Lover by Design
“Do you follow the season here? The weddings, mostly. Monaco loves a wedding. All that hope, publicly notarised.”
A pause, gentle as a blade going in slow. “I find the second weddings most interesting. A woman humiliated at the first, given a second chance to be believed. The crowd always wants to know whether she’s learned to be careful.”
He wasn’t looking at me when he said it. That was the courtesy. He handed me the whole sentence and the privacy to bleed on my own time.
I buttered a piece of bread I had no intention of eating and kept my hand steady, because a steady hand was the only true thing I could give back, and I have bled in front of worse audiences than one clever man.