All Chapters of VELVET: Chapter 41 - Chapter 45

ALEX I remember the look on her face when I told her I was leaving Paris, and.how it felt like the kind of wound that would leave the nastiest scar when it healed if it ever did. We sat on that living room floor for hours that night, too caught up in the silence to ever look each other in the eyes and make sense of the whole thing.I shouldn't have waited. I should've told her right away when I found out that I was getting let go. But she deserved a place here more than anyone, and I couldn't come clean about the very thing that would've torn her away from it all.The girlI met all those months ago isalso quite brash. She wouldn't haveallowed me to go through with mydecision if she knew I took the fall.She would've marched her ass to HR,and demanded they fire her instead. Itwould hrt her equally as much, but she isn't a mouse. She'd find a way to make sure the world fully collapsed on her before it did anyone else. The girl isnoble that way. Sometimes,

EVE I took a deep breath, brushing off thenon-existent lint off the long velvet sleeves of my dress, and straightened my shoulders. Grabbing the handle of the door, I pulled it open and walked inside, the smell of coq au vin and calvados hitting my nose and making the hunger that sat in my stomach ten times worse. I then noticed how different the place had looked since the last time I came here, although that had been in the daytime.Beingeam dark out already, the place went from a brunch-time bistro to a candlelit rendezvous for honeymooners. There were strands of little lights covering as many spaces as they could, resembling fireflies and making up the majority of the light in the room aside from thengolden wall sconces. A slow stirring tune, something that sounded like Des croissants de Soleil filled my ears, being sung by a woman. I looked around, finding the voice sitting on top of a piano at the back of the room, a man playing below her.I then sh