Chapter 182
Chapter 182
Elena
I woke to the insistent buzz of my phone alarm, my hand fumbling across the nightstand to silence it. When my eyes finally focused on the screen, my heart lurched—8:00 AM. Training started at 8:20, and the facility was at least fifteen minutes away even without traffic.
"Merde," I breathed, sitting up so quickly the room spun. My mind immediately conjured Michel's face, that particular expression he reserved for lateness—lips pressed thin, eyes narrowed with disappointment that cut deeper than any raised voice. In five years under his coaching, I had never been late. Not once.
But as I swung my legs out of bed, something on the nightstand caught my eye. My training clothes—leotard, warm-up jacket, compression tights—were folded with military precision, each crease sharp enough to cut. Beside them sat a glass of water with a slice of lemon floating at the perfect temperature.
Étienne.
The realization spread through my chest like warmth. He had been in my room while I slept, had laid out everything I would need, had thought of the lemon water because he knew I couldn't train on an empty stomach but often felt nauseous in the mornings.
I grabbed my phone, half-expecting a terse message about my oversleeping. Instead, I found a single text sent at 6:47 AM: Michel knows about the muscle spasm. Take your time. I'll have breakfast ready.
---
When I emerged from my bedroom seven minutes later—dressed, face washed, hair pulled into a hasty bun—I found Étienne exactly where I somehow knew he would be: at the dining table, laptop open, already deep in whatever corporate crisis required his attention at this ungodly hour on a Saturday. He was dressed in charcoal slacks and a crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows.
He glanced up as I approached, and something in his expression softened. "Good morning."
"You told Michel I had a muscle spasm?" The words came out more accusatory than I'd intended.
"I emailed him at six." Étienne's tone was matter-of-fact as he closed his laptop. "He agreed you could arrive thirty minutes late."
I sank into the chair across from him. "How did you know I'd oversleep?"
"Because you didn't truly fall asleep until after one," he said, and there was no judgment in his voice, only statement of fact. "I heard you turning over. Your breathing didn't settle until 1:17."
The precision of it should have been unsettling. Instead, I found myself caught between embarrassment and something dangerously close to wonder. He had been listening for me, monitoring my rest with that characteristic exactness that bordered on obsessive.
"I didn't mean to keep you awake," I managed.
"You didn't." He stood, moving toward the kitchen. "I was already up."
---
When he returned, he carried a tray that might as well have been curated by a nutritionist—which, knowing Étienne, it probably had been. Greek yogurt topped with precisely measured blueberries and a drizzle of honey. Two slices of whole wheat toast, still warm. Three egg whites, not a trace of yolk. Half an avocado, already sliced, with a tiny dish of sea salt on the side.
He set it before me with care. "You have fifteen minutes to eat. Your training bag is by the door—I checked the ribbon, no tangles. The hoop grip was coming loose, so I re-taped it."
I stared at the meal, at the evidence of how thoroughly he had anticipated my needs, and felt something crack open in my chest. "You didn't have to do all this..."
"I know." He settled back into his chair, and when our eyes met, there was something raw and undefended in his gaze that he quickly shuttered. "But I wanted to."
The words hung between us, weighted with meanings neither of us was quite ready to name. I picked up my fork and began to eat while he watched with an intensity that should have made me self-conscious but instead felt oddly grounding.
---
By 8:25, I was dressed in my training gear, bag slung over my shoulder, standing at the door while Étienne held his car keys. We were halfway to his car when I stopped, the words tumbling out before I could second-guess them. "Living with you... I mean, knowing you're just in the next room... I sleep better than I have in years. Better than when I lived alone."
He went very still, his hand frozen on the car door handle. When he turned to look at me, there was something predatory in the precision of his focus. "So you're suggesting I should make this arrangement permanent?"
Heat flooded my face, but I refused to look away. "If you don't mind."
For a long moment, he said nothing, just studied me with those dark eyes. Then, so quietly I almost missed it: "I don't mind at all."
---
The drive to the training facility should have been awkward—two people who had crossed an irrevocable line the night before, now trapped in the intimate space of a car. But somehow it wasn't. Étienne drove with his characteristic precision while I found myself studying his profile: the strong line of his jaw, the slight tension around his eyes that suggested he'd slept as poorly as I had, the way his fingers drummed an unconscious rhythm against the steering wheel at red lights.
"You know what I realized?" I said suddenly. "Before I moved out of the manor, I told myself it was because I needed independence. That I was ready to stand on my own."
His fingers stilled on the wheel. "And now?"
"Now I think I was lying to myself." I turned to face him more fully. "I didn't leave because I didn't need you anymore. I left because I needed to know... if what I felt was real. If it would still be there when we weren't living in the same house."
At the next red light, he turned to look at me, and something in his expression made my heart stutter. "And?"
"And it's worse," I admitted. "Not seeing you every day, not having you there—it made me realize how much space you take up in my life. How much I want you to take up that space."
The light changed, but for a long moment he didn't move, just held my gaze with an intensity that felt like a physical touch. Then a car honked behind us, and he had to return his attention to the road, but I saw his knuckles whiten on the steering wheel.
"Elena." My name came out rough. "You can't say things like that to me."
"Why not?"
"Because it makes me want things I have no right to want."