Crush(70)

Nonetheless, I pushed that aside until I couldn’t any longer.

As soon as I turned the corner onto my street, I noticed the Porsche was gone. Picking up the pace, I started to run down the street. I felt like it was Charlie all over again. Charlie was my first love. The only person I had said “I love you” to besides Logan. At the time I was young and na?ve, and I mistakenly thought love conquered all.

I learned the hard way—that couldn’t be farther from the truth.



Charlie and I were inseparable.

We were such a perfect pair with such similar interests.

We’d been living together for a while when one day, he came home and announced, “My family is coming to visit.”

I was shocked. “When?”

“Next month. They’re going to adore you, love.”

Nervousness was the only thing I felt for the next week. When I came home from work one night, out of the blue, he started talking about marriage.

Marriage? Was this because of his family coming?

I felt sick. I couldn’t discuss marriage until he knew everything about me. “Charlie,” I interrupted as he was going on about how perfect we were for each other.

“Yes, love,” he said.

“I have something to tell you.”

Right then and there, with no preparation at all, I was forced to tell him I was unable to have children.

Charlie did his best to accept that hard truth but as the weeks passed leading to his family’s arrival, I could tell he wasn’t doing well processing the information. He was from a large family and I had come to learn he, too, wanted a large family.

All talk of marriage had ceased and he began to pull away from me. More time passed and we were no longer inseparable. I had thought about ending things before he eventually did, but I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to be alone, so I held on to hope. Hope that I shouldn’t have had.

Three days before his family was to arrive, I had to go out of town. It was a Wednesday and I had to travel from Paris to Monaco. The back-to-back meetings and seven-hour commute had me returning just in time to meet them on Saturday. But by some stroke of luck, on Friday morning I had finished my work and decided to hop on an earlier train.

Feeling stressed about our relationship, I knew Charlie and I needed to spend some time together and just talk before his family arrived, so I stopped at the store and bought what I needed to make a nice dinner. My arms were loaded with bags when I burst open the door to our flat and found it practically empty. Everything that Charlie had brought into our relationship was gone, and so was he. He’d left a note on the counter that said, I’m sorry. I just can’t.



Approaching my townhouse, it felt like déjà vu as I reached my door and swung it open. “Logan!” I yelled.

There was no answer.

I knew there wouldn’t be. The Rover wasn’t parked out front and the Porsche was gone. Still, who knew? Maybe something had changed.

Hopeful, I hurried up the stairs and into my room. “Logan,” I said hoarsely.

There was no answer.

That’s when I knew there wasn’t ever going to be one. His things that had been scattered around the room for weeks were gone. I’d told him the truth about myself and like Charlie, he couldn’t handle it and had packed up and left.

“Logan,” I whispered, and crumpled to my knees.

No tears fell, though. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew this was how things would end for us. There was no other way. Love really never would conquer all.

My father hadn’t talked much about the future with me, but he had told me I’d end up alone. Taking charge of my own life, I’d set that course all by myself, but then with Logan, things had changed and I thought maybe my father had been wrong. In that regard, he wasn’t.

That horrid memory started to materialize.



Huge and overpowering, he stood at my bedside. “I begged your mother not to go through with this, Gabrielle. I knew you weren’t a strong enough match. We should have waited for your sister to be cleared.”

“No, we couldn’t wait. The doctors all said time was running out.”

“Nonsense, they didn’t know what they were talking about. Your mother was doing fine. She would have held in there. She was tough, like me.”

He was delusional. Had he always been?

I think he refused to see my mother’s physical weaknesses. “You’re wrong,” I dared to say out loud.

His eyes narrowed on me and his jaw twitched. “No, Gabrielle, you were wrong for agreeing to do this. For encouraging your mother. It was selfish of you to want to take your sister’s place. Now, your mother is dead and I’ll be stuck with you forever.”

His words stung, but I kept on. “It wasn’t about me. She was my mother and I loved her. I only wanted her to get better.”

“And she was my wife.”

Anger roiled in my gut. He’d said that as if it trumped anything I’d said. “She was just another one of your soldiers. Someone to command. You never loved her,” I spat.

He grabbed my chin and jerked it toward him, slapping me hard. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You should have listened to me. And because you didn’t, she’s gone and you have no future. Don’t you see? No man will want you now.”