maybe it’s that no one knows us here. I feel like we’re in a bubble, and that bubble emboldens me. “Would you have talked to me if I wasn’t wearing a costume?”
“No,” he says, immediately. “I wouldn’t have.”
My shoulders drop. I knew that answer was coming, but I asked the question anyway.
“And I’m glad I didn’t know,” he adds in his bedroom voice—the one he uses when he tells me to spread my legs for him. “I wouldn’t change a damn thing about the tryst in the library. The night at my home. The afternoon in the restaurant. Not a single thing.” He pins me with a dark stare. “Is that clear?”
I shudder out a yes. “Crystal.”
“Good. But just in case, let me add this—I’m so fucking glad I had a mask on the night you played piano. Because you are the most sensual, responsive, exciting woman I’ve ever known.”
Known.
He didn’t say touched.
But known. Somehow that word carries even more weight. He’s not comparing me to his body count. He’s putting me on a pedestal for being…well, being me.
His reassurance breaks another layer of my walls. “My ex-boyfriend in college,” I begin, and he sits up straighter. “I was going to sleep with him. I didn’t.”
“Did he hurt you?” Finn asks, biting out the words.
“No.” I shake my head. “He didn’t hurt me physically. But he…” I stop, hesitate. This is harder than I’d thought it would be. Those journals I wrote in are twisted up with sex, and fantasies, and OCD, and secrets. I wasn’t so good at untangling my thoughts. I didn’t understand them enough to understand their separateness. And I don’t want to reveal all of myself. Just a part, because it feels like he’s earned it. “I used to write down what I did that day. What I thought. How I felt,” I explain.
“That makes sense. A lot of people do that.”
“Yeah and sometimes I had these uncomfortable thoughts,” I say, because that’s a safe enough way to tell him without slapping a label on myself. “Sometimes about random people. Like a professor. Or a teaching assistant.”
He nods for me to keep going, making it clear he’s not judging, just listening.
“And I’d write them down. Sometimes I’d mentioned a guy I had maybe gone out with once the previous year. On a date, or to a party.”
“Sure. You’d tell the journal about your life.”
Well, I was telling my sister. And you know what? There’s no need to keep that to myself either. “I was writing to Willa,” I say softly, my voice breaking briefly.
“That must have been hard,” he says, squeezing my forearm for a moment, then letting go.
“It was, but I needed it. I still need it. I tried to tell her everything in my journals. They were just mine.” I draw a breath for fuel, hating what Brandon did but feeling compelled to share it anyway. “But one time when Brandon slept over, he skipped his morning class to sleep in. I went to the lecture, leaving him alone in my dorm with my journals for maybe an hour. And I didn’t know it at the time, but he read them all. Every single private thought I’d written down. Whether it was one of those uncomfortable thoughts I mentioned, like about a teacher, or whether it was a recap of a date from my freshman year, or whether it was a book I read that made me want to try role-play,” I say, a fresh wave of hurt washing over me. “Sometimes I even wrote the specific fantasies down.”
“That’s a disgusting violation,” he says with vitriol.
“And then, bit by bit, day by day, he took that info and used it against me in subtle, manipulative ways. At a study sesh, he’d say would you ever want to go into the stacks…with your bio professor. Or he’d ask me about a guy I went out with a while ago. Was Carson a good kisser? Are you sure you didn’t think of anyone else when you kissed him? Or even something more insidious. Remember when you said you wanted me to handcuff you? I didn’t remember every detail I’d ever written down, but he’d stay on it, trying to trip me up.”
Finn huffs an annoyed breath, like he wants to wring Brandon’s neck. “He manipulated you. He gaslit you.”
I hadn’t thought of it like gaslighting, but maybe it was. But it was also embarrassing. I was so fooled. “He was clever. I can’t believe it took me a few weeks to puzzle together where it all came from. From me,” I say, still ashamed he tricked me so deeply.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Finn says, perhaps wanting to reassure me, or maybe to protect me from the stories I told myself about my past. “You have a good heart. You probably couldn’t conceive that he would trick you like that.” He sighs, scrubbing a hand across his chin. “Sometimes it takes us a while to see how we’ve been used.”
I’m about to ask how he’s been used when he adds, “What happened after?”
I need to finish my story before I ask for his. “I broke up with him. I never slept with him. And honestly, I didn’t want to sleep with anyone for a long time. I shut down, Finn. I was basically dormant sexually until several months ago, after a lot of therapy and a deeper understanding of myself. That’s when I realized I was truly ready. That I wanted sex a certain way. That I wanted to be…dominated. That I wanted the fantasies. And that I wanted someone who wouldn’t manipulate me. Someone who’d do the opposite—who’d role-play with me, not against me.”