A Moment Captured🌷 Where moments whisper💚

“He isn’t walking from Paris, mon cœur.” You looked back at him.

“J’sais.”

“He’ll arrive.”

“I know that too.” His mouth moved faintly against the rim of the cup.

“You’re making Aimé nervous, bébé.” Aimé remained entirely asleep against you, one cheek pressed into the fabric of your shirt, his mouth open slightly beneath your collarbone.

“He looks nervous.”

“Exactly.” You narrowed your eyes at him, but the lights of a car moved between the trees before you could answer, pale through the rain, disappearing once behind the curve of the drive and then returning closer. Your hand stopped on Aimé’s back.

Kylian saw it. He did not tease you again. The first car passed toward the side of the house, security stepping out beneath dark umbrellas, and then the Mercedes came slowly through the gates behind it, rain gliding over the black roof as it followed the gravel around toward the entrance. You stayed where you were for another second, Aimé warm and heavy against your chest, looking through the window at the shape moving behind the glass.

Mattou.

Seventeen, long-legged and slightly folded into himself as he climbed from the car, one hand holding the hood of his jacket forward against the rain while the driver opened the boot behind him. There were two bags. Then a third. Kylian came to stand beside you.

“He’s staying four days?”

“I don’t know what he packed.”

“Paris, apparently.” You smiled despite yourself, your throat tightening at the same time, and Kylian’s palm settled briefly against the back of your neck before he went to open the door.

Cold air entered first, carrying rain and wet gravel into the warmth of the hall, and then Matthieu appeared behind an unnecessarily large suitcase, his jacket damp across the shoulders, his hair flattened at the front where the hood had pressed against it. Kylian took the handle before Mattou could drag it over the threshold.

“Ça va?”

“Oui. Merci.” Mattou’s answer came a little too quickly, his posture straightening almost imperceptibly as Kylian reached for the second bag too, the old awareness still there beneath the familiarity, quieter than it had once been but not entirely gone. Kylian did not make him sit inside it. He only bumped his shoulder lightly against Mattou’s as he passed and carried the luggage toward the stairs.

“What did you bring?” Mattou glanced at the bags, then at you.

“Des vêtements.”

“For an entire season?”

“I didn’t know if it was cold here.” You looked pointedly at the thin jacket he had arrived in.

“Clearly.” His mouth pulled to one side, already preparing an answer, but then Aimé shifted against your chest.

It was barely a movement, one small hand pressing loose and sleepy against you, his face turning toward the room before settling again, but Mattou’s attention went to him immediately. The answer disappeared. He had seen photographs.

Too many, probably, the same face asleep beneath different blankets, Aimé against Kylian’s chest, Aimé curled beneath your chin, Aimé looking faintly offended during his bath. Mattou had reacted to all of them properly, hearting some, saving others without telling you, asking once whether babies were supposed to look so serious. But he had never been close enough to hear him breathe. Mattou came farther into the room, more slowly now, leaving a faint trail of rain beneath his shoes until Céline appeared behind him with a cloth and clicked her tongue.

“Les chaussures, Matthieu.” He looked down.

“Pardon.”

“Pas à moi. Au sol.” You laughed softly as he bent to pull them off, nearly losing his balance when one heel caught, one hand reaching blindly for the wall while Céline watched without helping him. By the time he straightened again, damp socks against the warm stone, some of the stiffness had left his shoulders. He looked at Aimé once more.

“Is he asleep?”

“For now.” Mattou nodded as though this was information he needed to consider carefully. Then he came close enough that the sleeve of his jacket brushed your arm, his eyes moving over the baby’s face without touching him, taking in the small closed eyelids, the soft crease beneath his cheek, the dark hair lying flat where your fingers had been smoothing it.

For a while, he said nothing. You let him look.

“He’s smaller than the photos,” he said eventually.

“That’s how photos work sometimes.”

“No, but…” His brow drew together, still studying Aimé. “J’sais pas. I thought he was bigger.”

“He’s a baby, Mattou.”

“I know he’s a baby.” The indignation stayed quiet because Mattou still seemed afraid of waking him, his voice dropping until the words were almost shaped rather than spoken. “He’s your baby.” Aimé’s fingers opened against your shirt. Mattou’s gaze followed them.

“You can touch him.”

“I know.” But he did not. Not immediately. He slipped his wet jacket from his shoulders instead, passing it toward Céline without looking and then rubbing his palms together, once, twice, warming them before he brought one hand near Aimé’s back. Even then, he paused.

“D’accord. Là?”

“Anywhere. He won’t break.” Mattou gave you a doubtful look.

“You say that because he’s yours.”

“And because he won’t.” His fingertips settled at last between Aimé’s shoulder blades, so lightly that the fabric of his sleepsuit barely moved beneath them. Aimé drew in a deeper breath, his body rising against your chest, and Mattou’s hand lifted at once.

“He moved.”

“He breathes sometimes.”

“T’es chiante,” Matou muttered, already fighting the little pull at the corner of his mouth. Your smile widened, but Mattou was already touching him again, more certain this time, his palm resting gently over the small curve of Aimé’s back. Something in his face quieted. Not surprise exactly. Recognition. The strange, slow adjustment of finding your sister still inside the person standing in front of you, while understanding that something enormous had happened to her anyway. His eyes lifted to yours.

“Ça va?” The question was simple enough that it took you a second to hear everything inside it. You nodded.

“Oui.” Mattou looked at you for another moment, checking in the private way younger brothers did when they had not yet learned how to ask twice, and then his gaze dropped back to Aimé.

“He looks a bit like you.”

“A little?”

“Quand il dort.” You stared at him.

“What does that mean?” Mattou’s mouth twitched, pleased with himself now.

“When he wakes up, c’est Kylian.” From behind him, Kylian gave a quiet sound of agreement as he returned to the room, and Mattou glanced over his shoulder before looking back at the baby, one hand still spread carefully over Aimé’s back as though he had forgotten it was there.

“You want to hold him, bro?” Kylian asked. Mattou went still. His eyes moved from Kylian to you, then down to Aimé.

“Maintenant?”

“No, next week,” you murmured. He ignored you.

“I’ve never…”

“I know.” Mattou rubbed his palms together once more, though they were already warm, then held his arms out with an uncertainty that made something ache softly beneath your ribs.

“Comme ça?” You adjusted them for him, one hand beneath his elbow, the other turning his wrist until there was somewhere for Aimé’s head to rest, and only then did you lift your son from your chest. Mattou’s whole body tightened as you lowered Aimé into his arms. You eased him into Mattou’s arms carefully, guiding one hand beneath his neck, adjusting the other under the blanket, and the moment Aimé’s weight settled fully against him, all the humor left your brother’s face.

“Relaxe.”

“I am relaxed.”

“You’re not breathing.”

“I am.”

“You’re barely breathing.”

“Arrête.” But he smiled as he said it, small and helpless, his gaze fixed on the weight settling against him. Aimé stirred once, his forehead creasing, one fist drawing toward his mouth before he went soft again beneath Mattou’s chin. Mattou looked down at him for a long time. Then, very quietly, as though the observation belonged only to himself, he said,

“Ah ouais.” Your hand stayed beneath his arm for another second, even after you knew he had him.

“Ça va?” Mattou nodded without looking up.

“Oui.” His thumb moved tentatively over Aimé’s sleeve.

“C’est Aimé.” Mattou bent his head closer, his voice hardly more than breath now. 

“Salut, petit. Mattou smiled down at him immediately, helplessly, the expression so familiar it made your chest hurt, because for one brief second, one impossible little second beneath the kitchen lamps with rain moving softly against the glass, he looked exactly like you when you looked at Aimé, open and undone and trying not to let love show too obviously on his face, failing completely.

—

Within a few days Aimé had begun to expect Mattou, his head turning when your brother’s voice entered a room, his legs beginning their slow, excited movement whenever Mattou bent over the blanket and said his name. You found them together throughout the house, Mattou sunk into the corner of the sofa with his schoolwork abandoned beside him and Aimé asleep across his chest, or standing at the kitchen window while he explained some grievance from school with complete seriousness, speaking to the baby as though Aimé had arrived halfway through a conversation and would understand eventually if he continued long enough.

Paris had entered the château with him, through wet trainers beside the radiator, a charger forever disappearing, his schoolbag against the dining chair, and a voice Aimé already seemed to know.

That afternoon you had left only to carry two cups back into the kitchen, the sitting room warm enough that the windows had begun to cloud at their lower edges, November rain slipping patiently over the glass while the trees beyond the terrace bent silver beneath the wind, and when you returned with refilled drinks balanced carefully in your hands, you stopped just before the doorway because Aimé had woken in your absence and Mattou had not called for you.

Your brother sat deep in the sofa with Aimé resting along his thighs, the baby’s head supported in the crook of one arm, one tiny foot free from the blanket where Mattou’s fingers had apparently failed to tuck it back in, and Aimé was looking past him toward the doorway, eyes wide and serious, his mouth opening around a small searching sound that made Mattou turn his head in the same direction.

“Oui,” he whispered, following the baby’s gaze before he had seen you standing there. “C’est maman.” Aimé moved at the word, arms shifting against the blanket, his whole little body responding before his eyes had properly found you, and Mattou looked back down at him with the faintest smile, his face softened by the golden light from the lamp beside the sofa.

“You’re already looking for her?” He murmured, adjusting the blanket near Aimé’s shoulder with the slow concentration he had learned from watching you.  “She’s right in the kitchen.” Aimé made another small sound, quieter this time, his eyes still fixed somewhere beyond Mattou’s shoulder, and your brother brought one finger close enough for the baby’s hand to close around it, waiting until the tiny grip had settled before he spoke again.

“She’s the best, isn’t she?” The words were so simple, offered without the slightest knowledge that you were listening, that something inside you softened almost painfully, the cups still warm between your palms while you watched your little brother study your son’s face as though the answer might appear there. Aimé blinked up at him. Mattou’s thumb moved once over the back of the baby’s hand.

“Oui,” he decided for him, voice dropping further. “J’sais.” There was a silence after that, not empty, only filled by the rain and the quiet breath of the fire, by Aimé’s fingers opening and closing around Mattou’s, by the low television light moving over the rug from a match nobody had remembered to turn off, and you thought he might stop speaking, but Mattou leaned a little closer, his forehead nearly above Aimé’s, and continued as though the baby had asked something.

“I never liked it when she left, either.” Your breath caught so softly that neither of them heard. Mattou did not make the admission larger than it was, did not explain university or the quiet of your mother’s apartment after you left or any of the years in which the two of you had learned how to miss each other without speaking about it properly, he only looked toward the doorway once more and then back at Aimé, his fingers still caught in the baby’s hand.

“But she comes back,” he murmured. “You see?” Aimé’s gaze found you then, properly this time, his arms beginning to move beneath the blanket as recognition reached him in pieces, your shape, your voice when you whispered his name, the cups being set carefully on the table before you crossed the room, and Mattou smiled down at him with quiet satisfaction, as though he had proved something important.

“Voilà,” he said. “Maman.” You came to the sofa slowly, one hand moving first to Aimé’s hair, your fingers passing over the soft dark warmth of it while his eyes stayed fixed on your face, his mouth pulling briefly into the beginning of that small, milk-sweet expression that still seemed too fragile to call a smile, and then your hand slipped beneath the blanket until it found Mattou’s wrist, resting there for a moment because you did not know how to touch what he had said directly without frightening it away.

“He was looking for you,” Mattou murmured, glancing up at you, his expression already closing slightly with the embarrassment of being overheard.

“I heard.” His eyes dropped immediately to Aimé. 

“How much?” You lowered yourself beside him, the sofa dipping until your shoulder rested near his, close enough that Aimé lay between the two of you beneath the blanket, his face turning first toward you and then, almost at once, back toward Mattou as though he needed to make certain neither person had vanished while he attended to the other.

“Enough,” you whispered. Mattou pressed his lips together, his gaze dropping immediately to Aimé as the embarrassment returned in the slight tightening of his shoulders, but you did not tease him, did not ask him to repeat anything or make the tenderness perform now that it had been seen, you only left your hand over his wrist beneath the blanket while your other traced the round of Aimé’s cheek, and for a while the three of you sat without speaking, the warmth of the baby moving between your bodies, Mattou’s shoulder solid and familiar against yours, the rain making Provence disappear beyond the windows until the room seemed held outside time.

“J’suis là,” Mattou murmured, looking down at him. “C’est bon.” You watched Aimé’s eyelids begin to lower, his mouth softening against the cotton while Mattou continued rubbing the small curve of his back, his own face becoming still with the responsibility of being trusted, and there it was, the thing you had been seeing throughout his visit without finding the right shape for it, not only the sweetness of your brother loving your son, but the comfort of him, the way Mattou had brought a piece of your first home into this one without making either feel threatened, Paris no longer waiting outside Provence as the life you had abandoned, but sitting beside you beneath a blanket, seventeen years old, too tall, holding Aimé with one careful hand and smelling faintly of rain and the soap from your mother’s apartment.

Outside, winter continued gathering itself across the hills, rain filling the shallow places in the terrace stone, mist lowering until the landscape disappeared completely, but inside the sitting room.

Mattou’s eyes drifted toward the shelf beside the fireplace after Aimé settled again, not with any real intention at first, only following the room the way he had been doing since he arrived, taking in the books stacked sideways, the little ceramic dish Céline used for matches, the candle Fayza preferred but Kylian never lit, and then his gaze caught on the frame half-hidden between them, easy enough to miss unless you already knew it was there, a photograph from October maybe, one of the terrace ones, Kylian standing beneath the pale afternoon light with Aimé asleep against his chest beneath a blanket, his face turned toward the hills, the baby tucked so deeply into him that neither of them seemed aware of anything beyond the warmth they were sharing.

Mattou reached for it automatically, careful with the baby still stretched across his lap, and tilted the frame toward himself until the tv’s reflection caught the glass, his smile coming slowly, not teasing now, not the bright, ridiculous grin he used when he wanted to make the room laugh, but something quieter, more observant, the expression of someone realizing that this version of Kylian existed here every day, not on television, not on shirts, not in the impossible distance of stadiums, but barefoot somewhere on the terrace with his son asleep against him.

“Ah,” he murmured. You looked up from Aimé’s face.   “C'est qui?” Mattou held the frame loosely near his knee, his thumb resting along the edge of it while his eyes moved from the photograph to the baby and back again. “C’est papa.”The word reached him before the photograph did. Aimé turned his head, searching at the familiar sound of papa. Mattou noticed too. His face changed.

“C’est papa, oui,” he whispered, tilting the photograph closer. Aimé’s gaze found the frame a second later, not precisely, not with recognition the way adults imagined recognition, but with hands opened, closed, opened again, reaching clumsily toward the glass as a tiny impatient sound escaped him. Your smile softened before you could stop it. God. There it was. The reaching. The little ache of absence inside a body too new to understand it.

“Oui, papa’s been gone one whole morning," you murmured, more to yourself than to Mattou, but Aimé kicked both legs against your thighs as if disagreeing with the idea that morning was not already too long. Mattou’s grin returned faintly, warmed by wonder now, and he adjusted the photograph with exaggerated seriousness. 

“Monsieur Aimé Mbappé,” he said, tapping very lightly near the baby in the picture, then moving his finger toward Kylian. “Et ça, c’est papa Mbappé.” Aimé let out a delighted squeal, folding forward with such sudden determination that Mattou jerked the frame back an inch and then laughed under his breath, helpless and startled, while you slid one hand across Aimé’s stomach to steady him, the other rising to his cheek, your fingers finding the warm softness there as the ache beneath your smile deepened.

“You miss him already, don’t you?” you whispered. “Do you miss Papa?” Aimé looked toward you immediately. The photograph vanished from his attention so completely it almost made you laugh, his entire body changing the second your voice lowered close to him, eyes finding your face, your mouth, your hands, the center of his little world returning to the person whose skin he knew before light, and when the smallest smile tugged at the corner of his mouth your whole body melted around him.

“Oh, mon petit lapin,” you breathed, leaning down until your nose brushed his, once, then again, your lips following over the round of his cheek, the soft place near his eye, his forehead, his temple, little kisses placed wherever he would let you reach while his hands grabbed at your sweater and his feet kicked against Mattou’s lap.

Aimé answered with a tiny burst of breath, not laughter yet, not quite, only a pleased little sound that opened around the beginning of one and disappeared before either of you could be certain, and you folded closer at once, your mouth pressing into his cheek while Mattou stared down at him as though the baby had just said something extraordinary.

“Oui, oui, I know,” as if he had told you something very important, as if all that joy had to be answered properly or it tmight disappear. Mattou went quiet across from you.

“Did he just laugh?” Mattou whispered. You smiled, your nose still tucked against Aimé’s warm cheek. 

“Almost.”

“Non,he laughed.”

“Mmnm we’ll know when he does.” Mattou looked down at Aimé, who was already working his mouth around another soft, breathy sound, as though the beginning of laughter were still somewhere inside him, waiting to be found, and your brother watched with the quiet concentration of someone who had been given a secret and did not want to frighten it away.

“Oui, voilà,” he murmured, his smile softening as Aimé settled beneath your hand. “Maman et papa make you happy, hein?” Aimé blinked up at him, his mouth still faintly curved from your kisses, and Mattou nodded as though the baby had answered properly. “J’comprends,” he whispered.

For one brief moment, the three of you seemed to exist in the room anyway, even with Kylian hundreds of kilometres away, the rain moving softly against the windows, firelight slipping over the photograph still held in Mattou’s hands, Aimé making those small, pleased breaths against your neck while you kissed him until his body wriggled warmly in your arms, and Kylian there inside the frame, silent beneath the October light, kept close by the familiar sound of papa and the little hands that had reached for him through the glass.

—

You hadn’t left Provence, even after Mattou had reminded you of Paris. Madeline arrived two days before Kylian’s birthday with frost caught in the shoulders of her coat and Paris still clinging to her in small, ordinary ways, the faint smell of the Métro on wool, a paper bag from the boulangerie near her apartment folded beneath one arm, her phone vibrating somewhere inside her handbag before she silenced it at the door, and for the first few minutes after Céline let her inside you could only stand there with Aimé against your chest and look at her, because it had been longer than you had allowed yourself to understand, long enough that the sight of somebody from your own life beneath the high stone archway made the house rearrange itself around you.

Madeline didn’t say anything sentimental. She dropped the bag by her feet, crossed the distance between you and folded her arms around both of you, careful of Aimé only after she had already pulled you close, her cheek cold against yours, one hand spreading over the back of your sweater as though she could feel through it how much of you had been held together by routine.

“Tu m’as manqué,” she murmured into your hair. Your throat closed so quickly that you laughed instead, a thin, embarrassed sound, and Madeline tightened her arms for one second before drawing back to look at the baby.

Aimé watched her from beneath your chin with the grave concentration he gave every new face now, his dark eyes moving slowly over her mouth, her earrings, the loose strands of hair damp against her cheek, and Madeline’s whole expression changed, not dramatically, not into the exaggerated softness people sometimes performed around babies, only quieting as she lifted one finger toward the small fist curled near your collar.

“Bonjour, toi,” she whispered. Aimé blinked. Madeline glanced at you. “He looks like he has something to say.”

“He usually does.”

“Is it kind?”

“Rarely.” Her mouth curved, and when Aimé’s lips shifted with it, the smallest social smile opening and disappearing across his face, Madeline went completely still.

“Did he…”

“He smiles now. Oui.” The words came more softly than you intended, pride and something sharper folded together inside them, and Madeline looked from Aimé to you, understanding enough not to celebrate too loudly.

“Since when?”

“A few weeks. Thought I sent you a picture too.”

“Kylian got to see?” You adjusted the blanket around Aimé’s side even though it had not moved. 

“The first one. Mmhm.” Madeline’s eyes stayed on you for a moment, then lowered again to the baby, her finger still caught lightly beneath his hand.

“A proper one?” You hesitated.

“He sees them when he’s here.” She did not answer that, and you were grateful for it. 

Kylian had not argued when you told him Madeline was coming, though you had felt the pause in him, the slight stillness of his hands at your waist while you stood together in the kitchen, Aimé asleep upstairs and rain beginning against the terrace doors, his eyes moving over your face as though he were trying to decide whether you had invited her because you wanted company or because something had already begun to break.

“Just Madeline,” you had said, hearing the apology in your own voice and disliking it immediately. Kylian’s mouth had softened.

“You don’t have to ask me.”

“I know.” But both of you knew you had been asking anyway, because for months the house had been held closed around the three of you, visitors measured, phones turned over, plans abandoned before they could become risks, and Kylian had said plainly that he did not want anyone near Aimé, did not want anyone near you, not because he wanted you alone but because the outside had always arrived with hands extended, with eyes, with questions, with the possibility that one careless photograph could take the life you had made and turn it into something public before either of you had learned how to stand inside it. He had kissed your forehead then, his palms warm at your hips.

“Invite her.” That had been all. By the time Madeline came, Kylian had already left for the match, his birthday beginning before dawn with a car at the side entrance, a half-packed bag near the kitchen table and Aimé awake against his shoulder because Kylian had lifted him from the crib even though the baby had not been crying, walking him slowly through the dark nursery while you watched from the doorway in one of his shirts.

He wouldn’t be back home that night. So you stood in the hall at five in the morning while Kylian kissed his son over and over, his mouth moving from Aimé’s forehead to his hair to the small warm cheek resting against his collar, murmuring promises about tomorrow as though a baby understood time.

“Papa comes back after,” he had whispered, his lips resting against Aimé’s temple. “You look after maman for me, oui?” Aimé had been barely awake, his fingers caught in the front of Kylian’s sweatshirt, and when Kylian finally passed him to you, the baby’s hand stayed closed around the fabric until the last possible second.

Now, with Madeline in the house, the absence became more visible somehow, not larger, only easier to see beside someone who had not grown accustomed to stepping around it. She noticed the cake in the kitchen first. You had made it the night before, simple because Kylian did not like anything too much, the dark chocolate glaze left imperfect along one side where Aimé had begun crying and you had abandoned the spatula, one candle still inside the paper packet near the fruit bowl because there was no reason to place it yet. Madeline stood beside the counter with Aimé in her arms, one hand supporting his head while he stared up at her with solemn suspicion.

“He comes back tomorrow?” she asked.

“Late.”

“After training?” You nodded, reaching for two wine glasses from the shelf. Madeline looked again at the cake. 

“So after his birthday.”

“He has the match.”

“I know.” There was no judgment in her voice, which made the room harder to stand inside.

You carried the glasses into the sitting room, and Madeline followed with Aimé tucked against her chest, the baby warm and serious beneath the pale blanket, one tiny hand resting open against the black wool of her jumper as though he had already accepted that she belonged to whatever world had delivered her to him.

Outside, winter had lowered itself over the hills without snow, only a cold mist moving through the hills, the terrace stones dark with water, the furthest rows of the garden disappearing each time the weather thickened, while inside the fire pressed warmth into the room and the television waited muted on the far wall, the pre-match coverage moving through images of the stadium, supporters, Kylian arriving in a dark coat with headphones over his ears, his face briefly filling the screen before the broadcast cut away.

Aimé shifted in Madeline’s arms at the sound of the outer door opening somewhere below. His head turned, awkward but immediate, eyes moving past her toward the hall. Madeline looked down at him.

A member of security crossed the entryway, speaking quietly to Céline, and the sound faded almost at once, but Aimé continued watching the doorway, his body held very still beneath the blanket as though he were waiting for the familiar shape that usually followed gravel beneath the tyres and footsteps across the old stone. Madeline’s eyes lifted to yours.

“Does he do that often?” You sat on the edge of the sofa, smoothing the fabric over your knee. 

“At this hour.”

“He expects Kylian?”

“He knows when the cars come.” Aimé made a small questioning sound, his mouth opening while his gaze remained fixed toward the hall, and Madeline lowered her face closer to his.

“Ce n’est pas papa,” she whispered. “Pas encore.” Your eyes closed for a second. It was not that Aimé understood where Kylian had gone, or how long a day was, or why the voice that usually moved through the house had been absent since morning, but he had begun to know patterns, the shift of the mattress before dawn, the sound of Kylian’s laugh entering a room, the way his father crossed directly toward him even when other people were speaking, and when those things did not happen he searched for them with his whole small body, turning toward doors, growing restless in the late afternoon, settling against you but continuing to watch over your shoulder. Madeline sat beside you, her thigh touching yours lightly.

“He notices.” You looked toward the television. 

“Oui.” On the screen Kylian was warming up beneath white stadium lights, moving easily through the cold, his birthday announced beneath his name as if it belonged to everyone watching, while here his son stared toward a doorway in Provence and waited for a sound that would not arrive until tomorrow night. Madeline adjusted Aimé higher against her shoulder and rubbed her hand slowly over his back.

“He’s getting big.”

“Too quickly.”

“He holds his head much better since last.”

“Sometimes.”

“And the smiles.” You nodded. “What else?” The question opened something you had been holding closed without realizing it.

“He follows me now,” you whispered. “Across the room. He watches Céline when she talks. He knows the bottle. He sleeps longer, sometimes, but then he wakes because he’s discovered he has hands and wants to look at them.” Your mouth curved despite yourself, your gaze falling to the tiny fist near Madeline’s shoulder. “Yesterday he rolled halfway onto his side and frightened himself.” Madeline smiled.

“Did Kylian see?” The smile left you slowly.

“Non.” Madeline’s hand continued moving over Aimé’s back. 

“Did you tell him?”

“Ouais, bien sûr.I sent him a message.”

“And?”

“He called when he could.” You heard the defensiveness enter your voice and hated that too, because Madeline had not accused him of anything, because Kylian called from corridors and cars and hotel rooms, because he left voice notes before training and came home whenever the schedule allowed, because the effort was real and the absence was still real beside it.

“He hates missing things,” you said more quietly.

“I know.”

“He isn’t choosing to.”

“I know that too.” The match began with the volume low, the stadium noise flattened by the television into something distant and unreal, and for a while neither of you spoke, Madeline holding Aimé while you sat close enough to keep one hand on his leg, your thumb moving beneath the blanket every time he stirred, the three of you watching Kylian run beneath the floodlights hundreds of kilometres away.

Aimé smiled again when Madeline touched the tip of his nose. Not the uncertain beginning from weeks before, but the open little expression he had learned now, his mouth widening, his eyes brightening with it, his whole face briefly transformed by recognition and pleasure, and Madeline laughed softly, pressing her lips together to keep the sound from startling him.

“Oh, you know you’re beautiful,” she murmured.  Aimé’s legs kicked beneath the blanket. You smiled too, but your eyes had already gone to the television, to Kylian turning after a pass, unaware of the exact second his son’s face had opened like that. Madeline saw. She looked at the screen, then back at you.

“When are you coming back?” The question came so plainly that at first you thought she meant upstairs, or to the kitchen, or to Paris for an appointment you had forgotten discussing.

“Back where?”

“Paris.” You looked at her. Aimé continued moving happily in her arms, one hand caught in the chain at her neck while the match murmured beyond him.

“I don’t know.” Madeline’s gaze remained steady. 

“Why are you still here?” Something in you tightened at once, not anger exactly, but the old instinct to defend the arrangement because it had kept Aimé safe, because Provence had held you through birth and fear and blood and the weeks afterward when the thought of Paris felt too bright, too public, too close to every version of yourself you had lost.

“It’s safer.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“For him?”

“For all of us.” Madeline did not disagree immediately. She shifted Aimé against her chest, turning him slightly when he began searching toward you, and his eyes found your face at once, his mouth softening as you touched his cheek.

“You’re alone,” she said. She tried for empathy, but it just was the harsh reality. 

“I’m not alone.”

“I know you have Céline. Your mother comes. Fayza comes.”

“Kylian comes.” Madeline’s expression did not change, but the words stayed between you long enough to become something else. You looked toward the television again. Kylian moved across the screen with the sharp, effortless speed that made the whole stadium rise around him, while the sitting room remained warm and quiet, Aimé making a small sound in Madeline’s arms because your hand had left his cheek.

“He comes home,” you said.

“From somewhere else.” Your eyes lifted to hers. Madeline’s voice stayed gentle. 

“Babe, you don’t live here.” The room seemed to settle around the sentence. The fire shifted. Rain slipped down the windows. On the screen Kylian disappeared briefly beyond the edge of the frame, and Aimé turned his head again toward the hall when footsteps passed somewhere outside the sitting room.

You looked at him first, at the dark eyes waiting beyond Madeline’s shoulder, the little body already learning what it meant for papa to leave and return, then at the cake waiting untouched in the kitchen, at the match playing silently in a house Kylian did not wake in often enough anymore, at your own hands resting empty in your lap.

“Neither does he,” you said. The words came without force. That was what made them true. Madeline became very still beside you, not surprised exactly, only listening as the answer moved through you and found its own shape. Madeline’s hand covered yours on the sofa cushion.

“What do you want?” You watched Aimé’s fingers open against her jumper, his head turning toward you again the moment you spoke his name.

“I want him to know his father is coming home,” you whispered. “Not wonder if every car is him.” Madeline’s thumb moved once over your knuckles.

“And you?” The question reached somewhere deeper, not because you did not know what you wanted, you thought perhaps you had known for longer than you had allowed yourself to admit it, but because nobody had asked you without first placing Kylian’s fear beside the answer, without reminding you of the gates, the security, the photographs that had never quite become clear enough to publish, the thousand careful decisions that had made Provence feel less like hiding and more like love.

“I want to go home.” Madeline watched you for a moment, Aimé warm and loose against her chest, one of his hands caught beneath his cheek.

“Then go home.” Your eyes lifted to hers.

“It isn’t that simple.”

“No,” she said, quietly, adjusting Aimé higher when he shifted. “But it is still your life.” Something in you stilled. Madeline looked toward the television, where Kylian moved beneath the white glare of the stadium lights, then back at you.

“You speak as though you are waiting for him to decide what happens to you,” she said. There was no accusation in it, only the careful firmness of someone who had known you before any of this, before the house, before the gates, before loving him had required so much patience. “He is not only Aimé’s papa. He is your partner.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” The words should have hurt more than they did. Instead they settled somewhere low and honest.

“This is not only his career, his fear, his decision,” she continued, her fingers moving slowly over Aimé’s back. “And it is not only Aimé’s life you are protecting. It is yours too. The three of you belong to one another, yes, but you are still inside that three.” You looked down at your hands, at the faint half-moons your nails had left in your palm.

“I understand why he’s afraid.”

“I know you do.” Madeline’s voice softened. “You understand him so well that sometimes you disappear inside it.” 

The stadium rose suddenly around Kylian, the sound breaking through the room before either of you saw the goal, white shirts running toward the corner, bodies colliding around him while the camera found his face, his mouth open with breath, joy flashing there before something quieter passed through it, that look he carried now after scoring, as though some part of him had already left the pitch and gone searching for the house.

Aimé startled against Madeline, his face tightening, and she passed him to you before he could cry, his body coming into yours with the warm certainty of habit, cheek settling beneath your chin, fingers opening against your collarbone. You held him there and watched Kylian disappear beneath his teammates.

“I think I’ve been waiting for him to ask us to come back,” you said. Madeline leaned into the sofa, still looking at you.

“And now?” Your hand moved over Aimé’s back, feeling each small breath beneath the knit of his sleepsuit, the life the two of you had made, not given to you, not placed carefully in your arms by somebody else, but made between you, carried by you, chosen again every day by both of you.

“Now I stop asking,” you said, and even spoken quietly, the words did not feel sharp, they felt steady. “I tell him what I need.” Madeline’s face softened, but she did not rescue you from the weight of it.

“Which is?” Aimé turned his face toward your throat, his mouth brushing your skin, and you pressed your lips to his forehead, your eyes remaining on the television, on Kylian emerging slowly from the bodies around him, one hand lifting briefly toward his mouth before he turned back toward the pitch.

“That this is my family too,” you said. “That I want us home. And that being afraid cannot be the only thing deciding where we live.” Madeline nodded once. Not approval. Recognition.  Somewhere beneath the noise and the distance, beneath the birthday being celebrated by thousands of people who did not know him at all like this, you imagined the moment you would say it to him, not ask, not plead, not make Paris into another test of whether he loved you enough to choose correctly. But it had kept you safe long enough now. Long enough for you to remember that safety was not the same thing as a life.

—

Madeline sat on the edge of the ensuite counter with one leg crossed over the other, Aimé’s monitor propped beside her wine glass, the wine still nearly untouched, while you stood at the sink washing your face with your eyes half closed, moving slowly through the steps of a routine your body remembered better than you did.

“What would make you feel like you again?” You rinsed the cleanser from your hands and looked at her through the mirror.

“I am me.” Madeline hummed, the sound quiet and unconvinced, then glanced down at the monitor when Aimé shifted beneath his blanket.

“Have you cooked lately?” You nodded, reaching for the towel.

“Burnt anything?” You turned to look at her properly, confused enough that she smiled. “Mm.” She lifted the wine glass, remembered she did not want it, and set it back down. “Shopped?” A small smile pulled at your mouth despite yourself.

“A lot.”

“I saw.”

“You saw nothing.”

“I saw three boxes in the dressing room and one of them was larger than Aimé.” You pressed serum into your skin, trying not to laugh.

“Worked out?”

“Thanks to Céline.”

“Smoked?” You rolled your eyes.

“Madeline.”

“What?” She shrugged, completely unbothered. “I am checking.”

“You are making a list.”

“I know you through lists.” You caught her gaze in the mirror, and something softened between you, the old rhythm of it, the version of your friendship built in bathrooms and borrowed dresses and conversations spoken while one of you was taking off her makeup and the other was pretending not to watch too closely. Madeline waited until you reached for the moisturiser.

“Have you had sex yet?” Your hand stopped inside the jar. She smiled. 

“Ooo.” You lowered your eyes, smoothing the cream slowly over your cheek. Madeline lifted one shoulder, entirely unashamed.  She reached for her wine, took the smallest sip, then pointed the rim of the glass toward you. “Mnm. Do not do that.”

“Do what?”

“Pretend you have suddenly become discreet.” Her eyes moved briefly toward the monitor, checking that Aimé was still asleep, before returning to yours. “You used to tell me everything that happened in papa’s bed.” Your mouth curved before you could stop it.

“That’s not true.”

“I mean….” She smirked.

“You asked very detailed questions.”

“And you gave very detailed answers.” The smile deepened, tired but real now, your cheek returning slowly beneath the exhaustion as you pressed the cream into your skin. Madeline watched you in the mirror. 

“So?”

“So what?”

“Is he still worth all that dramatic silence?” You looked down, trying to hide the way your face changed, but there was no point, not with her.

“Yes,” you said, soft at first, then with more certainty when she kept waiting. “He is still everything.” Madeline’s brows lifted. “In bed,” you added, though the warmth in your face made the clarification useless. “He is still…” You shook your head once, searching for something that did not sound too large and failing. “Him.”

“Still that good?” You turned toward her then, leaning one hip against the sink, your eyes narrowing with the faintest trace of a smirk.

“Better.” Madeline laughed into her glass.

“Oh la la,” You looked back at the mirror, smoothing the last of the moisturiser along your throat, but the smile stayed. A tired laugh slipped out of you, soft enough not to carry beyond the bathroom, and Madeline’s smile widened, pleased with herself.

“It’s still us,” you said after a moment. Her teasing softened, though it remained at the edges of her mouth. “When it is just us in bed, it feels like everything starts again,” you continued. “He is not leaving, I am not waiting, nobody is protecting anybody from anything.” Madeline watched you for a beat.

“Mm,” she hummed gently. You looked down at your hands, rubbing the last of the cream across your knuckles.

“It is the only place nothing feels changed,” you continued. “Not really. He is still him, and I am still…” You searched for the word, then gave up on it. “Me. It feels like my life exists in that bed.” Madeline watched you in the mirror.

“Right,” she said gently. “But he leaves the bed.” Your fingers stilled. The room went quiet except for the faint rush of water settling in the pipes and the soft static of the monitor.

“D’accord,” Madeline said, lighter now, seeing too clearly the thought she had left you with and deciding not to let you disappear into it. “Then I think you should get back into his bed.” You looked at her through the mirror.

“What?”

“I am serious.” She slid down from the counter and came to stand behind you, her hands settling on your shoulders as she studied the two of you in the glass. “Look at you.”

“I look exhausted.”

“Sure but somehow it works for you. That’s always been your thing. You don’t try too hard to be sexy.” You laughed under your breath, shaking your head, but she squeezed your shoulders, refusing to let you look away from yourself.

“You look like the girl he would ruin his entire life for.” Your mouth opened, then closed again. Madeline’s brows lifted. “Have you forgotten?”

“He wouldn't have ruined his life.”

“Because you are worth it.” She turned you slightly beneath her hands, inspecting your face as though the evidence were there somewhere beneath the moisturiser and the sleeplessness. “But he was the one who slept with his chef. He was the one who could not leave you alone. You were not begging for him.” A tired smile began to pull at your mouth.

“I was a very good chef.”

“You are difficult to shake.”

“That sounds less flattering.”

“It's not.” Madeline caught your eyes in the mirror. “He looks at you as though being in the same room was physically difficult for him.” You lowered your gaze, smoothing the remaining cream over your throat, but the little smile remained.

“He still does.”

“Then use it.” Your eyes came back to hers.

“Use what?”

“The fact that he has never once known how to behave around you.” She squeezed your shoulders, her voice warm now, full of the particular confidence she had always been able to lend you. “Stop sitting here waiting for him to remember that you are more than Aimé’s maman.” You gave her a look, your cheek returning properly now.

“You think he has forgotten?”

“I think you have.” Her mouth curved. “You keep speaking as though he has all the choice. Paris, Provence, when he comes, when he leaves. Make him want to stay somewhere.”

“He already wants me.” There it was, soft but immediate, the certainty coming back into your voice before you had time to hide it. Madeline smiled at your reflection.

“Ah! Voilà. There she is.” You turned within her hands, leaning your hip against the sink.

“And he is still everything,” you said, because she had dragged the truth out of you now and there was no reason to become modest halfway through it. “So this is not exactly a sacrifice.” Madeline laughed, low enough not to carry down the hall.

“Good. Then get back into his bed, remind him why he used to follow you through his own house.” She said, reaching past you for her wine.

“That is your advice?” You stared at her.

“My advice is independence,” she set the glass down again, still nearly full, and turned you gently toward the mirror. You watched her expression change in the glass, the amusement remaining, but something more deliberate moving beneath it.

“You need to remember your power,” she said. "And now you have more. He already won't say no to you. And if he tries you can put Aimé's little pouty face beside yours whenever you need support.” You tried to roll your eyes, but your gaze had already slipped toward the monitor, toward the small grey shape curled beneath the blanket, and your mouth trembled instead, exhaustion catching somewhere beneath your ribs, tangled too closely with love.

“He's really cute, isn’t he?” The words came out smaller than you meant them to, and then you were laughing softly through the sudden sting in your eyes, embarrassed by how close everything sat to the surface now.

“Très.” She turned you toward her and pulled you in, one arm wrapping around your shoulders, the other hand cradling the back of your head while you leaned into her. Aimé slept on, his small body rising and falling beneath the blanket, unaware of Paris, of fear, of the life waiting beyond the gates. Madeline kissed your temple.

“Come back home,” she whispered. “All of you.”

—

Kylian came home the following evening with the cold still caught in his coat, his bag left somewhere near the entrance because Aimé had heard his voice from the sitting room before he had properly crossed the hall, the baby’s whole body changing against you, legs beginning to push beneath the blanket, arms moving without direction, his mouth opening around a small, excited sound that made Kylian stop where he stood.

For a second he only looked at him. Then Aimé smiled.

Not the sleepy beginning of one, not something uncertain enough to be mistaken for wind or movement, but the open little smile he had begun giving deliberately now, his eyes fixed on his father while his body strained toward him from the safety of your arms, and Kylian’s face altered so completely that you almost looked away, the exhaustion remaining, the long journey, the match, the birthday spent beneath lights and cameras and other people’s voices, all of it still there, but beneath it something softer broke open.

“Ah,” he breathed, crossing the room at once. “C’est mon Aimé, ça?” he said, the words already warm with laughter as he crossed the room toward you. “C’est papa?” Aimé kicked harder. Kylian’s hands were already reaching, but he looked at you first, habit now, waiting for the small shift of your arms before he took him, and the moment Aimé settled against his chest Kylian lowered his face into the baby’s neck, kissing the warm fold beneath his cheek, his hair, his temple, whispering his name between each touch as though he had been gone weeks instead of a day.

“You know me now,” he murmured, voice rough against Aimé’s skin. “Hein? You know papa.” Aimé made a pleased little sound and caught the collar of his sweatshirt. You watched Kylian close his eyes.

Madeline stood near the sofa with her wine in one hand, looking at you rather than at them, and after a moment she crossed quietly toward the kitchen, touching your shoulder as she passed, not asking whether you wanted her to stay because she had already understood that the rest belonged to you.

—

Kylian had said he would do the bath, and you had let him because he was finally home.

“I have him,” he said when you followed them upstairs, one arm supporting Aimé against his chest while the other reached back to touch your waist, not pushing you away, only reassuring you that he knew you were there. “Tonight, I’lll do it.”

You had sat on the edge of the bath and watched him kneel on the tile with his sleeves pushed unevenly toward his elbows, Aimé stretched carefully along his forearm beneath the warm water while Kylian spoke to him in the same low voice he used when nobody else was meant to hear, telling him about the match, the goal, the noise after, the people who had sung to him as if any of that could matter beside the little hand resting against his wrist.

For a few minutes Aimé had listened, solemn and damp beneath the bathroom light, his eyes moving between Kylian’s mouth and the water trembling near his stomach. Then tiredness found him. His mouth pulled downward, his brow gathering, and Kylian noticed before the first cry came, his hand moving at once over Aimé’s chest.

“Non, non,” he murmured. “Ça va, mon fils.” Aimé’s face tightened.

“He’s tired,” you said softly.

“I know, mon coeur.” Kylian shifted him higher, trying to bring him closer without lifting him fully from the bath, but the movement startled Aimé and the first cry broke through the room, sharp and wounded, his little legs drawing upward while his arms opened helplessly against the cold air. Kylian bent over him immediately.

“C’est papa,” he whispered, his mouth close to the wet hair at Aimé’s temple. “Papa est là.” The crying only deepened.

You watched Kylian try again, the cloth left floating near the edge of the bath, one hand cupping the back of Aimé’s head, the other moving over his stomach, his whole body beginning to sway even while he remained on his knees, as though his muscles had remembered walking the nursery at night and could not understand why it was not working here.

“Give him to me,” you murmured.

“I have him.” The words were gentle, but something beneath them had begun to fray. Aimé’s cry caught against his own breath, his skin cooling, his whole small body going rigid with exhaustion, and you moved down beside them without asking again, opening the towel across your lap before slipping one hand beneath Kylian’s.

“Come here, bébé,” you whispered. Aimé turned at your voice. Not fully, not with any understanding of what he was choosing, but enough that his cry broke, one breath missing before the next, and when you wrapped the towel around him and brought him against your chest he folded into you almost immediately, still crying, still unhappy, but softer now, his cheek wet against your neck while you kissed his temple.

“Oui, Aimé d’amour. C’est fini,” you murmured. “Maman est là.” Kylian remained beside you on the floor, one hand still beneath Aimé’s back even though you had already taken his weight, his fingers spread there as though he could not quite release him.

For a while the three of you stayed like that, awkwardly folded beside the bath while the water cooled, Aimé’s cries becoming little wounded breaths against your skin, your mouth moving over his damp forehead, Kylian’s thumb stroking slowly beneath his ear.

“He wanted you,” Kylian said. You looked at him. His face had gone quiet, not wounded enough to ask for comfort, not distant, only tired in a way that made him look younger.

“He was finished,” you whispered. “That’s all.” Kylian nodded, but his eyes stayed on Aimé.

“He heard you.”

“He hears you too.” Another nod. You did not try to make him believe it more than he could in that moment.

—

Aimé went down eventually, after a bottle he barely wanted, after you fed him in the chair while Kylian sat on the rug beside your feet, his hand resting around your ankle, his thumb moving once beneath the hem of your trousers whenever Aimé’s breathing caught, after the two of you walked him through the nursery in turns and Kylian stood over the crib longer than necessary once the baby had finally settled, his palm hovering near Aimé’s stomach before touching him once, lightly, only to feel the rise beneath his hand.

You had been watching his face when he straightened. Not openly, not enough to make him feel examined, only from where you stood beside the chair folding the muslin cloth into smaller and smaller squares, watching the way he kept his head lowered after his hand left Aimé, the way his jaw shifted once before he pressed his lips together, swallowing whatever had followed him out of the bathroom and remained lodged somewhere beneath his ribs.

“I’m going to head downstairs,” he said quietly. You stopped folding. He still did not look at you, his fingers resting against the crib rail, his shoulders broad and motionless beneath the soft grey of his sweatshirt. “Just for a minute.” There was nothing unusual in the words, nothing you could have held him to, but you heard the care with which he had made them ordinary, and when he finally turned his face toward you, his eyes touched yours only briefly before moving back to the crib.

“I need…” He rubbed his palm over his chest, not dramatically, only once, high beneath his collarbone, as though the ache there had become physical enough to soothe with pressure. “I need a little minute, mon cœur.” You could feel it from across the room.

The disappointment he was ashamed of, the love that had made the disappointment possible, the small, terrible humiliation of wanting to be the person who could quiet his own son and discovering that love did not always make the body choose you. You wanted to go to him. You nearly did, the folded cloth loosening between your fingers, your body already leaning toward his before you stopped yourself.

“Okay,” you whispered. His eyes returned to you then, something grateful and wounded passing through them too quickly to name.

“I’m fine.”

“I know.” It was not true, and neither of you asked the other to pretend that it was.

He came close enough to bend over Aimé once more, pressing his mouth to the soft hair above his ear, then passed behind you with his hand sliding briefly around your waist, his fingers tightening there for half a second, not pulling you with him, only touching you as though he needed to leave with some proof that you had understood. You gave him the minute.

You stayed beside the crib while the château settled around you, listening to Aimé breathe, smoothing the muslin cloth across the back of the chair although it was already flat, waiting until you heard Kylian’s steps reach the bottom of the stairs and disappear into the rooms below.

Then you waited longer. Long enough that the silence stopped feeling like space and began to feel like absence.

By the time you left the nursery the château had gone almost entirely dark, Madeline asleep somewhere along the corridor, Céline’s door closed downstairs, the fires burned low beneath their ash while winter pressed itself against the windows, the cold moving through the stone in slow, invisible threads.

You found Kylian in the kitchen. He had switched on only the small lamp beneath the shelves, leaving the rest of the room in shadow, the yellow light falling over the long counter, the copper pans, the worn stone where you had once stood with herbs beneath your hands and felt him watching you before either of you had known what to call it.

He sat at the table with his elbows resting on his knees, his hands hanging loosely between them, his shoulders still slightly raised beneath the sweatshirt as though he had carried the cold in with him, though the kitchen was warmer than the corridor.

He had taken the minute you gave him and done nothing with it. He had not poured water. He had not re-lit the fire properly. He had not taken out his phone or answered any of the messages that had been arriving for him all day. He was simply sitting there, bent forward in the half-light, staring at the floor between his shoes.

You stopped in the doorway. For a moment you let him remain alone, even with you watching, because there was something unbearable in the privacy of his face when he did not know it was being seen, the tiredness there, the hurt he would never have placed in Aimé’s hands, the effort it had taken to leave the nursery gently when some smaller, younger part of him had wanted to remain beside the crib until the baby woke and gave him another chance.

The cake still waited beneath the glass cover near the stove, the dark glaze uneven along one side where you had tried to smooth it before he came home. You crossed toward it quietly. Kylian heard you only when the glass lifted from the plate, his head rising slightly, though he did not straighten. You cut a slice, placed it on a small white plate, then searched the drawer beside the stove until your fingers found one of the candles Celine had already tided away beneath the folded napkins.

The match scraped too loudly in the quiet room. He looked up. You pressed the candle into the cake and lit it, shielding the little flame with your palm as you carried the plate toward him, the light trembling over his face, catching briefly in his eyes before you set it down on the table between his hands.

“Joyeux anniversaire, bébé,” you whispered. His mouth softened, but he looked down again almost immediately. You climbed onto the counter across from him, your tiny sleep shorts gathering beneath your thighs, bare feet hanging above the cold floor.

“Make a wish,” you murmured watching his eyes flutter closed. At first you thought he was doing what you had asked, searching quietly for something he wanted, but his breathing changed, the inhale drawing too slowly into his chest, his mouth tightening while he swallowed against whatever had risen there. When he opened his eyes again they were wet. Not crying, never, only bright enough that your own chest pulled painfully toward him.

“Kylian.” He shook his head once. 

“Ça va.” You looked at him across the candle. His eyes closed again, and this time one hand came briefly over his mouth, his fingers pressing there before falling back between his knees. You slipped down from the counter and his eyes opened again but they only moved back to the candle as though the sight of it had reached somewhere he had kept closed all day, beneath the messages and the team and the cameras, beneath the match and the drive home and Aimé turning at the sound of your voice.

“You should be upstairs,” he said quietly.

“So should you.”

“I needed a minute.”

“I gave you some.” The candle flickered faintly between you. Kylian drew in a breath, slow and uneven enough that you saw him try to correct it before it reached you, his fingers coming together between his knees, one thumb pressing hard into the centre of his opposite palm.

“You didn’t have to come down.”

“I know.” That made him look at you. You moved closer, not sitting yet, only standing between his knees, your hand finding the back of his head, your fingers settling into the close softness of his hair while his forehead came forward almost without decision, resting against your stomach.

For several seconds neither of you moved. Then his arms came around you. Not tightly at first. His hands touched the backs of your thighs, slid higher, and closed around your waist with a suddenness that made the breath catch in your chest, his face pressing into you as though he had held himself upright only until there was somewhere safe enough to fold.

“He didn’t want me,” he said. The words were muffled against you, so quiet you could almost have pretended not to hear them. Your fingers tightened at the back of his head. “He wanted maman.”

“He needed me because he was tired.”

“He was tired with me.”

“Kylian.”

“I know.” His breath warmed the fabric over your stomach. “I know what you’re going to say.” You bent over him, your cheek resting against the top of his head.

“Then let me say it anyway.” His arms tightened. You could still see the candle beyond his shoulder, its flame shortening slowly over the untouched cake, his birthday burning down while he held you in the dark kitchen and tried not to make the smallest grief of his life feel larger than it was.

“He loves you,” you whispered. “He knows you. He hears you come into the room before I do.” Kylian was silent. “He looks for you when the television is on. He sleeps with his mouth open on your chest. When I show him your picture, he smiles.” His eyes lifted to yours.

“Does he?”

“Mm.” Your thumb moved slowly beneath his eye. “A little one. Barely there.” Kylian’s mouth shifted despite himself, the beginning of something soft and unwilling.

“You’re sure?”

“I know every face he makes.” That brought the smile properly, faint and tired, but there, and you leaned in to kiss the corner of it before it could disappear. A breath left him, not quite a laugh, breaking painfully somewhere against your body. You lowered yourself then, kneeling between his feet until you could see his face, your hands holding either side of it while he tried to turn away from you and failed because you followed him.

“He did not choose me over you,” you said. “He was cold, he was tired, and I was the only one in the room not wet. That is all.” His eyes lowered.

“I wanted him to know I came back.” The words hurt more than the others had. You felt your own face change before you could stop it, your thumbs going still against his cheeks.

“He knows.”

“I keep leaving.”

“And you come back.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Non,” you whispered, moving closer until your forehead touched his. Suddenly now didn’t feel like the time. Now it felt like it would hurt more than heal you. “It isn’t. But he knows who papa is.” Kylian closed his eyes. You stayed there with him while the candle burned lower, your knees aching against the stone, his hands sliding from your waist to your wrists, holding them against his face as though warmth could be transferred that way. When he opened his eyes again, they were wet, though still nothing had fallen.

“You made me a cake.”

“It’s not my best work.”

“It’s your work though.” Your mouth trembled. He saw it, and his face folded at once, his hand leaving your wrist to cup the back of your neck, pulling you forward until your nose pressed beside his, both of you breathing the same small space. 

“You know I want to give you everything,” he whispered. Your eyes closed. “You know that, oui?”

“Oui.”

“I want everything for you. For him.” His voice broke slightly around the last word, so faintly that he might have hoped you would not hear it. “I want you to have all of it.” Your fingers moved over his hair again, slow and careful.

“I know, mon amour.” He turned his face against yours.

“I try so hard.”

“I know.” You shifted to stand more up right and looked past him. Past the curve of his shoulders, at the man you folded into your stomach again when you moved in the kitchen where you had once been afraid to touch him at all. It hurt. It hurt to have him back in your arms.

“I miss you,” you whispered. The words came out before you could make them smaller, desperation slipping through the careful place you had been keeping it, and Kylian went still beneath you, not because he did not understand, but because he did. Your hand paused against the back of his neck.

“I miss you so much.” His arms closed more tightly around you, and the breath that left him sounded almost hurt, his face pressing deeper against your stomach as though he could hide the effect of it there.

“I’m here,” he murmured.

“I know.” You bent over him, your cheek settling against the top of his head, one hand cupping the back of his neck while the other rested against his shoulder.

“That’s what makes it worse.” Kylian lifted his face. His eyes searched yours, glossy and exhausted beneath the low kitchen light, his mouth parted as though an answer had reached him and failed before it could become sound.

“You came home,” you whispered, your thumb moving lightly beneath one of his eyes. “And I missed you while you were holding him. I missed you upstairs. I miss you when you call. I miss you before you leave because I’m already thinking about when you come back.” His gaze dropped toward your lips.

“I miss you too,” he said. You swallowed.

“I know.”

“Every day.” The words were not defensive, only tired and true, and when he lowered his cheek against your stomach again, his hands moved slowly over your back beneath the thin fabric, touching you with the care of someone trying to reassure himself that you were still there.

“In the hotel,” he murmured, “sometimes I wake up and I don’t know the room.” Your fingers slid along his jaw, but you did not lift his face yet.

“Just for a second,” he continued. “I reach across the bed, and then I remember.” You closed your eyes.

“We’re here.” He nodded against you. “And then?” Your hand guided his face upward again.

“I check the monitor on my phone.” Your hand softened against him.

“You can’t see him properly like that.”

“I know.”

“You can’t smell him.” His mouth trembled faintly.

“I know.”

“You can’t hear the little sound he makes before he wakes.”

“I know, bébé.” The answer came rougher now, its edges catching against his throat, and you looked toward the dark doorway, toward the stairs rising through the sleeping château, toward the nursery where Aimé lay beneath the soft amber light without knowing that his father was downstairs trying not to grieve the shape of his own life.

“He notices you’re gone.” Kylian’s eyes closed. You regretted it immediately, not because it was untrue, but because you watched the sentence find the most tender place in him, after the bath, after Aimé had quieted for you, after a birthday spent being sung to by thousands of people and wanted by the two people he could not remain beside. “I’m sorry,” you whispered.

“Non.” His hand tightened at your waist. “Don’t.”

“He doesn’t understand,” you said quickly, your thumb passing over his cheek. “He only hears the cars sometimes, or a door, and he looks.” Kylian lowered his head.

“He looks toward the hall,” you continued, your voice beginning to shake despite the care you took with it. “Only for a moment. I don’t even know if it is you he’s looking for.” Neither of you believed that.

“He smiles so much more now,” you continued. “Not once. All the time. And he watches me move through a room. Yesterday he looked at his smile in the mirror and I swear all I could see was you looking back at him.” Your mouth tried to soften around the memory, but your eyes had begun to burn, the lump in your throat rising, the smile trembling before it could settle. “It’s the same.” A breath of grief left Kylian, broken and brief.  

“He’s changing so quickly,” you whispered. “And I keep thinking I’ll remember everything for you. I tell myself I’ll keep it all exactly as it happened, every sound, every little face, and then you call and you’re tired, or he needs me, or someone comes into the room where you are, and you have to go.” Kylian’s hand slid higher along your back.

“And by the next day there is something else,” you continued. “Something new I have to remember.” He was quiet for so long that you felt each breath move through his chest beneath your hands.

“I don’t want you to remember it for me,” he said softly. Your lips pressed together. He lifted his eyes to yours. “I want to see it.” 

You lowered yourself onto his lap, careful and slow, one arm winding around his shoulders while his hands adjusted beneath you automatically, holding your hips, drawing you close enough that your knees pressed along either side of him. His face settled against your neck. You held him there.

The kitchen was so quiet you could hear the faint movement of the flame, the windows shifting beneath the cold, the muted hum of the refrigerator under the counter, the distant settling of old stone around the three of you, Aimé sleeping above while his parents sat downstairs trying to understand how a life could be so full of love and still hurt this badly.

“What are we doing?” you whispered. Kylian did not answer at first. You had not meant it cruelly. It had come from somewhere beneath anger, somewhere more frightened than that, and he knew it, because his hand moved over your back in one slow pass before stopping between your shoulders.

“I don’t know, bébé,” he admitted. No reassurance followed it. No promise that the season would become easier, or that the distance was temporary, or that loving one another this much would somehow make the arrangement kinder. Only the truth. Your throat tightened. You pressed your mouth to his temple, holding it there, and that was when you heard the exhale, thin and unsteady against your neck, the sound of something loosening inside him despite how long he had kept it held.

Then the small, wet breath that followed. Your heart seemed to fold painfully beneath your ribs.

Kylian turned his face farther into you, trying to conceal it, but you felt the faint pull of his breath against your skin, the way his chest stopped moving properly, the way his fingers gathered a little of the fabric at your waist as though he needed something physical to keep hold of while the walls finally began to give.

“I…” The word would not come. You tightened your arms around him, one hand spreading over the back of his head.

“I thought this was what you needed,” he whispered. You went completely still. His voice had become so quiet you nearly felt the words more than heard them, his mouth moving against the hollow beneath your jaw.

“I thought if you stayed here, you would be safe,” he continued. “I thought you would sleep. I thought you would have Céline, and your mother, and Madeline when she came. I thought you wouldn’t have to hide every time you left the house.”

“Kylian…”

“I thought Aimé would have this. This is where it is good..” His hand tightened at your waist. “The garden. The quiet. No cameras at the door. I thought I was giving you something here.”

“You did.” His breath caught.

“Then why does it feel like I left you?” The question went through you so cleanly that for a moment you could not breathe. You drew back just enough to see him, but he kept his eyes lowered, lashes wet, his face arranged in the terrible restraint of someone who did not believe he had earned the right to be comforted for a choice he had helped make.

“You didn’t leave me,” you whispered.

“I leave every week.”

“You come back.” You tried weakly.

“And every time I come back, he is different.” His mouth trembled, only once. “And you are more tired.” You shook your head, but he continued before you could protect him from it. “You tell me you’re fine because I’m in a hotel and there is nothing I can do. You tell me he slept because you know I have training.” His eyes held yours. “I miss everything, and you make it sound gentle so I can play.” Your eyes filled.

“I don’t want you worrying when you’re away.”

“I worry anyway.”

“Bébé.” Your lip began to tremble.

“I miss everything, and you make it sound gentle so I can play.” You held his face then, making him look at you, your palms warm against his cheeks while his eyes met yours with nowhere left to hide.

“I make it gentle because I love you.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want every beautiful thing he does to hurt you.”

“It does hurt.” The honesty of it broke something open in your chest. Kylian leaned into your hands, his eyes closing while a tear finally slipped beneath your thumb, warm and startling against your skin.

“It hurts because I love it,” he whispered. “And I’m not here.” You wiped it away, but another followed, quieter than the first.

“You are here,” you said, though the sentence sounded fragile now, no longer enough to cover the distance between the château and every anonymous room where he woke reaching for you.

“Not enough.” Your forehead fell against his.

“No,” you whispered. His hands tightened around your waist. “No,” you said again, because loving him did not require you to lie. “Not enough.” His face crumpled so slightly another person might not have noticed, but you knew every change in him, every place he became younger when he was afraid, and you pulled him back against you before he could turn away.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed. 

“Non.”

“I brought you here.”

“You brought us somewhere safe.” His fingers gathered a little fabric at your waist. 

“I thought I was leaving you somewhere that you needed.”

“It was.”

“And now?” You looked across the kitchen, at the dark stone, at the lamp over the counter where you had first learned the shape of his attention, the house that had kept you safe so beautifully that leaving it had begun to feel like betrayal. “Where do you want to be?” You stared at him.

“I don’t know.”

“Paris?”

“Maybe.” His gaze moved over your face.

“Do you want to go back?”

“I don’t know what back means now.” Kylian’s hands stayed warm at your waist. You looked toward the staircase again. “Do we keep carrying him between both until one of them becomes home?” you asked quietly.

“I thought this was home.”

“So did I.”

“And now it isn’t?” You shook your head faintly.

“I don’t know. It is. But you’re not here so it hasn’t been.” The hurt moved across his face before he could hide it. You touched his cheek immediately.

“I’m not blaming you.”

“I know.”

“I’m not.”

“I know, bébé.” His mouth turned into your palm and kissed it once, then stayed there.

“I just don’t know how to keep loving you from the part of your life where nobody can see us,” you whispered. Kylian’s eyes opened.

“You think I hide you because I’m what? Ashamed?”

“No.” The answer came at once. “I don’t know.”

“Then…”

“I think you hide us because you’re afraid.” His gaze lowered. “And I’m afraid too,” you said. “That’s why I stayed.” His thumb moved against your waist. “But I’m starting to be afraid of this as well.”

“Of what?”

“Of getting used to missing you.” Kylian looked at you for a long time. Then his forehead came down against yours, his eyes closing while both of you breathed in the small space between your mouths.

“I don’t want that,” he whispered.

“Neither do I.”

“What do we do?” You shook your head slightly, your nose brushing his. “Just tell me what you want,” His arms tightened around you. 

“I want to know where we live,” you whispered. Kylian’s eyes moved briefly toward the ceiling, toward Aimé sleeping somewhere above you, the monitor quiet beside the untouched cake.

“I don’t…” He stopped, his mouth tightening with the frustration of having reached for an answer and found nothing there.

“How does this work?” you asked. The panic had begun to enter your voice despite your effort to keep it soft, sharpening the edges of the question, but Kylian did not look away.

Something in him settled instead. You recognized it immediately, though it had been a long time since you had seen it this closely, without a camera between you, without a pitch or a press room giving it somewhere else to go. His shoulders lowered. His hands became still at your waist. His eyes held yours with that deep, unbroken concentration you knew so well, the look that meant he had heard not only the words you had said, but the fear beneath them, and would not leave you alone inside it.

There was no retreat in him now, no instinct to soften the question until it disappeared. Only the quiet certainty that he would stay there with you until the two of you found an answer, however difficult it became. Your heart struck hard once beneath your ribs.

“I don’t know that either,” he said. A small, fragile smile touched your mouth, sad more than amused.

“You hate not knowing.” His thumb moved once against your waist.

“Oui,” he murmured, still looking at you. “But I hate you being afraid more.”

“I know.” Kylian’s mouth curved faintly, though his eyes remained wet. The candle had nearly reached the cake by then, the flame low and leaning, and you looked toward it before brushing your thumb over his cheek.

“You still haven’t made your wish.” He gave a small, breathless laugh.

“I know what it is now.” You shifted slightly in his lap, reaching for the plate and bringing it closer between you.

“Close your eyes.” He did. You watched his face while he wished, the tired mouth, the lashes lowered against his cheeks, the faint line still held between his brows. Then he blew out the candle. For one second the kitchen darkened further, the smoke curling between you, carrying the sweet burnt smell of wax and chocolate into the cold room. Kylian opened his eyes.

“What did you wish for?” you asked. His hands moved around your waist again, holding you close.

“You know I can’t tell you.”

“You tell me everything.”

“Not wishes.” You smiled faintly.

“Fine.” You cut a small piece from the cake with the side of the fork and held it toward him. He took it slowly, his eyes never leaving yours.

“Good?” He nodded. “You’re lying.”

“Never about what you feed me.”

“You look sad.”

“I am sad.” Your hand lowered. Kylian caught your wrist before it fell fully, bringing your fingers to his mouth. “But I’m here,” he whispered against them. “Tonight.” You looked at him.

“Tonight,” you repeated. It was not enough, and it was still something.

You fed him another bite, then took one yourself when he lifted the fork toward your mouth, both of you sitting in the yellow kitchen light with the ruined edge of the cake between you, his birthday passing quietly through the house while Aimé slept upstairs and winter held the hills beyond the glass.

—

The plate remained on the kitchen table with two bites of cake left near the edge, the fork resting across the dark glaze, wax cooled into a pale line beside the place where the candle had been, and when Kylian stood he did not reach for the light or the dishes or anything that might have made the night feel finished, only held out his hand to you, his fingers closing around yours as you followed him through the darkened corridor toward the old salon at the back of the house.

The room was colder than the kitchen, the fire reduced to a low red glow beneath the ash, winter held close against the tall windows while rain passed softly over the glass, and Kylian stopped beside the long sofa, looking down at it as though he had forgotten why you had come there until you touched the back of his arm.

He lay down first. Not properly, not with the intention of sleeping, only lowering himself along the length of the sofa with one arm beneath his head, his body too long for it, one foot left against the rug, and you came down beside him without asking where you should fit because there had never been much space between your bodies once the doors were closed, your knee sliding between his, your cheek settling over his chest while his arm closed around your back and pulled you nearer until the thin fabric of your nightdress warmed against his shirt.

For a while neither of you spoke.

His palm moved beneath the hem at your back, not searching, only finding skin, the warmth of his hand spreading slowly over you while your fingers rested near his collar, then slipped beneath it, tracing the place where his neck met his shoulder, where his pulse moved unevenly beneath your thumb.

Kylian’s mouth found your forehead. One kiss, then another placed lower, near your temple, his lips staying there as though the pressure of them could hold something inside him. You shifted closer. There was almost nowhere left to go, your thigh over his, your arm tucked between his chest and the cushion, his hand spread beneath your shirt at the base of your spine, but when you moved he tightened around you anyway, the instinctive closing of his body making your breath catch against his throat.

Your mouth rested against his throat, close enough that each time he swallowed you felt it beneath your lips, and his hand moved slowly over your back, palm open, thumb passing again and again along the same small place at your spine as though he had not decided whether he was soothing you or himself.

The monitor sat on the low table beside the sofa, its screen turned down but not off, Aimé visible in the grainy dark upstairs, one fist near his cheek, his body still beneath the blanket except for the small rise Kylian looked for every few seconds. You watched his eyes move toward it. Then back to you. His lips touched your forehead.

“I love that you protect me,” you whispered. The movement of his hand slowed. You kept your face against his neck, your fingers resting beneath the collar of his shirt, touching the warm skin there while you spoke.

“I love that you don’t want anything to happen to us. I love that you think of every door before I even know there is one.” Kylian’s arm tightened around you. “But you are so frightened of losing me,” you murmured, your mouth moving over his skin with the words, “that I think I am beginning to lose myself.” He went still beneath you. Not the sharp stillness of anger, only the quiet stopping of someone who had heard the sentence properly and did not yet know where to put his hands. Your lips pressed beneath his jaw before his mouth could move.

“I know you did not mean to.”

“Bébé…”

“I know.” His breath left slowly against your hair. 

“I miss kitchens,” you whispered. Kylian’s hand stopped. Not fully, only for the smallest second before his thumb resumed its path over your skin.

“What?” You kept your face against him.

“Kitchens.” His chest rose slowly beneath your cheek.

“You have a kitchen.”

“I know.”

“A very big kitchen.” A weak smile touched your mouth, though he could not see it.

“With too many copper pans.”

“Céline will hear you.”

“She knows.” His lips moved against your hair, almost a smile, but the quiet returned too quickly around it. You drew one fingertip along the edge of his collarbone.

“I miss being in one before anyone wakes,” you said. “I miss arriving when it is still dark and turning on one light. I miss the first coffee somebody forgets beside the stove. I miss the noise when everybody comes in at once and nobody has enough space and somebody is always asking where the knives are even though they have been in the same place for years.” Kylian swallowed beneath your hand.

“I miss being tired because I worked,” you continued, the words becoming softer as they left you. “Not only because I did not sleep.” His palm moved higher along your back. “I miss people knowing where I am because I am there every day,” you whispered. “I miss Madeline coming through the back door and taking food without asking. I miss standing for too long. I miss complaining about standing for too long.” His hand reached the back of your neck, fingers slipping beneath your hair.

“You want to work again.” You breathed against him.

“I don’t know.” Kylian waited. You felt him trying not to fill the silence for you, trying not to turn the confession into something he could arrange before you understood it yourself.

“I think I miss knowing who I was when I walked into a room,” you said at last. His fingers tightened faintly at your neck.

“You know who you are.”

“Here I am Aimé’s maman.”

“And my…” He stopped. Your face lifted slightly from his chest.

“And your what?” Kylian looked at you in the dark, the faint firelight catching along one side of his face, his eyes still glossy from the kitchen, his mouth softer than it had been all evening.

“My home,” he whispered. The words were so quiet they barely disturbed the room. Your throat tightened, and before your mouth could tremble you lowered it to his cheek, kissing the warm skin there, then the corner of his mouth, then beneath his jaw, each touch placed slowly because you did not trust yourself to answer without breaking something open between you. Kylian turned into the kisses. His hand slid from your neck to your cheek, thumb moving beneath your eye, though you had not cried yet.

“That is beautiful,” you whispered against his skin. “But I still miss kitchens.” His eyes closed.

“I know.” You kissed the place near his mouth again, and when he exhaled the breath shook faintly over your lips.

“I miss you in them,” he said. You stilled. “That first one,” he continued, his eyes remaining closed as though the dark made it easier to return there. “Here.” His hand moved once over your back.

“You were standing there, and I remember thinking the room had changed before I understood it was only because you were in it.” Your breath caught.

“You looked at me like you had not decided whether I belonged there yet,” he murmured. “And I already knew I wanted to stay.” You lifted your face slightly, but his eyes remained closed, his expression softened by the memory. “I remember your hand in mine after the last candle went out,” he said. “I couldn’t see you properly anymore, but I knew exactly where you were.”

“I knew where I was then,” you whispered. Kylian’s eyes opened. Your fingers moved slowly beneath his collar, tracing the pulse at the base of his throat. “I was frightened of you, and of the storm, and of everything that might happen after I took your hand, but I knew who I was in that room.” His gaze held yours. “Now I have you,” you said, your voice breaking around the tenderness of it, “and Aimé, and more love than I knew a person could survive, and sometimes I still don’t know where I am.” Kylian looked at you for a long moment, his hand remaining still at your back.

“You think I only knew you because you were standing in a kitchen,” he said softly. Your lips parted, but he continued before you could answer, his eyes moving over your face as though he were trying to find the exact place the fear had settled.

“I knew when you were tired before you said it. I knew when you were angry because you became quieter. I knew which doors you closed carefully and which ones you let fall behind you.” His thumb moved once against your skin. “I knew the sound of you before I knew how to make it mine.” Something in your chest tightened.

“Kylian…”

“I used to come downstairs because I heard you,” he whispered. “Even when I had nowhere to go. I would stand in the hall and listen to you move things around.” Your fingers slid higher up the fade of hair at the back of his head. He lowered his eyes, the memory softening his face.

“I knew.”

“You did not.”

“I always knew when you were there.” His eyes opened. For a moment the old kitchen seemed to exist between you, the summer version of it, open windows and cut fruit and the scrape of your knife over the board, Kylian appearing in doorways without explanation, both of you pretending proximity had happened by accident.

“I miss that girl too,” he said. Your mouth parted. “Not because you are not her,” he added immediately, his hand coming firmly to the side of your face. “I miss how much time I had with her before I understood it was time.” You looked down at him. His thumb moved slowly along your cheekbone. “I wasted so much of it standing in doorways.” You lifted your face enough to see him, though the two of you remained so close that your nose brushed his cheek when you moved, his eyes dark in the weak firelight, exhaustion still held heavily beneath them.

“Tell me about her,” you whispered. His brow drew faintly.

“Who?”

“The girl you fell in love with.” Kylian looked at you for a moment, trying to understand whether you wanted comfort, whether there was a correct answer waiting somewhere inside the question, and you touched the side of his face, thumb resting near his mouth.

“Not what she looked like,” you said softly. “Tell me why.” His eyes moved over yours.

“She did not care who I was.” You almost smiled. 

“That isn’t true.”

“She cared,” he corrected, his hand moving higher over your back. “She just did not move differently because of it.” Your fingers slipped along his jaw. “She told me when I was in her way. She told me when I was wrong. She would be standing in my kitchen, in my house, and somehow I was the one asking permission to touch things.”

“You should have been.”

“I know.” His mouth softened briefly, but his gaze stayed on yours.

“She was very sure of herself,” he continued, quieter now. “Even when she was not sure at all.” You swallowed.

“She could be frightened and still say no. She could want something and still wait until it was her choice. She never made herself easier because somebody else had more power in the room.” His thumb moved once beneath your shoulder blade.

“She had a life before me,” he whispered. “Work she loved. People she loved. A way of moving through Paris that had nothing to do with me.” Your eyes burned. “And she let me into it,” he said. “Slowly. Not because I asked enough. Because she decided.” Your lips touched his cheek, then stayed there. Kylian’s hand came to the side of your neck, his fingers slipping beneath your hair.

“And she was funny,” he added, his mouth brushing your temple. “Very funny when she was angry.”

“I am not.”

“She was.”

“Continue.” A breath of warmth moved through his chest beneath you, but it disappeared almost immediately, the sadness returning to his face as he looked at you.

“She knew what she was good at,” he whispered. “And when she did not know, she learned. She did not wait for someone to make the room safe before she entered it.” Your mouth trembled before you could stop it. Kylian saw. His thumb touched beneath your eye, though the tear had not fallen yet.

“You’re still her,” he said. You shook your head faintly against his hand.

“I know she is still here somewhere.”

“Not somewhere.” His voice was soft, but certain. “Here.” He pressed his palm more fully to your back, holding you against him. “You think I don’t see her? Because you are maman now?” His mouth touched your forehead. “I see her every day.”

“Then let me be her again.” Kylian’s eyes closed. You brought your lips to the side of his mouth, speaking against his skin because the words had become too exposed in the room.

“Let me make a decision you do not like.” His hand tightened at your waist. “Let me be scared and still choose.” Your cheek rested against his. “Let me be who you fell in love with, so I can be who Aimé’s maman should be.” Kylian swallowed. You felt it beneath your mouth. “He needs to know I had a life. That I loved his papa and still belonged to myself.”

“You do.”

“Then trust me like I do.” The monitor gave a small breath of static beside you, and both of your eyes moved toward it before returning to each other. For a moment Kylian said nothing. His hand stayed beneath your top, warm and still against your back, while fear moved quietly through his face, not hidden from you now, not rearranged into reassurance or a plan.

“I do trust you,” he whispered. His hand stayed still against your back. “I’m frightened anyway.” You waited. “I don’t know how to let you choose something that I cannot make safe.”

“You don’t have to make it safe.” His eyes moved toward the monitor.

“I know.” His throat shifted. “But I miss everything now.”

“The bath,” he said. “I knew what he needed.”

“He was overtired.”

“I knew.”

“He does that with me too.”

“But he heard you.” His voice had gone quieter. You placed your palm flat against his chest.

“Kylian.”

“I am scared his first word is going to be papa.” You stared at him. The sentence seemed wrong at first, almost like something you had misunderstood, and he saw the question in your face before you spoke. “Because I’m not here,” he whispered. Your fingers curled slightly against his shirt.

“You say it when I’m gone.” His eyes moved toward the dark ceiling, toward Aimé’s room above you. “Papa is coming. Papa is on the phone. Look, that’s papa. He hears the word when he is looking for somebody who is not in the room.” The ache that moved through you was so immediate you lowered your mouth to his throat, kissing him there before either of you could see what the words had done to the other. His skin shifted beneath your lips as he swallowed. You kissed him again. Then again, slower, pressing your mouth to the pulse beneath his jaw until his hand came to the back of your head and held you there.

“He knows you when you are here,” you whispered into his skin. Kylian’s breath caught.

“I know.”

“He smiles before you reach him.”

“I know.”

“He hears your voice from the hall.”

“I know, mon coeur.” Your lips remained against him because every time you lifted them his mouth threatened to change, because you could feel how hard he was trying to keep the sadness contained inside ordinary words.

“I’m scared he will know me as the person who comes back,” he admitted. Your eyes closed. His hand slid over your back again, pulling you more completely over him, your body aligned with his now, your cheek beside his, his lips against your temple while the two of you held each other with an almost painful closeness, as if touch could shorten roads, erase fixtures, pull every missing morning back into the same room.

“I’m scared I’m getting better at it,” you whispered.

“At what?”

“Being without you.” Kylian went still beneath you. The hand at your back opened wider, then pressed. You felt his mouth move near your hair but no words came, only a breath drawn carefully through his nose, the small sound of him swallowing before his lips found your forehead and stayed there.

“I don’t want you to,” he said at last.

“Neither do I.” His face turned into yours until his nose brushed your cheek.

“Sometimes I do everything without you,” you whispered. “And then you come home and I have to remember how much I needed you before I learned not to.”  Pain moved through his eyes, and you kissed the slight tension beside his mouth before it could become apology.

“When I am here, I’m already counting,” he whispered. “I hold him and think how many hours. I lie beside you and know what time the car comes.”

“I do that too.”

“That isn’t living together.”

“No.” The agreement was almost soundless. You lay there for a long moment with the truth between your mouths, neither of you moving away from it, his hand travelling slowly from the base of your spine to your shoulder and back again, your fingers following the shape of his throat, the scrape of his jaw, the familiar warmth beneath his ear.

“Where do we live?” you asked. Kylian opened his eyes. You did not lift your head, did not turn the question into anything formal, only watched him from the small distance left between you.

“I had thought here…” his voice tailed off.

“So did I.” You filled the silence.

“And now?” You breathed in slowly, his skin and soap and the faint smoke caught in his shirt from the fire.

“Now…I think Paris.” His hand slid beneath your hair.

“Paris?”

“I miss it.”

“I can…” He stopped himself. You felt it happen, the familiar instinct rising in him to call someone, secure something, return a space to you through effort and access, and then the quiet choice not to finish.

“I know,” you whispered. Kylian looked at you. “That you can fix it.” His mouth tightened faintly.

“But?”

“I don’t want everything fixed before we speak about what it is.” He nodded slowly. The monitor shifted with a small crackle beside you. Both of your bodies went still at once. A soft sound came through, Aimé moving in sleep, one tiny breath turning into another before the room above settled again. Kylian listened longer than you did. You watched his face while he waited, the concentration in it, the fear he carried beneath every quiet moment with his son. When his eyes returned to yours, they were wet again.

“I want him to wake up where I am,” he whispered. Your throat closed.

“So do I.”

“I want to know the sound before he cries.”

“You do.”

“Not always.” His mouth turned downward before he caught it, and you kissed him again, lips pressing to his cheek, then beneath his eye, then along the line of his jaw as his hand closed around the back of your neck.

“I want to be there when he does something silly for the first time,” he whispered against your hair.

“He is three months old.”

“He already does silly things without me.”

“He found his hand.”

“And then hit himself with it.” You laughed softly into his neck, the sound wet at the edges, and Kylian’s arms tightened as though he had needed it.

“I missed that,” he said.

“You were on the phone.”

“It is not the same.”

“No.” You let the answer remain honest. Kylian shifted beneath you, turning enough that you slipped partly between him and the back of the sofa, his body curving around yours now, one thigh over yours, his arm beneath your head while the other stayed at your waist, fingers slipping again beneath the fabric to rest against your skin.

The position left you face-to-face, impossibly close, your breaths sharing the same small space, your lips touching whenever either of you spoke too softly.

“How does it look to you?” he asked. You traced the line beneath his eye.

“I don’t know.”

“You’lll come back to Paris.”

“I’d like to.”

“And Aimé?”

“With me.” The answer came instinctively. Kylian nodded.

“Of course.” You studied him, the quiet certainty of it easing something inside you.

“His room would need to be ready.”

“It will be.” Your fingertip touched his mouth before he could say more.

“Home, please, bébé,” you whispered. His eyes searched yours.

“Paris, please.” The first tear slipped before you felt it, warm across your cheek until Kylian caught it with his thumb.

“Together, hein?” you whispered.

“Oui,” he said, and then his mouth closed again. You waited.

“Mais…” His eyes moved toward the monitor. You touched his cheek.

“I know. I know.”

“They don’t know him there.”

“They don’t know him here either.”

“Here I know who comes through the gates.”

“I know.”

“In Paris I cannot know everything.” You pressed your lips to his cheek, close to the corner of his eye.

“You were never supposed to know everything.” His jaw shifted beneath your hand.

“I need you to trust what I know too.”

“I do.”

“Then let me need this more than you need to feel certain.” Kylian closed his eyes. You kissed him slowly beneath one eye, then across his cheek, your mouth touching each small place where the strain had gathered.

“I need to go home,” you whispered. “I need our kitchen. I need my things where I left them. I need Madeline to come over and complain that there is no food even when I have cooked all day. I need to wake up beside you without knowing what time the car is taking you away from here.” His fingers pressed into your back. “I need Aimé to know that when papa leaves in the morning, papa comes back to the same place.” Kylian’s breath caught. “And I need to stop feeling grateful every time you arrive,” you said, softer now. “You are not visiting us.”

“No.”

“But that is what this has become.” He opened his eyes again, and the hurt there was open enough that you kissed him before it could turn into apology, your mouth holding gently against his while his hand came to your face, his thumb damp beneath your eye. When you pulled back, he stayed close.

“I’m scared,” he whispered.

“I know.”

“And if somebody sees you?”

“Then they see me.”

“And him?”

“We protect him together.” His mouth tightened. “You can’t promise me nothing will happen.” Kylian looked away. You guided his face back carefully. “But you can promise you will be with me.” His eyes held yours. “That is what I need,” you whispered. “Not for you to make the world disappear.” His forehead came against yours.

“I don’t like it.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want him there yet.”

“I know.”

“You still need to go?”

“Yes.” The answer stayed soft. You did not pull away from him, did not sharpen it, did not make his fear foolish simply because it could no longer decide for you. Kylian breathed slowly through his nose, his hand sliding from your cheek to the back of your neck while he looked at you for so long that the room seemed to narrow around the two of you.

Then his mouth touched yours. Once. Again, slower. He kissed the tear beneath your eye, your temple, the center of your forehead, then lowered his face into the side of your neck, his lips moving there in small, sleepy presses that felt almost sad, not agreement without fear, only love trying to follow you somewhere it did not yet feel safe.

“D’accord,” he whispered against your skin. Your fingers tightened in his shirt.

“D’accord?” His mouth stayed near your throat.

“Oui.” He lifted his face and wiped another tear from your cheek.

“What time do you want to fly tomorrow?” he asked gently. You stared at him, then a small smile moved through the wetness in your eyes.

“Tomorrow?”

“You said home.”

“I did.” His hand moved slowly at the back of your neck.

“So we go home.” You watched him for a moment, the fear still there, his mind already moving too quickly through cars and bags and security and the exact hour Aimé would need to eat.

“You still have to be the Kylian I fell in love with,” you whispered. His brows drew together faintly.

“I am.”

“You’re planning already.”

“I asked one question.”

“You’ve planned six things behind your eyes.” That brought the smallest breath of laughter from him. You touched his lips with your thumb. “Slowly.” Kylian nodded, though you could feel how difficult it was for him not to reach for his phone.

“Breakfast,” he said after a moment. You settled closer against him.

“Breakfast.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he repeated. Your body softened slowly along his, the decision settling not as triumph but as a release so deep it made you tired, your hand loosening against his shirt while his palm continued its quiet path over your back.

Sleep reached you before it reached him. Kylian felt the exact moment your breathing changed, the way your weight settled more completely into his chest, one knee still held between his, your mouth warm against the skin above his collar.

He did not move. His phone rested in his hand now, the monitor open on the screen, Aimé asleep upstairs beneath the faint grey light while you slept against him in the salon below, and Kylian watched both of you, his eyes moving from the baby’s small breathing body to the woman stretched along his chest.

He was frightened. Not of you becoming independent, because you had never stopped being so, not really, but of what he could no longer keep outside the room once the three of you returned to Paris, of cameras, questions, the possibility of being followed, of somebody understanding too much from one photograph.

And beneath it, quieter, there was pride. You had asked him to remember who you were, then reminded him yourself. His hand moved once over your back, careful not to wake you. The girl from the kitchen had not disappeared. She had been here through every feed and sleepless night, through Marseille, through the weeks of letting his fear make the decisions because she had understood why he needed it.

Now she had made one of her own.

Kylian lowered his mouth to your hair and stayed there, his eyes returning to the monitor, holding both of you without moving while the house remained dark around him and Paris waited somewhere beyond the hills, no safer than it had been yesterday, only home because you had chosen to go back.

•

I apologize that these chapters are getting so long so tysm for being patient and reading! I really hope you enjoyed this chapter and look forward to what's ahead!

Be sure to like, comment, or message me what you think, s'il te plaît !!

Next Part - Chapitre 22 | Coming Soon ✨