“It’s okay,” I say through a choked sob, reaching for his beautiful face and running my fingers down his cheek, which is still bruised from last night. “You don’t have to say anything. I was there, Blaise. I only had eyes for you growing up. I watched you and your family, and I knew how it was, even if you didn’t tell me. You aren’t like them; you never were and never will be. In my eyes, you’re not a Dumont. You’re just Blaise. And you deserve peace and family and forgiveness as much as anyone.”
“I love you,” he whispers again, his voice ravaged with the emotion that seems to roll through him. “I’ve always only loved you, even if I didn’t know how to feel it, how to say it, it’s still true. You’re mine. You were always mine.”
“And you’re mine.” I lean up and kiss him on the lips, feeling the tears run down my cheeks and onto our lips, tasting the salt, tasting each other. “I love you. I think I always did. When I was young, you broke my heart, Blaise, because I’d given you my heart, and I swear I never got it back until now. It’s yours and I’m yours.”
He kisses me back, and we’re immediately wrapped in each other’s limbs, both of us spilling tears for the things we’ve let go of and the things we’ve gained. For the love we’ve been denied, the love we’ve lost.
The love we’ve found.
The next morning I wake up in a haze. Despite the copious amounts of coffee I consume from the hotel room’s coffee maker, I can’t seem to get my head on straight.
There’s a lot to process: What just happened to us. What’s coming up next. The longer I’m in the hotel room—almost like Blaise and I are biding our time, because I guess we are—the more I feel like I’m trapped.
“I want to go for a walk,” I tell Blaise as I slip on a Minnie Mouse dress, eyeing myself in the mirror. It reminds me of the shirt I had when I was in the orphanage. We don’t have any clothes other than the bloody and dirty ones we showed up in, so Blaise had the concierge bring up a whole assortment of clothes from the gift shop. Of course, most of them are Disney themed, but I don’t really care. It’s all pretty surreal right now as it is.
“I’ll go with you,” Blaise says, getting up off the chair. He’s been on his phone all morning, looking at flights to Dubai and places to stay, and everything is just moving oh so fast.
“No,” I tell him. “I want to be alone. I just need some fresh air and some space to think.” His face falls, so I walk over to him and wrap my arms around his waist, momentarily giddy that I can do this with him. That he’s mine. “Don’t worry. It’s nothing bad. This is just how I process things, and there’s a lot to process. Besides, I need to call Olivier. I need to tell him everything that’s happened.”
“I worry about you,” he says.
“Well, you shouldn’t,” I tell him. “I’m going to go for a walk in the actual park. Happiest place on Earth is also the safest, most secure, and most-monitored place on Earth. You have to be screened to get in, and security cameras are absolutely everywhere. Nothing is going to happen to me.”
He frowns and then kisses me on the forehead. “Okay. But if you’re not back here in an hour, I’m going after you, and I’m bringing the police in tow.”
“If it’s not the Goof Troop, I’m going to be very upset,” I tell him. I can tell by his bemused expression that he doesn’t know what the Goof Troop is, so I leave it at that.
I slip on some Daisy Duck–print leggings, plus my boots, and grab my coat and purse, and then I’m out the door. I feel ridiculous, like I’m an adult in kid’s clothing, but the feeling only lasts as far as the park entrance, where I go to buy the day pass. It seems almost everyone, of all ages, is dressed similarly to me. It actually makes me smile—the first bit of lightness I’ve felt in my chest since yesterday.
Even though being with Blaise now has opened up my world to love, something I’d only dreamed of sharing with him, at the moment everything is tainted by the fear of the unknown, the fear that at any moment, someone might appear and ruin everything. All we have is Pascal’s word. We don’t have any closure whatsoever.
Which is why I have to phone Olivier. It’s going to be late at night, but I don’t think it can wait. I need to hear my brother’s voice, especially since he’s gone through almost the same thing I have.
Once I’m in through the park gates, I relax a little. Even though it’s a weekday and it’s winter, it’s still crowded and loud, so I set out across the park looking for the quietest place possible. I finally find a little duck pond by Cottonwood Creek Ranch in the frontier section of the park. I sit down on a bench and call.
He picks up on the fifth ring. “Hello?” he asks, voice thick with sleep.
“Olivier?” I ask, letting out a breath of relief at the sound of his voice.
“Seraphine?” He sounds more awake now. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. No. I’m sorry to wake you,” I tell him. “I know it’s early.”
“It’s okay,” he says, and I’m surprised he’s still speaking English. He sounds really good. “I get up early anyway.”
“Who is it?” I can hear Sadie mumble nearby, and I feel bad for waking her too.
“It’s Seraphine,” he says. “Go back to sleep, baby, I’ll take this in the other room.”
“Baby?” I ask with a chuckle as I hear some shuffling and the shutting of a door. “You guys are pretty cute in the morning.”
“She’s the cute one,” he says with that same softness he always has when he’s talking about Sadie. He clears his throat. “So what’s going on with you? Last we talked you seemed a bit . . . distant.”
I bite my lip. “Yeah. Well, I had my reasons. And before I explain, I just want you to know that I’m okay. I’m alive. I think I have a future ahead of me, much like you had your future ahead of you when you stepped on that plane and went after Sadie.”
“Oh shit. What happened? Is it Gautier?”
I swallow and try to keep the tears back. I should be all cried out after these last few days, and I don’t want to lose it in the middle of Disneyland Paris. “I did something stupid, Olivier. Or maybe it wasn’t stupid, because it led me to the truth. But it’s changed everything. Everything.”
“What truth?” he asks cautiously.
“That our uncle murdered his own brother in cold blood.”
There is silence over the line. I hear him exhale a shaky breath. “And you know this how?”
“Because I got too close to the truth, and he found out. Because I trusted the wrong person.”
“Blaise.”
“No,” I cry out softly. “No, not Blaise. Blaise is the only one I can trust. I . . .” Shit. Never figured out how to break this part of the story to him. I leave it for now. “It was Cyril. I told Cyril what I suspected, and he went straight to our uncle.”
Olivier grunts. “Those two don’t even like each other.”
“Birds of a feather,” I tell him. “Cyril wants revenge for not getting a single penny from me. And I guess Gautier trusted him because Cyril has always been weak and spineless. He knows how to manipulate the desperate.”