Perfect Together by Kristen Ashley

“It’s fucked up.”

“Remy—”

“Let’s not do this, Dad.”

“Do you think, what she did to you, she did not do to me a thousand-fold?”

And again, Remy froze.

Guillaume kept speaking.

“Your grandmother was a vapid woman. I would have been uncertain she had much but air between her ears, except she was uncommonly cruel to her daughter. She wished her daughter’s death, not her husband’s. And she did not wish that because of love for her husband, but because she wanted no responsibility except selecting which gown to wear to which event she’d attend each evening. She was infuriated she was saddled with a child, a home and a business she had to see to herself. And as such, it isn’t lost on you, she saw to all of them very poorly.”

Remy didn’t have anything to say, but even if he did, Guillaume wasn’t finished.

“I took one look at your mother, I saw this extraordinarily beautiful woman who needed to be saved, and I was lost. I was young and that romantic notion was too much for me to ignore. I fell in love with her and set about saving her. It wasn’t until much later that I realized the damage was done. But I was still in love with her, much more so by then. What did I do? I am a man and not a small man. When she slapped me, did I slap back? When she used her nails on me, did I bind her then cut them to the quick? When her tantrums woke the neighbors, did I gag her?”

“Well done for deciding to just absent yourself and letting your child deal with it,” Remy replied.

“We left her four times, do you not remember?”

Remy felt his blood turn sluggish in his veins.

And it seemed his lips didn’t move when he answered, “No, I don’t remember.”

“We were in France, without her.”

Fuck.

He remembered that.

Maybe around when he was four. Definitely when he was six. His dad had even enrolled him in school that time. And again at seven. Last, not long after, when he was eight.

Respectively, the pump, the brush, the cut from the vase, and the broken arm.

His mom was not with them, but he didn’t know they’d left her.

He just knew they’d left.

“To get me back, us back, she promised,” Guillaume continued.

Remy said nothing.

“She lied,” Guillaume finished.

“So why—?”

“Why did Wyn take you back when you left her? I love her. And after the last, when I told her she wouldn’t get another chance, it stopped.”

“It didn’t stop, Dad.”

“I had our housekeepers reporting.”

He did?

“It didn’t stop, Dad.”

That was when Guillaume froze.

“It didn’t stop until I was eleven. She shoved me, and I pushed her back. I told her—”

Oh Christ.

He told her to tell his father.

And telling his father, they both knew, meant his father would know he didn’t push her for the fuck of it.

He pushed her because he was fed up and was pushing back.

Now he knew, that if he’d told his dad…

“You told her what?” Guillaume prompted.

“She threatened to tell you what I’d done. I told her I wanted her to. After that, the physical stuff stopped.”

Abruptly, with an awful look on his face Remy could barely witness, Guillaume started to rise from his chair but stopped and settled back when Melisande arrived and set in front of Remy a plate filled with oysters fried in cornmeal and poached eggs covered in hollandaise sauce with creole seasoning, on top of ham and biscuits.

“The House,” or the breakfast Cormier men had been eating in that house for over a hundred years.

Not the women.

They got one egg, half a biscuit, the ham and sauce, but nothing fried, and it was assumed they wouldn’t finish it.

Wyn ordered it without the oysters, which was to say, two eggs, not one, and a full biscuit.

Manon had it as it was and ate every bite.

“Thanks,” he pushed out.

“Anything else, Remy?” Melisande queried.

“I’m good.”

“For you, Mr. Gastineau?” she asked his dad.

Remy looked and saw his father had smoothed his expression.

“The others will be waking soon, my dear, perhaps fresh coffee?” Guillaume ordered.

She nodded and reached for the pot. She then left.

That was when Guillaume got up and stood at the window to look out.

Remy stared at his back and wondered, holding himself so tight, if the compression would get too much and he’d fly apart.

“Dad?” he called.

“What do I do now?” he asked the window.

“Nothing,” Remy answered. “It’s done. There’s nothing to do.”

Guillaume turned. “I made a deal with my wife that she would cease abusing our son, and she did not honor her end of that deal, and I’m to do nothing?”

“It was over forty years ago and she’s dying.”

Guillaume jutted his chin forward and clipped, “I don’t care if it was a hundred years ago, she promised she’d stop hurting you.”

Well…

Fuck.

“I forgot how much the children love beignets,” Guillaume suddenly declared. “I’m going to Café Du Monde to get some for them.”