I find Estienne standing beneath the old oak tree at the edge of the property, his silhouette carved sharp against the lantern light bleeding from the distant party.
His shoulders rise and fall with breath that comes too fast, too ragged, and his hands hang at his sides like weapons he does not trust himself to use.
"Go back inside," he says without turning around. "This is not a conversation you want to have with me right now."
"You do not get to decide what conversations I want." I step closer, close enough to see the tension corded through his neck. "You just beat a man in front of your entire staff. Then you walked away and now expect me to pretend it meant nothing."
He spins to face me, and the fury in his expression steals the breath from my lungs. "It meant nothing? That piece of shit had his hands on you, and you think my reaction meant nothing?"
"I think your reaction had very little to do with workplace harassment policies." The words come out sharper than I intend, barbed with frustration I have been swallowing for days. "Everyone at that party saw exactly what I saw, Estienne. You were not protecting a staff member. You were marking territory."
His laugh is harsh and hollow, nothing like the warm sound I remember from our rainy day escape. "Territory. That is what you think this is about? Possession?"
"I do not know what this is about." I advance on him, my pulse hammering against my throat. "You have barely spoken to me since you found out who I really am, and now suddenly you are defending my honor with your fists? Pick a lane."
"You want to talk about picking lanes?" He closes the distance between us until we are nearly chest to chest, his breath hot against my face. "You lied to me for days."
The accusation lands exactly where he aims it—the soft, undefended place beneath my ribs where guilt has been festering since the moment I gave him a false name.
"I was running for my life," I spit back. "I had just escaped a man who broke my bones for sport, and you expect me to have introduced myself with my full family history?"
"I expect you to have told me the truth before I fell—" He cuts himself off, jaw clenching so hard I can see the muscle jumping beneath his skin.
"Before you what?" I press, my voice rising. "Finish the sentence, Estienne. Before you fell for a lie?"
"Before I fell for you again." The confession rips out of him like something torn from the root. "Twenty years I spent telling myself that the girl on the other side of that stone wall was just a childhood fantasy I invented to survive being dragged across an ocean against my will."
My heart stops beating. Starts again at twice the speed.
"I'm sorry," I whisper.
"Fuck your sorry." His voice cracks on the words. "You made me remember waiting at that wall after my parents told me we were leaving, hoping you would come so I could explain why I had to go."
The ground tilts beneath my feet. "You waited for me?"
"I waited until my father physically dragged me to the car." His eyes burn with old grief and fury. "I thought you had decided I was not worth a goodbye."
The irony is so cruel it makes me want to scream.
"I waited too." The confession scrapes my throat raw. "You never came, and I thought you had forgotten me the moment you crossed the property line the day my grandfather told you to leave."
His expression fractures, disbelief and understanding warring behind his eyes. "We were both waiting. What a cosmic joke."
"My grandfather gave me one day to say goodbye," I continue, the words tumbling out faster now that the dam has broken. "One day, and you never showed, and I spent twenty years believing I was not worth the effort of a farewell."
"Renée." He says my real name, and the sound of it in his mouth makes my knees threaten to buckle. "I would have waited forever if I thought there was any chance you would come."
"Then why are you so angry at me now?" The question tears out of me, desperate and raw. "I am standing right here."
"I cannot stop thinking about what happened to you." His voice drops to something rough and dangerous. "Every time I close my eyes, I see the bruises you tried to hide that night. I imagine the things he did to put them there, and I want to burn his world to the ground for touching you."
The admission makes heat flood through my chest—protective fury wrapped in something that feels terrifyingly like devotion.
"Frank is not your problem to solve."
"The hell he is not." Estienne's hand cups my jaw, his touch gentle despite the violence coiled in every line of his body. "That man spent eight years destroying the girl I never stopped loving, and you expect me to stand by and do nothing?"
I should pull away. I should remind him that I do not deserve his protection or his rage or any of the feelings burning behind his ice-blue eyes.
Instead, I rise onto my toes and crush my mouth against his.
The kiss is nothing like our first. There is no sweetness here, no tender exploration.
Estienne groans against my lips, his hands fisting in my hair, yanking my head back to deepen the angle.
I gasp at the sharp tug against my scalp, and he swallows the sound, his tongue sweeping into my mouth with a possessiveness that makes my toes curl.
My spine meets the rough bark of the oak tree, and the impact sends a shudder through my entire body.
He crowds me against the trunk, his hips pinning mine, and I can feel exactly how much he wants this pressing hard and insistent against my stomach.
"God." The word punches out of him as I drag my nails down his back. "Renée."
I answer by biting his lower lip, tugging hard enough to make him hiss.
His hand slides down my side, gripping my hip with fingers that will probably leave bruises, and the thought makes me moan into his mouth.
He kisses like he is trying to consume me. I match his intensity with my own, my fingers tangling in his dark hair, pulling him closer even though there is no closer left to find.
His mouth trails down my throat, teeth scraping against my pulse point, and I arch into him with a cry that sounds nothing like my own voice.
The night air is cool against my heated skin, but everywhere he touches burns.
"Please." The word escapes me before I can stop it. "Take me to bed."
He freezes.
For one terrible moment, neither of us moves. His breath comes hot and ragged against my neck, his body rigid with tension, his hands still gripping me like he cannot bear to let go.
Then he pulls back, and the loss of his warmth makes me want to scream.
His fist slams into the tree trunk beside my head, hard enough to split his knuckles. The sound echoes through the garden like a gunshot, and I flinch despite myself.
"I cannot do this." His voice is wrecked, barely recognizable. "Not like this."
He pushes off the tree and walks into the darkness without looking back, leaving me trembling and aching and utterly alone.
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