Read Chapter 1: Arrival in the Rain

The rain came down like a grudge, a solid sheet of it hammering the roof of the little white Clio until Camille thought the metal might dent. She gripped the wheel, knuckles pale, as the windshield wipers fought a losing battle. Provence was supposed to be sun-drenched lavender and cicadas, not this gray, weeping apology for a sky.

A crack of thunder rolled across the valley, and the car shuddered. Then, with a sickening lurch, the engine gave one pathetic cough and died. The steering wheel went heavy in her hands as she coasted, momentum carrying her forward past the dripping plane trees and the shuttered stone houses of the village she hadn’t seen in sixteen years. The smell of wet dust and cold stone seeped through the vents as the car rolled to a stop, its nose nearly kissing a wrought-iron gate.

Camille let her forehead fall against the steering wheel. Of course. Of course this was how it would go. The grand return of the prodigal daughter, marooned in a two-thousand-euro pile of scrap metal in the middle of a monsoon.

She pushed open the door and stepped out, and the rain swallowed her instantly. It plastered her dark hair to her scalp, soaked through the thin cardigan she’d thought smart for the drive down from Paris, and found the vulnerable skin at the back of her neck. She squinted through the downpour, hoping for a glimpse of a neighbor’s porch light, some sign of life.

Her eyes landed on the building in front of her.

The shutters were closed, a deep, peeling blue that had once been cheerful. The wisteria that climbed the stone facade was a tangle of sodden, skeletal branches. Above the door, a hand-painted sign swung on a single, rusted hinge.

***La Maison Bleue.***

The name hit her somewhere in the chest, a cold stone dropped into still water. She’d forgotten. She’d packed up her life in Paris in a whirlwind of legal paperwork and ex-husband’s boxes and had not once, in all her mental lists of things to do and places to go, allowed herself to remember this address. Because remembering meant remembering him.

A flash of lightning illuminated the façade, and in that stark white moment, she saw it wasn’t quite as abandoned as it looked. A curl of smoke, thin and gray, rose from a stone chimney, immediately shredded by the wind. A single rectangle of warm, yellow light bled from the edge of a shutter on the second floor.

Julien Perrot. The boy who’d taught her to swim in the river, who’d kissed her breathless behind the chapel, who’d promised to wait. The man she’d left without a word when the Cordon Bleu acceptance letter arrived, prioritizing a future over a Provençal summer love. The man whose property she now stood in front of, soaked to the bone, her life in tatters behind her.

She had nowhere else to go. The village was a five-minute walk, but that was a five-minute walk in this. The nearest garage would be closed. Her phone was dead—she’d forgotten to charge it, another casualty of her chaotic departure.

A gust of wind drove the rain sideways into her face, and she made a decision born of pure desperation. She pushed through the gate and up the wet flagstone path, her ballet flats squelching with every step.

She knocked. Three sharp raps that were swallowed by the storm’s roar.

Nothing.

She knocked again, harder, her fist stinging against the solid oak. She was shivering now, her teeth beginning to chatter.

She was about to turn away, to swallow her pride and run for the village, when the lock scraped. The heavy door swung inward on protesting hinges.

He was taller than she remembered. Or maybe she just wasn’t used to being dwarfed by anyone anymore—Marc had been shorter than her. Julien filled the doorway, a dark silhouette against the dim, golden light of the hallway behind him. He wore a faded gray sweater, the sleeves pushed up to his forearms, and his dark hair was mussed, as if he’d been running his hands through it. He smelled of wood smoke and rain and something else, something clean and sharp—thyme, maybe, or rosemary.

His eyes, the gray of a winter sea, went wide for a fraction of a second. Recognition. The same jolt she felt, electric and unwelcome. Then his expression shuttered, sliding into a guarded blankness that was almost worse than anger.

He didn’t speak. He just stood there, one hand on the door, blocking her from the warmth, looking at her like she was a ghost he’d long since exorcised.

Camille wished the ground would open up and swallow her. She could feel the water pooling in her shoes, her hair hanging in limp, dripping ropes around her face. She must look like a drowned rat. She felt like one. “Julien,” she managed, her voice coming out thin and reedy. “My… my car. It died. Just down the street. The rain…”

She gestured vaguely behind her, a useless, flapping motion.

His gaze flicked over her shoulder, assessing, then returned to her face. He didn’t move. The silence stretched, thick with sixteen years of unspoken words, of unanswered letters, of a promise she’d broken.

“I’m sorry,” she added, the words feeling wholly inadequate. “I didn’t know… I didn’t realize this was you.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “This is my grandmother’s house,” he said. His voice was lower than she remembered, rougher around the edges. “She passed. Last spring. I’m fixing it up.”

The news landed soft, another layer of strangeness over this surreal moment. Madame Perrot, with her flour-dusted apron and her honeyed friendship. She’d cried when Camille had left. Camille hadn’t been there to see it.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, the words pathetic, useless.

He finally looked at her properly, taking in her soaked clothes, the tremor she couldn’t quite control. Something in his posture softened, the rigid line of his shoulders easing a fraction. He stepped back, pulling the door wider. “You’d better come in. You’ll catch your death.”

It wasn’t an invitation born of welcome. It was a duty, a basic human decency that he couldn’t in good conscience refuse. She hated that she needed it. She hated the way she had to duck her head as she moved past him, tracking rainwater across his grandmother’s worn stone floor.

The hallway was dim, lit by a single lamp on a sideboard that she remembered. The air was cold and smelled of dust and plaster. A tarp was draped over a stack of lumber near the staircase. It was a house in transition, ghostly and unfinished.

He led her into a kitchen at the back of the house. It was the only warm room she’d seen. A large, old-fashioned range glowed with heat, and a heavy iron pot simmered on top, releasing a savory scent of tomatoes and herbs that made her stomach clench with a painful, sudden hunger. The room was a mess—plaster dust on the counters, tools piled in a corner, blueprints spread out on the wooden table—but it was alive.

He pulled out a chair. “Sit.”

She did, slumping into the chair with a gratitude that made her eyes sting. He didn’t look at her. He moved to an old cupboard, took out a chipped enamel mug, and poured something steaming from a kettle. He set it down in front of her without ceremony. “Thyme tea. My grandmother’s recipe. It’ll warm you up.”

She wrapped her frozen fingers around the mug, and the heat seared her palms. She cradled it like a lifeline, letting the warmth seep into her bones. She looked up at him, standing across the table, his arms crossed over his chest, his face still guarded. The distance between them was a chasm filled with everything they hadn’t said.

She took a sip. The liquid was earthy and floral, the taste of her childhood, of summers spent gathering wild herbs on the hillsides. It tasted like coming home, and it broke her heart.

He nodded at the mug. “You’ll need a dry set of clothes.” It wasn’t a question. He turned and left the room, and she heard his footsteps on the stairs.

Camille sat alone in the warm kitchen, the storm raging outside, and listened to the sound of him rummaging in another life, one she’d walked out of. She had a fleet of options now. She could call a tow truck in the morning, find a hotel, never have to see him again. She could run, like she had before.

She took another sip of the tea, feeling its warmth settle in her chest, feeling the weight of the place settle around her. The rain hammered against the windows, relentless. The first flames of the fire in the range crackled, holding back the chill.

She couldn’t keep running. Not from him, not from here. It was time to stop. But as she heard his footsteps return on the stairs, a single, terrifying thought pushed through the exhaustion.

Why did it have to be him?