Chapter 7
Elena
The afternoon sun turned the Mediterranean into liquid gold. I stood at the edge of the Beaumont family's private beach, trying to focus the way Michel demanded during training—cataloging the rhythm of the swells, calculating intervals between sets, treating the ocean like an apparatus I needed to master.
"Core stability work," Michel had said yesterday, tapping his clipboard with that look he got when he was about to make my life difficult. "Your center of gravity shifts too much during the ribbon sequence. Go to the beach, practice your balance in the water." He'd paused, then added with rare gentleness, "And maybe it'll get you out of that house for a few hours."
I'd wanted to argue that I got plenty of fresh air walking from the car to the training facility, but the truth was I'd been feeling claustrophobic lately. Three days had passed since our dinner, since Étienne had fed me that bite of salad across the table, since I'd felt the air between us crackle with something I still couldn't name. Three days of him leaving for work before I woke up, of terse text messages about his late meetings, of the space beside me in the car remaining empty because he'd suddenly remembered urgent appointments.
He's avoiding me, I thought, and the realization sat in my stomach like a stone. He knows. He knows I feel something, and now he's running.
The water shocked me even through the borrowed wetsuit. I focused on my breathing—in for four counts, hold for four, out for four, the way Étienne had taught me to manage pre-competition nerves, back when he still looked at me without that new wariness in his eyes. Standing on one leg in waist-deep water, I let the current force my core to engage, but instead of clearing my head the way training usually did, I kept thinking about the way his hand had trembled when he'd handed me my water bottle last night, the way he'd pulled back as if my fingers burned him.
I was so absorbed in my spiraling thoughts that I didn't notice the massive object floating nearby until a wave knocked me sideways. My arms windmilled, my balance vanished, and suddenly I was underwater, salt stinging my eyes. Panic flared—not rational fear, but the visceral terror that had lived in my chest since childhood, since the day Mama had walked out of that training hall in Sofia and left me sobbing on the floor. Drowning drowning drowning you're going to drown and no one will save you because you're not worth saving—
My hand shot out blindly and connected with what felt like a floating platform. Without thinking, I grabbed it and pulled myself up, my gymnast's reflexes taking over, muscle memory from thousands of hours overriding my rational brain. I scrambled onto the surface with desperate grace—
And then the platform moved.
Not moved—buckled. Because it wasn't a platform at all but a person. A person who was now bent double beneath me, making a startled choking sound as my full weight—fifty-one kilograms of muscle and terror—landed directly on the back of their neck. We went down together, my thighs clamped around what I now understood was someone's head, their hands flailing, both of us submerging in chaos.
Oh God oh God I'm killing someone I'm literally killing someone—
When we finally surfaced—when he finally surfaced, dragging me with him because I'd locked my legs around his neck and forgotten how to let go—I found myself face-to-face with a young man who looked like he'd just been attacked by a very small, very aggressive octopus. His dark hair was plastered to his skull, his eyes were streaming, and there was a red mark blooming across his cheekbone where my knee had apparently made contact. He was coughing and sputtering, one hand braced against my hip to keep us both afloat.
"I'm sorry," I gasped, still clinging to him, my fingers tangled in his hair because at some point I'd grabbed onto the nearest handhold and apparently decided never to let go. "I'm so sorry, I thought you were—I didn't mean to—oh God, your face—"
"It's okay," he wheezed, though his voice suggested it was very much not okay. "Just—could you maybe—your grip is—" He made a pained sound as I reflexively tightened my hold, my body still convinced we were drowning. "I'm not going to drop you. I promise. But I also can't breathe very well with you choking me."
I loosened my grip fractionally, though my hands stayed buried in his hair, and felt my face flame hot enough to evaporate the seawater dripping down my cheeks. "I panicked. I don't—I'm not good with water. Or with unexpected situations. Or with—" I cut myself off before I could add abandonment or the possibility of drowning alone. "I'm just sorry. Are you hurt?"
"Only my dignity," he said, and there was amusement in his voice now, the kind of shock that comes from having a stranger literally drop on your head. He had the kind of face that belonged in a cologne advertisement, all sharp angles and symmetrical features, with eyes the color of strong coffee and a smile that was starting to break through despite the circumstances. He was older than me but not by much, maybe twenty-three or twenty-four, with the easy confidence of someone who'd never had to worry about being abandoned in a training hall. "Though I have to say, that's the most creative pickup technique I've ever experienced. Do you often throw yourself at strange men in the ocean?"
"Only when they're pretending to be flotation devices," I shot back, and felt some of my panic recede. My hands were still in his hair—softer than it looked, I noticed—and his hand was still on my hip, warm even through the wetsuit. "You should label yourself better. 'Caution: Not a Life Raft' or something."
"I'll add it to my surfboard," he promised, maneuvering us toward shore with practiced ease. "Right next to 'Beware of Flying Gymnasts.'" He paused, glancing at me with sudden recognition. "You are a gymnast, right? That's not just an assumption based on the fact that you climbed me like a tree?"
I nodded, finally releasing his hair as my feet touched sand. "Rhythmic gymnastics. How did you know?"
"The way you moved," he said simply, running his free hand through his wet hair. "That wasn't just someone scrambling for safety. That was someone whose body knows exactly how to mount an apparatus, even when that apparatus is an unsuspecting person." He grinned. "I'm Maxime Delacroix, by the way. Étienne's nephew—well, his mother's sister's son, technically, but we just say nephew."
The name hit me like a physical blow. Maxime. Étienne's nephew. The one Isabelle occasionally mentioned with that particular tone mothers get when discussing eligible young men, the one who'd been studying abroad and had only recently returned to Paris. I'd seen him once, briefly, at a family gathering—a distant figure across a crowded room, never close enough for an introduction.
Of course, I thought with a hysterical urge to laugh. Of course the first boy I accidentally assault turns out to be related to Étienne. Because my life is apparently a badly written romantic comedy.