Recipe for a Broken Heart

Chapter.10

Chapter 10 — Caught in the Rain

The rain came out of nowhere on Friday evening, the kind of sudden autumn downpour that turned sidewalks into rivers with no warning from a sky that had been perfectly clear an hour earlier.

Camille was halfway to the train station when it hit. By the time she ducked under the overhang of a closed bakery, she was already soaked through.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Étienne.

Are you caught in this?

Yes. Hiding under a bakery awning like a drowned cat.

Stay there. I am ten minutes away.

She typed out a protest, then deleted it, because honestly, she didn't want to manage. She wanted, for once, to let someone else handle a small crisis.

He arrived nine minutes later, driving himself, pulling up to the curb and leaning across to push open the passenger door. "Get in before you catch pneumonia."

"It's not that dramatic."

"You are shivering. That is fairly dramatic."

The drive should have taken fifteen minutes. It took closer to thirty, traffic snarled by the storm. Camille sat wrapped in the strange, cocooned intimacy of a stalled car, rain drumming against the roof, and found herself talking more freely than she usually allowed — about her mother's recovery, about Marcus's job hunt paying off, about small, ordinary things.

"Tell me about your father," he said at one point, carefully. "You have not mentioned him."

"There's not much to tell. He left when I was twelve. We talk maybe twice a year, if that." The old hurt worn smooth by time. "My mother raised us on her own. Two jobs, sometimes three. She never once made it feel like a burden."

"That explains a great deal about you. The way you carry things. Where you learned it."

"I never really thought about it that way."

"Most people do not, about the things closest to them."

"You light up when you talk about them," he said. "Your family. It is good to see."

"They're the reason I do most things, honestly."

"I know. I have known that about you since the interview. It is one of the things I admire most about you."

By the time they reached her building, the rain had softened to a drizzle. He parked, and neither of them moved immediately to end the moment.

"Thank you for the ride. You're making a habit of rescuing me from weather."

"Someone has to. You seem determined to walk through every possible storm rather than ask for help." Gentle teasing, but something more serious underneath. "You do not have to manage everything alone, Camille. Not anymore."

The words hit somewhere deep and unguarded. "I don't know how to do it any other way. I've been the one managing things for so long, I'm not sure I remember how to let someone else carry part of it."

"You are learning. I have watched you learn it, a little, these past weeks."

They were close now, closer than the conversation strictly required.

"Étienne—"

"I know," he said softly, before she could finish. "I know what this is becoming. I have known for some time."

For one suspended, breathless moment, he leaned in slightly, and Camille felt her whole body go still.

Then her phone buzzed, loud and jarring, her mother's name lighting up the screen, and the moment shattered.

Camille pulled back first, flustered, reaching for the door handle. "I should — dinner. My mother's expecting me."

"Of course." He straightened too, some careful composure sliding back into place, though not quickly enough to hide the disappointment underneath. "Goodnight, Camille."

She climbed out into the drizzle and stood on the sidewalk watching his taillights disappear, her heart pounding for reasons that had nothing to do with the rain.

Inside, dinner was waiting. Camille changed into dry clothes on autopilot, ate without tasting anything, nodding along to conversations she wasn't fully present for.

"You're somewhere else tonight," her mother observed, passing the bread basket. "Everything okay?"

"Everything's fine. Just tired."

Her mother let it go, mostly, though the knowing look she exchanged with Marcus suggested neither of them believed it for a second.

Later, alone in her room, Camille lay awake replaying the moment in the car, the way his voice had softened when he said I know, the way she'd felt entirely unafraid — right up until the fear came roaring back exactly when it mattered most. Somewhere around midnight, she made herself admit the truth she'd been avoiding: this wasn't small anymore. Sooner or later, she was going to have to decide whether she was brave enough to stop running from it.