Perfect Together by Kristen Ashley

Not once.

Not in fifty-four years.

It took a moment for him to lock it down before he replied, “I will call her.”

“Good,” Remy grunted.

“The children too?” Guillaume inquired. “Are you sure?”

“I am absolutely sure I want my kids to meet the woman who has loved my father for years.”

Guillaume began to look doubtful. “Perhaps you should talk to Wyn about this first.”

At that, Remy pulled his phone out of his back pocket, opened up his texts, and before he read them out loud, he said, “From Wyn. First, ‘Melly needs a raise.’ Then, ‘And we’re adopting her, even if it’s unofficially.’ After that, ‘We need to talk about meeting Estelle, honey.’ And then, ‘I’m pretty sure Manon and Sah will track her down and introduce themselves before we leave if we don’t see to it.’” He looked again to his dad. “Is that enough?”

“I love you with my whole soul.”

Remy’s head jerked like he’d been punched in the face.

But Guillaume was not finished.

“We are losing your mother, but I will be happy when I slip away, because I know I made a son who is the man I wanted to be.”

“Stop, Dad,” Remy said, his voice hoarse.

His father didn’t stop.

“I was not faithful, to either of them. I cannot tell you how much I fretted that I’d bragged of that to you, and you took it in and became me, and that is why you lost Wyn.”

“It isn’t, Papa, I told you that,” Remy whispered.

“I know you know this, Remy, you have children, but please, understand it coming from me to you right now. I don’t need to be happy. I just need to know you are.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Remy croaked, reaching long and catching his dad behind his neck, pulling the man to him, and then wrapping both arms around him.

Guillaume’s arms went around Remy too.

They hugged and held on, and it took some effort for Remy to get his shit together. He felt the same coming from his father.

But when they were both breathing easier, carefully, Remy let him go.

Guillaume ducked his head as he pulled out his handkerchief.

Remy did not hide it as he rubbed the wet from his cheeks.

“I’m hungry, and I’m sure Melly has deftly switched breakfast to brunch. It isn’t quite as easy to make it lunch. So we must get inside,” his father shared.

Remy nodded, sniffed sharply and then got out of the car.

That was a lot. It meant the world. He was keen to tell Wyn about it.

But he should have known he and his dad couldn’t have it without his mother fucking it up.

She did this by sitting at the dining room table with the rest of his family, like nothing was amiss, like he hadn’t just had his father’s face X-rayed because she’d very nearly crushed his jaw.

And she did it by stating the minute Guillaume and Remy strolled into the room, “Finally. I’ve asked them all to show some manners and wait for you. But we’re famished.”

Remy stood stone-still.

Guillaume shifted closer to him.

Wyn began to rise from her chair at the table.

Sabre’s face turned red.

Manon went pale.

Yves placed both hands palm down on the table like he needed that control, or he didn’t know what his hands would do.

And then Remy turned to his father, gently tugged the ice pack from his fingers, but it was not gentle when he tossed it on the table.

It slid across, upending the Waterford saltshaker, skittering the pepper, smearing the butter, glancing off the coffee pot and coming to a stop about a foot from his mother’s place setting.

“We were at the hospital, Mom, so Dad could get an X-ray on his jaw after you attacked him, and when we return, that’s what you have to say?” Remy asked with lethal calm.

She, too, slightly paled, but she also opened her mouth.

“Your father is—”

That was when it broke.

Years…

Years of holding it together tenuously. It just…

Snapped.

“Shut the fuck up!” Remy roared.

Colette bounced back in her chair, her hand coming to her Hermès-scarved neck.

Wyn got up from her seat.

“Remy,” Guillaume murmured, getting even closer as the door to the kitchen opened and Melly came into the room.

“He wants to be with you to your end,” Remy told her. “Right now, that’s his call. It won’t be if what happened yesterday or today ever happens again, Mom. I mean the physical abuse and the verbal abuse. The shouting. The foul shit that spews from your mouth. Definitely you hitting him with anything, even if it’s just your hand. If it happens again, I’m flying out, I’m collecting you, I’m taking you back to Phoenix, putting you in an apartment, and then waiting for you to die.”

“Honey,” Wyn said urgently, and just as urgently making her way to him. “Let’s step outside.”

He glanced at his wife and said, “No.” Then he looked back to his mother.

“I will not have you talk to me this way in my own home,” Colette declared.

“It’s my home too, Mom, as well as Dad’s, and I won’t have you pulverizing his bones in it,” he shot back.

Colette stood, slowly, regally, and shook her head in a feminine way to get the hair away from her face before she stated, “I believe you need to call the airlines and see if you can be on an earlier flight.”