Read Chapter 20: Aftermath of the Crash

The antiseptic smell of the hospital corridor hit Camille like a physical blow, sharp and chemical against the lingering scent of crushed lavender that seemed permanently lodged in her sinuses. Her head throbbed in time with the fluorescent lights above, each pulse a small hammer against her skull.

White. Everything was white. The sheets, the bandages, the face of the nurse who kept checking her pupils with a small penlight. Camille blinked against the glare, tracking the woman's movements with the single-minded focus of someone trying not to think about what had just happened.

The van.

The cobblestones.

The letters scattering like wounded birds across the square.

Julien's hand was still wrapped around hers, warm and solid and real. He hadn't let go since they wheeled her into the emergency room, not when the doctors asked him to step back for the CT scan, not when they stitched the gash above her eyebrow, not when they wrapped her shoulder in a brace that made her feel like a child in a too-tight coat.

"You're squeezing too hard," she whispered, her voice scratchy from the tube they'd shoved down her throat in the ambulance.

His grip loosened immediately, but he didn't let go. "Sorry. I'm sorry."

"Don't be." She turned her head carefully, the movement sending a fresh wave of dizziness through her. His face swam into focus—pale, drawn, with dark circles under his eyes that hadn't been there when she'd arrived in Provence two months ago. Or maybe they had been. Maybe she just hadn't wanted to see them. "You saved my life."

He shook his head. "The paramedics—"

"Called you because you were listed as my emergency contact." She managed a small smile. "You used to be. I never changed it. In the files at the prefecture, I mean. When I got my new identity card after the divorce, they asked who to contact in case of emergency. I wrote your name without even thinking."

Julien's throat worked. "Camille—"

"I know it's complicated. I know you pushed me away last night. I know there's a lawsuit and a father and a decade of secrets between us." The words came out in a rush, fueled by the strange clarity that often followed trauma. "But I read your letters. Every single one. The ones my mother kept from me, the ones I found scattered across the square. And I need you to know that I read them. All of them. From the first one, the one you sent three weeks after I left for Paris, to the last one, three years later when you finally thought I'd stopped coming back."

His hand tightened around hers again. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

"Do you remember what you wrote in that last one?" she asked.

"I remember every word I ever sent you." His voice cracked. "I remember the ink bleeding through the paper when I cried over the first one, and I remember the taste of wine and cigarettes when I wrote the last one, trying to convince myself I was done. Trying to convince myself you'd moved on, that you'd met someone in Paris who could give you everything Provence couldn't."

"I didn't move on." Camille blinked back tears, the ache in her chest sharp and sweet and terrible. "I married someone else, but I never moved on. Is that terribly pathetic?"

"It's not pathetic." Julien lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. "It's the most hopeful thing I've heard in ten years."

The machines around her beeped softly. Somewhere down the hall, a patient called for a nurse. Life continued in the hospital, mundane and ordinary, but in this small room, it felt as though time had stopped.

"I'm angry at you," she said quietly. "For pushing me away. For not telling me about your father's lawsuit. For trying to carry everything alone like you always did."

"I know."

"But I'm also angry at myself." She swallowed hard. "For not coming back sooner. For letting my mother's lies convince me that you'd stopped loving me. For building a life in Paris that was never what I truly wanted."

"We were young." Julien's thumb traced circles on the back of her hand. "We trusted the people who raised us. We believed what they told us because the alternative was too painful to consider."

"My mother deliberately kept us apart." The words tasted bitter on her tongue. "She read your letters, Julien. She read every word you wrote to me and she hid them. She let me believe you'd forgotten me, let me believe I had to build a new life, and she watched me marry a man who would eventually forge my signature on loan documents and leave me with a mountain of debt."

"Your mother loved you. In her own way, she must have thought she was protecting you."

"Protecting me from what?"

Julien was quiet for a long moment. "From me. From the life I could offer. Her daughter was headed to Paris, to culinary school, to a future that didn't involve scrubbing pots in a countryside inn. I was the boy who'd dropped out of university to run his father's failing business."

"You were never—"

"I'm not making excuses for her." He pressed another kiss to her knuckles. "I'm trying to understand her. Because if I don't, I'll spend the rest of my life hating a woman who isn't here to answer for what she did."

Camille closed her eyes. The room tilted slightly, the pain in her shoulder flaring. "What do we do now?"

"What do you want to do?"

The question hung in the air between them. It was the same question she'd been asking herself since the moment she'd read his letters, since the moment she'd discovered the truth. What did she want? She wanted the lavender fields and the morning mist in the valley. She wanted the B&B's creaky stairs and the sound of Julien laughing in the kitchen. She wanted to wake up without the weight of a failed marriage pressing down on her chest.

But she was also terrified. Terrified of trusting again, of believing in a future that could vanish as quickly as it appeared.

"Slowly," she said finally. "I want to take this slowly. I'm not the same girl who left Provence at nineteen. And you're not the same boy who watched me go. We need to learn each other again."

Julien nodded slowly. "I can do that."

"No more secrets." She fixed him with a look that made the words clear. "No matter how difficult the truth is. If there's something I need to know, you tell me. And I'll do the same."

"Deal."

He leaned forward, and for a moment she thought he might kiss her. But instead he pressed his forehead to hers, their breath mingling in the space between them.

"I thought I'd lost you," he whispered. "When I saw you on the ground, the letters all around you, the blood on your temple—I thought I'd finally found you only to lose you again."

"You know what's strange?" She kept her eyes closed, letting the warmth of him seep into her skin. "In that moment, when the van hit me, all I could think about was that I hadn't told you yet. That there was still so much left unsaid."

"Tell me now."

"I love you." The words came easily, naturally, as if they'd been waiting on her tongue for a decade. "I never stopped loving you. Even when I was married. Even when I tried to convince myself that Paris was my home. My heart always knew where it belonged."

When she opened her eyes, tears were streaming down his face. He didn't wipe them away.

"I love you too," he said. "I never said it enough before. I was always too careful, too afraid of what it might cost us. But I love you. I've loved you since we were sixteen years old and you threw a tomato at me in the kitchen because I'd seasoned the sauce incorrectly."

A laugh bubbled up through her tears. "It was overseasoned. You ruined that sauce."

"Which I still maintain was an acceptable way to begin a friendship."

She smiled, the expression pulling at her stitches. "You were always impossible."

"And you were always stubborn."

"Look at us now." She gestured vaguely at the hospital room, the brace on her shoulder, the bandage on her head. "Still impossible and stubborn, but together at least."

"Together." He said the word as if testing its weight. "I like the sound of that."

They sat in comfortable silence as the afternoon sun shifted through the window, casting long shadows across the floor. Nurses came and went, checking vitals and adjusting IV drips. For the first time in months, Camille felt something like peace settling over her.

---

She was discharged the next morning with strict instructions to rest and a prescription for painkillers that she immediately pocketed without intending to fill. Her shoulder throbbed, her head ached, and she was fairly certain she'd bruised several ribs, but none of that mattered when Julien helped her into his truck and drove her back to the B&B.

The lavender fields stretched out on either side of the driveway, purple and impossibly beautiful in the morning light. Camille pressed her forehead against the window, watching the colors blur together.

"I have something to tell you," Julien said as he parked. "I was going to wait until you were feeling better, but I think you should know."

"What is it?"

"A lawyer came to see me yesterday. From Switzerland." He turned to face her, his expression carefully neutral. "He says he has documentation that might help you. About your father's estate."

"My father died six years ago. I went to his funeral."

"According to this lawyer, your father may have faked his death and the funeral you attended was for an empty casket."

Camille stared at him. "That's insane."

"That's what I thought. But he left a file for you. It's in my office." Julien reached across to squeeze her hand. "When you're ready."

She looked out at the B&B, at the life she was building here, at everything she'd fought to find. Somewhere in Switzerland, a man who might or might not be her father was waiting. Somewhere in Paris, her ex-husband was enjoying the money he'd stolen from her. And here, in Provence, lavender was blooming and the man she loved was holding her hand.

"Help me inside," she said. "Then bring me that file."

The investigation could wait. The future could wait. Right now, she just needed to rest—and to remember that for the first time in a decade, she wasn't alone.