Page 45 of Enemies to French Kisses

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The fog is lifting,but my brain remains unconvinced that Laura doesn’t belong here. It’s a hard transition to go from happily married to antagonistic colleagues again, when I’ve been trying for ages to say the right thing to make it more between us.

In fact, it’s impossible.

That’s what I think about, lying in bed, hearing the uniformity of her deep breathing from across the room that tells me she’s finally asleep.

I don’t know how she sleeps in that chair, I only ever used it to drop my clothes on, which the cleaner tidies once a week.

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But there she is, with Delia curled at her feet. Four nights she’s slept in that chair. The first two nights I was dead asleep, confusion sitting heavy on me. When I woke in the night, an angel hovered over me, the moonlight making her skin glow like a dream come alive.

How I dreamt of pulling her into my arms, embracing her, feeling her tucked safely into me. To fall asleep holding her and waking with her head on my shoulder.

But I settle for watching her curled up in the chair.

In some moments, I still feel likethisis the dream, and reality is the one where we’re married, living out our love. My brain can’t come to terms with the idea that she doesn’t belong here.

I don’t know how we come back from this place. When the police were in the room, it fell so naturally from my lips, calling her my wife. I said it because a voice inside me said it was true and it was what the moment called for. There was no time to discuss between us, and my consciousness was limited at best. Laura lived the part so well that when I fell back asleep, I believed it.

Looking back, it’s all a haze. Reality and fiction blended into one.

The bump on my head still throbs, but the picture has come back into focus. She is not my girlfriend, she’s not myparamour, she’s not even my date for Gabriel and Amelie’s engagement party. And yet I managed to make her all of those without paying attention to the cost it would have.

The truth.

But the truth is overrated. What I want isher. But how can I explain it in a way that doesn’t seem like I’ve taken advantage of the situation?

Wait now, another voice inside me says.Remember that she nearly killed you. And while it was an accident, her tirade against you was not.Her reaction had been entirely out of nowhere. All the names she called me, the anger that boiled out of her—I couldn’t have deserved that. I was trying to create a romantic moment to remember in front of Sacre Coeur, inviting her to cross the line from colleagues into each other’s lives as my date for the engagement party. And heaven knows I’d tried many times already. I couldn’t have deserved that treatment, and I certainly didn’t deserve to be thrown down the steps of Sacre Coeur for it.

That same little voice reminds me that Americans have a different way of doing these things. She may not be ready to feel the same for me as I do for her… but I’ll find a way. For now, she is my wife. Perhaps I can ride this out a little longer—just long enough that she falls for me the way I’ve fallen for her.

I must have slept, because when I open my eyes, Laura isn’t in the chair anymore. I’ve grown used to waking and seeing her. The empty chair is jarring.

Voices speak low in the salon. Definitely not Charlotte again, though I did enjoy seeing her on the back foot for once. Laura knows how to stand her ground.

No, this is a man’s voice.

I opt for real clothes instead of pajamas, because you never know who might be in your living room with your fake wife in the middle of the day.

“Guillaume!” I open my arms and he rushes to me, slowing a few steps before reaching me and giving the most careful greeting of kisses on the cheek, as though I might break.