Perfect Together by Kristen Ashley

Remy had zipped open his case while I’d been out.

But he was standing above it, immobile, staring at his girl.

“Remy?” I called.

He jerked and only semi-focused on me.

“All right?” I asked gently.

“Why’d I do that?” he asked in return.

Oh no.

I stared at him because I didn’t have an answer to this question.

He’d named all three of our kids. He was adamant about the names. He was adamant they be French.

I liked them, they were unusual (to me) and cool (to anybody, says me) so I didn’t object. And now I was glad (I would have selected Joshua, Emily and Matthew, and they were so not Josh, Em and Matt it wasn’t funny).

“I did it for him,” he said. And the next was a muted explosion, the force of which had Manon jumping to her knees on the mattress. “Fuck!”

“Manon,” I murmured.

She popped off the bed and left the room, closing the door behind her.

I then moved to my husband.

I put my hand on his chest and ordered, “Remy, look at me.”

He’d still seemed unfocused, but he immediately focused on me.

“It doesn’t matter why,” I stated. “They’re Sabre, Manon and Yves, and they were meant to be those people with those names.”

“Yeah, but I did it for him, Wyn. Shit.”

“But it doesn’t matter.”

“He doesn’t even like Americans, did you know that?”

I closed my mouth because I was many, many things.

A proud American among them.

“He thinks Americans are harried and uncultured and worship at the altar of the dollar. And he finds the enduring American dream of possibly wedging yourself into upper middle class and a country club membership, pitiful.”

I kept my mouth shut.

Then I opened it to note, “Of course he’d look down on the proletariat, Remy. His family has been bourgeoisie for the last three centuries. And let’s not forget he left his son to an abusive mother in order to worship at that altar of money.”

“Some of the time. The rest of it was to live his life however he wanted, including keeping his fucks. He had one here, probably always. He had women he visited in Paris and more in the country. Remember when I told you about that summer when I was twenty? Him and me in the garden at the house in Toulouse. He was smoking a cigarette and having a brandy and sharing with his son the finer points of being a man. Including how crucial it was to keep your mistresses happy, but your wife happier, just so she won’t ask questions about your mistresses.”

I made a face, even though I did remember that story.

“Yeah,” he responded to the expression I made. “And I named our kids what I named them because I knew it would make him happy. I didn’t even think about why I was doing it. Like I didn’t think about why I left you.”

“Remy, just because your father is who he is, you’re a French-American man. You have dual citizenship. You made certain the kids did too.”

His face twisted because he thought he’d done that for his father too.

This had to be stopped.

So I got closer, lifting my hand to his neck, curling it around and squeezing.

“Remy, France is wonderful. You love it there. Your dad is who he is, but you love your Uncle Luc, your Aunt Francesca. You adored your grandparents and they adored you. You picked Paris for our honeymoon, for goodness’ sake, because you think it’s the most beautiful city in the world, and you know I do too. You might not be proud of your father, but you’re proud of being French. So stop it. It wasn’t like that. You’re you. You’re American. But you’re also French, and you gave that to our kids, and I for one think that’s a beautiful thing.”

“I hate it that he pushes them to speak French. I want them to speak French, but I know how it feels when someone pushes you to do something.”

He did know that.

Oh, how he did.

I didn’t focus on that.

“See?” I whispered. “You’re proud of who you are and that has everything to do with your heritage and you gave it to them. And I love that. For me. For our kids. And for you. And that’s why you gave it to them, honey. You didn’t do that for your dad. You gave them you.”

He spent a moment with that before he groused, “Shit, now it’s not you, it’s me who’s worrying that every reaction I have, every meaningful thing I’ve done had something to do with them.”

I wrapped my arm around his neck, set the other one to doing the same, and fitted myself to him, saying, “That’s what I’m here for, to help you see sense.”

He slid his hands over my hips to rest them just above my behind, with fingers encroaching, murmuring, “Yeah?”

I wanted to think how much I loved having his hands right where they were, having that back, having this kind of closeness with Remy again in my life.

What I didn’t want was to say what I had to say next.

But we were in this moment, it was truth and logic, and I needed to call it to his mind.

“And to remind you that they’re your parents. There’s no escaping that. They made you what you are, either because of them or in spite of them. And although it’s difficult for me to find any good in either of them, I know, even if it’s slight, it was there because they made you.”