Chapter 19
Étienne
The night sky over Monaco had been scattered with stars when I'd picked Elena up, the Mediterranean breeze carrying the scent of salt and expensive perfume from the nearby casino. Now, as we drove north toward Paris, the darkness seemed to press in from all sides, broken only by the occasional lights of small towns we passed.
Elena had been silent for the last thirty minutes, her head tilted back against the leather seat, her eyes closed. I'd thought she might be asleep until she spoke, her voice soft and slightly slurred with exhaustion.
"You know what I was thinking about today?" she said. "During training, when I kept messing up that combination. I was thinking... you would be a better coach than Michel."
I glanced at her briefly before returning my attention to the road. "Michel is one of the best in Europe. You're lucky to have her."
"But you understand things differently." She shifted in her seat, and I heard the small sound of pain she tried to suppress. "When you explain something, it makes sense. Like with the Formula One thing. Michel just tells me what I'm doing wrong, but you tell me why it matters, how to think about it."
"That's Michel's job," I said carefully. "To identify technical errors and correct them."
"I know, but..." She trailed off, then continued in an even softer voice. "Sometimes I think... if you were my coach, I wouldn't be so scared all the time. Or if you were..." Another pause. "If you were my father instead of my guardian."
The words hit like a physical blow. My hands tightened on the steering wheel as I forced myself to keep my voice steady, neutral.
"I'm your guardian, Elena. That's the role I'm meant to fill."
"I know that." There was something in her voice now, something I couldn't quite identify. "But sometimes I wish... I mean, Maxime's father is so involved in his life, always calling to check on him, giving him advice. And my real father never..." She stopped herself. "Sorry. I shouldn't compare."
"It's fine," I said, though it wasn't fine at all. The thought of being her father made something twist uncomfortably in my chest, because the feelings I was trying so hard to suppress were nothing remotely paternal.
"You do so much for me already," she continued, and now her voice was getting even softer, the exhaustion making her words run together slightly. "The training facility, Marie, making sure I eat right, checking my schedule. You're better than any father I could have had. Better than—"
"Elena." I cut her off, perhaps more sharply than I'd intended. "You should rest. We still have an hour before we reach Paris."
She was quiet for a moment, and I thought she might actually listen. Then she spoke again, and this time her voice had that dreamy quality that came with being on the edge of sleep.
"If you were my..."
My entire body went rigid. Every instinct told me where that sentence was heading, and I couldn't—wouldn't—let her finish it. Because if she said it, if she gave voice to that thought, it would shatter every boundary I'd spent five years constructing. It would make real something that needed to remain unspoken, unacknowledged, safely buried beneath the acceptable fiction of guardianship.
"I'm your guardian, Elena." The words came out more tightly than I'd intended, each syllable carefully controlled. "That's what I am. That's what I'll always be."
The silence that followed felt suffocating. I kept my eyes fixed on the road ahead, on the white lines disappearing beneath the hood of the car, because I couldn't trust myself to look at her. My jaw clenched hard enough to make my teeth ache, my fingers gripping the steering wheel with enough force that my knuckles went white.
I heard her shift in her seat, heard the small intake of breath that suggested she might speak again, and I braced myself. But instead, her breathing gradually evened out, the rhythm becoming slow and deep. When I finally risked a glance in her direction, her face had gone slack with sleep, her head tilted at an angle that would leave her neck sore in the morning.
The relief that washed over me was immediate and shameful in equal measure. She'd fallen asleep. She hadn't finished that sentence. Whatever she'd been about to say—and I knew, God help me, I knew exactly what she'd been about to say—it remained unspoken. The boundary held, if only barely.
I returned my attention to the road, but my hands remained too tight on the steering wheel, my shoulders rigid with tension I couldn't quite release. She'd been about to call me something I couldn't be, couldn't allow myself to be, no matter how much some dark part of me wanted to hear her say it. Because I was nine years older, because I was her legal guardian, because she was twenty years old and still figuring out who she was, and because I'd promised—to myself, to her, to the ghost of the man who should have been her father—that I would protect her, even if that meant protecting her from me.
The rest of the drive passed in silence broken only by the hum of the engine and Elena's steady breathing. I let myself glance at her occasionally—at the way sleep had smoothed the perpetual tension from her face, at the dark fan of her lashes against her cheeks, at the small furrow between her brows that suggested her dreams weren't entirely peaceful. Each glance felt like a small betrayal, a moment of weakness I couldn't quite resist.
This situation with Elena felt like approaching a turn too fast, like I could feel the loss of traction beginning but couldn't quite bring myself to slow down. The difference was that this time, when I crashed, it wouldn't just be my body that shattered. It would be her trust, her safety, her future—everything I'd spent five years trying to build for her.
So I would maintain control. I would keep the boundaries in place. I would be her guardian, her protector, the person who made sure she ate properly and got enough sleep and had everything she needed to succeed.