What if we fall again? Book 4

“Louis,” the deep, calm voice said. “Do you know what today marks?”

Louis glanced at his watch. He knew the date without looking, but he did it anyway.

“Yup. May eighth, 2019. It marks a Wednesday.”

The voice remained calm despite Louis’ sarcasm. He had gotten used to it over the last two years. Louis supposed anyone who voluntarily chose to spend this much time listening to his shit eventually developed remarkable patience.

“And perhaps there is something else that makes today significant?”

Louis looked away. “Yes. Two years ago today, we started therapy because I tried to end my life. Happy now?”

“Do you feel you have made progress since then?”

“I am still here, yes? I would call that progress.”

“Louis.”

“I am sorry.” He sighed and rubbed his palms over his jeans. Apparently, two years of therapy still hadn’t managed to make him less of an asshole. “Yes, sir. Things have gotten better. Not easier. Different. But I am going on. Still. Every day. Fewer panic attacks. Less self-hatred. Less talking myself down. I eat. I sleep most nights. I don’t drink until I pass out anymore. So yes. Progress.”

“Good. I am happy to hear that.” The therapist watched him for another moment. “Do you also know what else today marks?”

Louis frowned. This time, he genuinely had no idea. “Nope. I am afraid I do not.”

“It is our last scheduled session.”

Louis stared at him. “Oh, is it?”

“Do you think you will be okay from here?” the man continued. “Because if you don’t, we can extend our work. Ending regular sessions does not mean this door closes. You can always reach out, and we can continue if you feel you need the support.”

Louis just sat there. He needed a minute to process.

A lot had happened in two years, even if parts of his life barely seemed to have moved at all.

He still lived at home. His childhood room was still his room, though over time he had taken down everything that reminded him too directly of Jamie. The photographs. The little notes. Ticket stubs. Things from California and Paris. Eventually, he had packed all of it into an old shoebox and asked his parents to keep it in their bedroom.

Close enough that he knew it still existed. Far enough away that he couldn’t reach for it at three in the morning.

“Have you stopped following Jamie’s career?” his therapist asked. “Stopped collecting everything you can find?”

Louis didn’t answer right away.

He wanted to be honest. Therapy only worked if he was honest. He knew that by now. But this was his. One thing he didn’t want anyone touching.

“Yes.” The lie came remarkably easily.

“Good. You have to allow yourself to let go, Louis. Moving forward does not mean what happened becomes meaningless.”

I know.

They sat quietly for a while.

This man had seen almost every version of Louis that existed. The furious one. The broken one. The drunk one. The one who barely spoke for entire sessions. The one who talked so fast nobody could stop him. He had witnessed the periods when Louis wrote for days and nights, surviving on cigarettes and coffee while filling page after page because getting the words out of his head was the only way he knew to quiet them.

Jamie had filled those pages.

Their story. Their lives. Everything they had been given and everything they had been denied. Every touch Louis remembered. Every stupid argument. Paris. Montecito. Football games. Christmas. New Year’s Eve. The mountains. The pier. The hospital.

Book after book.

Perhaps it had started as a diary. By the time Louis realized what he was writing, it had become a love confession to someone who would never read it.

“Before you go, remind me what you do when things become overwhelming.”

Louis almost rolled his eyes but stopped himself.

“The five-four-three-two-one grounding thing.”

“The five-four-three-two-one grounding technique,” the therapist corrected patiently.

“Yes, that thing.” Louis sighed. “Five things I can see. Four things I can touch or feel. Three things I can hear. Two things I can smell. One thing I can taste.”

“And?”

“Breathe. Stay where I am. Remind myself that what I am feeling will pass.”

“Good.”

Louis had learned that because he’d had to.

He was no longer sleeping with strangers simply because another body was better than being alone. He no longer deliberately searched for pain to replace the kind he couldn’t control. He drank sometimes, smoked more than he should and remained perfectly capable of making questionable decisions, but there was a difference between living imperfectly and actively destroying himself.

A year after leaving Jacques, they had met for dinner.

A proper fine-dining evening. Jacques had looked wonderful. Healthy. Happy. He had met someone, a good man he was genuinely in love with, and Louis had been surprised by how sincerely happy that made him.

Jacques deserved happiness.

So do you, Jacques had told him.

Louis had smiled. A convincing smile, too. He had practiced those.

I am.

He hadn’t been. Perhaps he never would be happy in the way he once had been, but therapy had taught him that happiness didn’t have to return in the same shape. Sometimes it was as little as wanting to see tomorrow. Most days, Louis did.

He remembered very little of the night he had almost made certain there would be no tomorrow. Only fragments. His childhood room. Jamie’s face in photographs. Then, somewhere between losing consciousness and waking again, Jamie himself.

Blond hair. Blue eyes. His hand reaching for Louis. Louis had tried to take it. He had wanted to. Then Jamie had disappeared, and Louis had opened his eyes beneath hospital lights instead.

His parents had been there. Nobody else.

Once, that would have devastated him. Now Louis understood that having only his parents there was not the same as having nobody.

They had been enough.

Recovery had been ugly. There was nothing poetic about it. Louis’ body had needed time. His mind had needed longer. He had begun treatment for his eating disorder and slowly learned to stop treating food as another enemy. When he was physically strong enough, he started going to the gym. Eventually, he cut his curls short and kept them that way.

The boy Jamie had loved had worn his curls longer. Louis couldn’t become someone else, but he could at least look into the mirror without seeing precisely the same eighteen-year-old who had arrived in California. The gym had begun paying off, too. He was still slender, still soft-featured, still unmistakably Louis, but there was more definition to his body now. Still a French girl, he supposed. Just a slightly more trained French girl.

His appearance had never stopped attracting attention. Men. Women. Older. Younger. They flirted with him at the restaurant, on the Metro, in cafés, sometimes shamelessly. Louis flirted back when he felt like it. He simply never let anyone get close.

After Jacques, he had stayed away from relationships. He had seen what his inability to let go of Jamie had done to a good man, and Louis refused to do that to somebody else. The strangers stopped, too. His hand and memories worked perfectly well when necessary. At this point, his balls would probably fall off from lack of use, but Louis couldn’t find it in himself to care. What the fuck did he need them for anyway?

When the session finally ended, Louis stopped at the door and looked back. “Thank you.”

The therapist smiled. “You did the work, Louis.”

Louis gave a dismissive grunt. Some things therapy apparently couldn’t fix.

Outside, Paris greeted him with a warm May afternoon. Louis wore only a T-shirt and jeans. No jacket. No sweater. The trees were green, café terraces packed with people enjoying the weather. He walked slowly. There was no reason to hurry.

For a while, he simply enjoyed his city. Cups clinked against saucers. People talked over one another. Tourists stopped in the middle of pavements to photograph buildings Louis had walked past thousands of times. A couple kissed outside a boulangerie, completely oblivious to everyone around them. Once, seeing that would have hurt. Now Louis smiled and walked on.

And yes, over the last few weeks, he had checked less and less. Sterling announcements. Game results. Interviews. Statistics. Articles about the quarterback everyone seemed increasingly convinced would become one of the biggest names in American football.

Sometimes Jamie’s face still found Louis without him searching for it. A sports magazine in an international shop. A photograph online. A headline. The first time it happened, Louis had suffered a panic attack so severe his father nearly called an ambulance. Now he could look. Sometimes he even smiled back at the photograph. You are getting more beautiful by the day, mon amour. Then he moved on.

The restaurant was already filling when Louis arrived. He went upstairs through the back, changed into his work clothes and tied the apron around his still-slender waist.

Working for his parents had never been part of some grand plan. Yet for some ridiculous reason, he liked it. He liked the movement. The people. The familiarity. He liked hearing his father shout from the kitchen and his mother complain that Maurice was shouting. He liked knowing the regulars and watching tourists butcher the menu. It was simple. Safe. His.

Louis grabbed a handful of menus and stepped onto the terrace. For the next hour, he barely stopped moving. He took orders, carried coffee and wine, brought starters, cleared plates and flirted shamelessly with an elderly woman who informed him that if she were forty years younger, he would be in serious trouble.

“Madame, I am already frightened,” Louis told her solemnly.

She laughed and slapped his arm. Normal.

Louis stopped at the service station and took a long drink of water before collecting two empty glasses from a table.

“Monsieur? Um... excuse me.”

Louis stopped. The glasses remained in his hands. His body reacted before his mind managed to catch up. No. That voice. No fucking way.

He didn’t turn. Behind him, the man shifted.

“Um... do you have a table for one?”

French. He had asked in French. Of course he fucking had.

Louis’ heartbeat hammered against his ribs. No. No. No. No. A million fucking times no. His palms became damp. Heat rushed beneath his skin. The terrace blurred at the edges, voices melting into noise.

Five things you can see. He couldn’t see anything. Four things you can feel. The glasses. His apron. The ground beneath his shoes. His fucking heart trying to escape through his chest. Three things you can hear. Traffic. People talking. That voice. That fucking voice.

Louis slowly turned around.

He was taller. Or perhaps Louis had forgotten how enormous he was. His shoulders seemed broader than Louis remembered, his body unmistakably that of the elite athlete he had become. The blond hair was still there. Longer on top, pulled back in that familiar way Louis knew far too well.

And those eyes. Blue. People said blue eyes were cold. They had never seen James Alexander Montgomery.

Jamie looked directly at him. No recognition. Nothing. Just the polite, slightly uncertain expression of a man waiting for a waiter to tell him whether there was an available table.

Two years. Two fucking years of therapy. Of learning how to breathe again. Of teaching himself to live in a world where Jamie Montgomery existed somewhere far away from him. And now Jamie was standing three meters away. In Paris. In his parents’ restaurant.

Louis forgot every grounding technique he had ever learned. The glasses shifted dangerously in his hands.

“James.”