Chapter 55 FRENCH CONJUGATIONS — PART ONE
POV: PIPER
The art studio at 4 AM belonged to nobody.
That was exactly why she came.
Not to paint. Not even really for the French workbook open on the drafting table in front of her. She came for the way the room wasn’t pretending or performing anything at that hour. No hierarchy. No audience. Just the sharp smell of turpentine and old paint, and the brass desk lamp casting a small, warm circle in all that dark.
Je suis. Tu es. Il est.
I am. You are. He is.
She wrote the conjugations in her neat handwriting and thought about Omar’s text still glowing on her phone. Sweet dreams, beautiful. Dream of our future together. She’d read it four times and hadn’t replied. Instead, she’d come here. Maybe it was honest. Or maybe just cowardly. She wasn’t sure which.
She was three lines into the subjunctive when the door opened.
George filled the doorway like he owned it. Like the space had been waiting for him.
White dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, top buttons undone, dark hair doing that thing it did. His eyes landed on her French workbook, her oversized sweatshirt, her bare feet resting on the stool’s rungs. Then he smiled, slow and easy.
“Conjugating verbs after curfew, Miss Abbott.”
He stepped inside and let the door close behind him.
“How tragic.”
Her pen slipped from her fingers.
She didn’t pick it up.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
He moved around the space the way he always did, unhurried, touching the edge of an easel, the back of a stool, like he was taking inventory of everything. Then his eyes found her again.
“Stress suits you,” he said.
She wished she’d worn real clothes.
She didn’t move.
“It’s not stress.” Her voice caught, breathless. She heard it and couldn’t fix it. “This is just how I cope.”
“Piper Abbott,” he said, pulling a stool to the other side of the drafting table and sitting down like she’d invited him, “the girl who always knows exactly what she should want.”
“That’s not—”
“No?” He leaned forward on his forearms. “You’ve never wanted something you weren’t supposed to have?”
Her throat tightened.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she said.
“But you are.”
He reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair back behind her ear. The touch was light, careful, and she felt it everywhere it wasn’t.
“Omar loves you,” he said, like he was stating a fact about the weather. “Safe, devoted Omar. He brings you flowers and asks permission. He sees the girl he wants you to be—perfectly good, perfectly still, a china doll he’s terrified of breaking.”
“Don’t,” she said, but her voice had lost its sharp edges.
“When was the last time he asked what you wanted?” He didn’t move closer. He didn’t have to. “When did he look at you and see someone worth the risk?”
She didn’t answer.
His hand covered hers on the table.
Just that. The warmth of it.
“This isn’t about him,” George said quietly. “It’s not about your mama’s rules or what good girls do or what anyone expects. It’s just you. And what you actually want. For once.”
The lamp made its small, warm circle.
Outside, the cold wind moved through the trees.
She looked down at his hand over hers.
She thought about Omar’s text.
She thought about the greenhouse and the flower that only bloomed for one night and how she knew it.
She thought about the French workbook and the conjugations and je suis—I am—and what she actually was underneath all the pretending.
Then she stopped thinking.