Chapter 8
Elena
"Elena," I managed, forcing my voice to stay steady. "Elena Petrova. I'm—" Your uncle's ward. The girl living in his house. The person he's been avoiding because I might have accidentally made him uncomfortable by existing too intensely in his presence. "I'm staying with your family right now. While I train."
"I know," Maxime said, and something in his expression shifted—awareness, as if he'd just placed me in some mental file. "I saw you at my grandmother's birthday last year. You were wearing this blue dress, and you barely said anything all night, just stood next to Étienne looking like you wanted to disappear into the wallpaper." His smile gentled. "I wanted to come say hello, but you left early, and then I went back to America for my exchange program, and—" He stopped, seeming to realize he was rambling, and laughed. "Sorry. I'm making this weird. I just mean I've wanted to meet you properly for a while now, and I didn't think it would happen via assault."
There was something disarming about his honesty, about the way he admitted to noticing me without making it sound predatory or strange, just... interested. Like I was someone worth paying attention to, not because I was Étienne's responsibility or because I needed protecting, but because I was myself.
When was the last time someone looked at me like that? I wondered. Like I was just Elena, not a problem to be solved or a duty to be fulfilled?
"I'm sorry about your face," I said again, gesturing to the red mark that was definitely going to bruise. "And your neck. And your... dignity, apparently."
"Worth it," he said cheerfully, wading back to retrieve his surfboard. "I've been hit by worse. Last summer in Biarritz, my friend's board clocked me right in the temple. Gave me a concussion and the best story of my life." He tucked the board under his arm and turned back to me, looking like he'd just stepped out of one of those Instagram posts Chloé was always showing me. "Are you okay, though? You seemed pretty freaked out when you first grabbed me."
I considered lying, but there was something about the way he asked—genuine concern without pity—that made me tell the truth. "I don't like feeling out of control," I admitted, wrapping my arms around myself. "In the water, on land, anywhere. I like knowing where my body is in space, knowing what's going to happen next. And when I don't..." I trailed off, not sure how to explain the panic that lived just beneath my skin.
"That makes sense," Maxime said, and he didn't try to tell me I was being irrational or that I should just relax, the way Mama always had. "Gymnastics is all about control, right? Every movement planned and practiced and perfect. It must be terrifying when something breaks that pattern."
"It is," I said quietly, surprised by how much I wanted him to understand. "It really is."
We stood there for a moment, and I felt something shift—not the crackling tension I'd felt with Étienne across the dinner table, not the suffocating weight of being watched and measured, but something lighter, easier. Like maybe I could be just Elena here, not Étienne's ward or Nadia's daughter or the girl who had to be perfect to deserve love, but simply myself.
Is this what normal feels like? I thought, and the question made my chest ache. Is this what it's like to talk to someone without feeling like you're walking through a minefield?
"So," Maxime said, breaking the silence with a grin that was pure mischief, "since you've already physically assaulted me, does that mean we're friends now? Because I feel like there should be some kind of relationship progression after someone uses your head as a mounting apparatus."
I laughed, startled and genuine, the sound foreign in my own ears after days of careful politeness. "I think assault definitely qualifies as an icebreaker, yes."
"Excellent," he said, pulling out his phone and holding it out to me. "Then give me your number so I can document this friendship properly. And also so I can send you the medical bills if this bruise gets worse."
"You're not going to let me forget this, are you?" I asked, but I was already taking the phone, already typing in my number with fingers that had finally stopped shaking.
"Never," he promised. "This is going to be my favorite story for years. 'How did you meet Elena Petrova?' 'Oh, she dropped on me from the sky like a very athletic bird of prey.' It's perfect."
I handed back his phone, and he immediately sent me a text—a surfboard emoji followed by a dizzy face emoji and exclamation points that made me laugh again. When I looked up, he was watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read, something warm and pleased.
"I'm glad I decided to come to the beach today," he said. "Even if it did result in head trauma."
"I'm glad too," I admitted, and realized I meant it. For the first time in days, I didn't feel like I was walking on eggshells. I just felt... light.
But you shouldn't feel this way, a voice whispered in the back of my mind, sounding suspiciously like Mama. You shouldn't be this comfortable with someone you just met. What would Étienne think?
I shoved the thought away viciously. I'm allowed to have friends. I'm allowed to talk to boys. I'm allowed to exist outside of Étienne's orbit without it meaning something terrible.
"Where's the fun in that?" Maxime countered when I suggested we meet in a less violent way next time, but his smile was soft. When he suggested we exchange Instagram handles before he had to leave—"My friends are waiting at the bar, and if I don't show up soon they're going to assume I drowned"—I found myself agreeing without the usual anxiety.
Because Maxime wasn't Étienne. He didn't look at me like I was something fragile that might shatter, didn't measure every word before speaking, didn't make me feel like my very existence was a problem that needed solving. He just looked at me like I was a girl he'd met on a beach, a girl who'd accidentally assaulted him and then made him laugh.
And God help me, I want this, I thought as I watched him jog up the beach stairs. I want this lightness, this ease, this feeling of being twenty years old and standing in the sun with a boy who thinks I'm interesting rather than complicated.
My phone buzzed almost immediately—a message from Maxime, a photo of himself making an exaggeratedly wounded face with the caption Evidence for the police report. I laughed and sent back the eye-roll emoji, and then, because Chloé had been teaching me how normal twenty-year-olds communicated, I added: You'll survive. Gymnasts have very precise aim. If I'd wanted to actually hurt you, you'd know.
His response came seconds later: Terrifying and beautiful. I like it.
I stared at that message for a long moment, at the casual flirtation that would have made Étienne's jaw tighten if he'd seen it, and felt a complicated tangle of emotions I didn't want to examine too closely. Relief that someone found me interesting rather than burdensome. Guilt that I was enjoying this attention when Étienne had been so carefully distant.
And underneath it all, a small, defiant spark of something that might have been anger—anger that I had to feel guilty at all, that making a friend felt like a betrayal, that I couldn't even have a normal interaction with someone my own age without it becoming complicated by all the unspoken things between Étienne and me.
Stop it, I told myself firmly, shoving the phone into my bag. You're allowed to have friends.