Recipe for a Broken Heart

Chapter.20

Chapter 20 — A Year, An Ocean

The email arrived on a Thursday afternoon in late January, forwarded to Étienne's phone during a meeting Camille happened to be sitting in on. She watched his expression shift through the sequence she'd learned to recognize — surprise, then something tighter, then deliberate smoothing.

He excused himself, and Camille followed, finding him at the window of his office. "What happened?"

"The board wants me back in Lyon. Not permanently, but for an extended period — eight months, possibly closer to a year, to help stabilize operations while my father transitions into a reduced role. They want an answer within the month."

"A year, Étienne. That's not a business trip."

"I know. I have not answered them yet. I wanted to discuss this with you first, exactly as I promised."

"Could I come with you? Is that even something that's been discussed?" The question surprised even her as she said it, arriving faster than she'd consciously decided to speak.

He knelt in front of her, taking her hands. "It has crossed my mind, more than once, these past fifteen minutes. But I know what staying here means to you. Your mother, still recovering. Marcus, just finding his footing. I cannot simply ask you to abandon all of that."

"You're not asking. I'm offering." She squeezed his hands. "But you're right that it's complicated. I can't just disappear from their lives for a year, not without a plan."

"Whatever we decide, we decide together," he said finally. "Give me some time. Let us both think about what genuinely serves the life we are trying to build."

That evening, Camille told her mother everything.

"A year," her mother repeated, setting down her fork. "That's a long time, baby."

"Part of me wants to just go with him. But part of me is terrified of uprooting everything again, especially with you still—"

"Don't you dare finish that sentence with me as the excuse." Her mother's voice carried a rare firmness. "I am not an invalid, Camille. You have spent your entire adult life putting everyone else's needs before your own — mine, Marcus's, even David's, God help you. You quit school for two semesters when I hurt my knee the first time, remember, even though I begged you not to. I refuse to watch you do it again now, with a genuinely good man who loves you, simply because you have not yet learned to choose yourself first. If you want to go with him, go. We will manage."

"What if it doesn't work out, though?"

"Then it falls apart, and you rebuild, the way you have before. But you cannot spend your whole life refusing to build anything real simply because it might someday break. That is not caution. That is just a slower way of making sure you never truly have anything worth losing."

Camille sat with that for a long while, weighing fear against hope, the careful practicality she'd built her life around against the quieter voice that simply wanted the life she actually wanted.

She called Étienne once the apartment had gone quiet. "I talked to my mother. She thinks I should go with you."

"And what do you think?"

"I think I'm tired of choosing the safe option just because it's safe. I want to come to Lyon with you, Étienne. If you'll have me."

The silence stretched long enough to make her heart pound, before his voice came through, thick with emotion. "There is nothing in this world I want more."

"Are you sure? I don't want you to say yes just because it's what I want to hear."

"I am entirely sure. I have been quietly terrified of a year apart from you, in a way I did not fully let myself examine until this exact moment."

"You hid that well."

"I have had considerable practice hiding things well. But I am trying, with you specifically, to practice honesty instead."

They talked for nearly another hour, working through the practical shape of it — her job, visas, housing, the promise that a year was not forever.

"I'll need to learn French properly. I can barely order coffee in Lyon without your father's staff taking pity on me. His nurse had to translate for me twice during dinner."

"I will teach you myself. Consider it my primary project for the year." Warmth and humor mixed easily in his voice. "Though I warn you, my patience as a teacher may be considerably worse than my patience as a boyfriend."

"I've noticed. I work for you, remember."

"A fact I try very hard to forget, most days, for reasons that should be fairly obvious by now."