Recipe for a Broken Heart

Chapter.9

Chapter 9 — Defending Him

It happened on an ordinary Tuesday, over lunch, in a conversation Camille hadn't seen coming.

She was sitting with two coworkers from finance, Odette and Ravi, when the conversation drifted toward Étienne — someone had mentioned a vendor decision, and it unspooled into something closer to gossip than analysis.

"He's just so controlling, though," Odette said, stirring her yogurt. "Everything has to go through him."

"That's not controlling. That's called doing his job." The words were out before Camille had fully decided to say them, sharper than intended.

Odette raised an eyebrow. "Okay, defensive much?"

"I just think there's a difference between wanting to be informed and being controlling. He's not micromanaging anyone. He just wants to know what's happening in his own department, which seems reasonable when you're the one who has to answer for it to the board." Camille heard herself and, a beat too late, recognized how thoroughly she'd just defended him.

Ravi glanced between the two women, barely concealed amusement on his face. "Camille's got a point, actually. He caught that customs thing before it blew up. Wasn't controlling, that was just good instincts."

"Sure, fine, he's competent." Odette shrugged, already moving on. "I'm just saying he's intense."

"He's thorough," Camille said, aware she was still arguing a point nobody was invested in disputing anymore.

The conversation moved on easily. But Camille sat there a moment longer, unsettled by how automatically she'd stepped up to defend him — not strategically, not because she needed anything from him, but because some part of her had genuinely bristled at hearing him mischaracterized.

She hadn't done that for anyone in a long time. Not for David, not in the later years, when she'd started quietly agreeing with friends who suggested he was maybe a little self-absorbed. She'd let people say things about him she privately half-believed. But here she was, six weeks into a job, defending a man's management style with real fervor.

She was still trying to talk herself into believing it meant nothing when she passed his office on the way out and found him still there, sleeves rolled, glasses on.

"You're still here," she said, echoing words he'd said to her weeks earlier.

He looked up, tiredness in his face softening slightly. "Apparently I am a hypocrite about working late."

"I won't tell anyone."

"I would appreciate that." He studied her with the attentiveness she'd started to associate specifically with him. "Good day?"

"Mostly." She hesitated at the doorway. "Odette from finance called you controlling at lunch today."

His eyebrows rose slightly. "Did she. And what did you say?"

"I told her she was wrong. I told her there's a difference between wanting to be informed and being controlling, and that you just actually want to know what's happening in your own department."

Something moved across his face, quiet and unguarded — surprised, and beneath the surprise, something warmer. "You didn't have to defend me."

"I know. I did it anyway." She shrugged, trying for casual. "It just bothered me, hearing you described like that. It didn't sound like the person I actually work for."

"Thank you," he said, and the two words carried more weight than the moment strictly required. "That means more than you probably realize."

They stood there a moment, the office quiet around them, the same charged silence from the party settling over them again.

"I should go," she said finally, breaking it first.

"You should," he agreed, though he didn't look convinced by his own words. "Goodnight, Camille."

She walked to the elevator with her heart doing something complicated, admitting to herself, finally, that this had stopped being small and manageable several weeks ago.

At home, her mother was already in bed, the apartment quiet. Camille sat at the kitchen table without turning on the lights, thinking about Odette's comment, and how quickly her own defense had come. She thought too about David — not with the old ache, but with a kind of distant clarity, like looking at a photograph of someone she used to know.

Marcus wandered in, surprised to find her sitting there in the dark. "You okay? You've got the broody face on."

"I'm fine. Just thinking."

"About the French guy?"

"Go to bed, Marcus."

"That's not a no." He grinned, grabbing a glass of water. "For what it's worth, I like this version of you better. It's an improvement."

Camille didn't have a comeback for that, mostly because he wasn't wrong.