All for You (Paris Nights #1)(50)

“Oh, f*ck.” His head drooped suddenly, his fists clenching so that all the muscles on his arms stood out. “I don’t have any—f*ck.” He lifted his head. “I wasn’t—I’ve been living in barracks, and I didn’t expect you to—”

“I’ve got some,” Célie said without thinking, pulling open the drawer of her nightstand.

His face blanked. That deep dive into blankness that he did these days, whenever anything got to him too badly.

“I mean, they’re not mine,” Célie said quickly. “They’re just leftover from—a—a”—guy I dated. She faltered to a stop, cringing as she realized exactly how much she shouldn’t be saying any of this.

Joss reached into the drawer and took out the small, open box of condoms. His face, as he looked at it, went so completely devoid of expression it was scary.

“I didn’t mean—” Célie broke off again, realizing she was starting to apologize. It was none of his damn business who had used condoms in her apartment. Joss was a friend of her brother who’d left for five years. She hadn’t owed him any fidelity. She’d owed it to herself to try to make a good, new life on her own.

“I need a minute,” Joss said abruptly, and thrust away from her, striding the one long stride it took to reach one of her casement windows. Célie sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees, still fighting that urge to apologize. She would not apologize, damn it.

“Joss, what did you expect?” she finally burst out, angry and desperate.

“I didn’t expect anything,” he said flatly without turning around. “I just didn’t—think about that part.” His fist opened, dropping the purple box to the floor. It had been crushed into a small ball.

“Of course not.” She fisted handfuls of her sheet. “Because in your fantasies I was only what you needed me to be. Not what I actually was.”

He threw her one dark, dangerous glance over his shoulder, like the throw of a knife blade, and abruptly jumped onto her balcony railing.

It was so sudden that she drew her breath to scream Don’t jump! But she didn’t have time to make a sound. His feet touched the railing just long enough to launch him upwards.

She ran forward, in a desperate urge to catch him back to safety, even as his body pulled upwards out of her sight. She got to the window and leaned out.

He was hauling himself over the edge of the roof.

“Joss!”

He paused to look down, leaning back over the edge of the roof. “I need a few minutes.” It was flat and final.

“You have no right to be upset!”

“I know.” His body disappeared.

“Joss!”

Just his head reappeared. He waited.

She sought for words. “Don’t fall!”

He gave a brief nod and was gone.





Chapter 17


Joss sat on the zinc sheets of the rooftop, by a line of ceramic chimney tops, gazing down over Paris. Apparently this area where Célie lived had been built on higher land than the older, more central part of Paris, and from the rooftop, he had a clear view over those endless zinc-roofed mansards and chimney tops all the way to the Eiffel Tower. A pigeon came and pecked beside him, in the optimistic conviction that Joss must have climbed up here just to give it leftover baguette crumbs.

Grief tried to seize him in this gray, grim wave, that grief a man had to fight off in the Legion, because if you yielded to it, it was all over. You couldn’t let yourself think about all you had given up, all you were missing out on, all the ways you might have screwed up by making this stupid, over-romantic choice to join the Legion because it sounded good from a distance. Heroic. So much better than being a barely adult mechanic who couldn’t get another job because he’d lost the last one when his boss started thinking he must be in on the drug dealing, too, given the company he kept.

You couldn’t think about how stupid you had been, once the choice was made, how much you wished you could undo that choice and just go home. You couldn’t think about how the girl you wanted was probably dating other men, maybe even getting married, having babies. Legionnaires who let their thoughts go down those roads ended up killing themselves or deserting.

And a man who joined the Legion to make something of himself and then deserted halfway through because he couldn’t handle it had nothing left of himself to hold on to, to believe in, at all.

So after that grim, bleak year two, Joss had learned mostly how not to think of anything but success, strength, getting through. When he imagined Célie, she was delighted to see him, she threw her arms around him, she kissed him, he kissed her, he nestled himself in those beautiful moments of her and never, ever let himself think about what the reality might be.


A half-full box of condoms.

None of his business.

Just his loss.

And that great, gray grief that he’d fought off for five years slumped down on him out of the gray-dark sky of Paris, pressing all its weight down on him until even his shoulders didn’t want to bear up under it. And he’d formed those shoulders to bear up under anything.

***

Calvi, Corsica, three years before

Women were everywhere. Leaning against the bar, luring men into corners, glancing his way. Short-skirted, sweet-smelling, eager for fun.