He smiled, following her into the church’s profound quiet. Nothing moved inside but time and their own hushed footsteps.
Simplicity greeted them: bare stone walls, almost no decoration at all but a cross and a statue of Mary behind the altar. Worn wood pews led to that altar, under the simple barrel nave above them and the old round columns that supported its arches. Layla stopped in front of a marble sarcophagus. Fourth-century Roman, a little bronze sign proclaimed. She crouched down to trace the forms of the Latin letters that covered the marble and read their translation. An inscription from parents to their eighteen-year-old son, dead on the day he was due to start his military career for Rome.
She straightened, her throat tightening suddenly for those parents seventeen centuries ago. “One of your ancestors?”
“Well, probably not on Niccolò’s side. But on Laurianne’s, who knows?”
“Hey.” Such a strange, intense thought struck Layla that she had to reach out and grab Matt’s hand again. “He might be one of
my
ancestors.”
“Well, probably not him,” Matt admitted. “Since he died when he was eighteen, and the inscription doesn’t mention a wife and kids. But…yeah.” He reached out and took her other hand, too, holding her face to face with him, his eyes warm and his body so solid in front of her. “You have ancestors around here. We could probably track them down, the Dubois gravestones. Élise’s name must be on some of the plaques to World War II heroes. And on the lists of the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’, if she died saving children. I think I remember now seeing her photo in the Musée de la Résistance.”
Layla stood very still, her hand over her lips, shaky suddenly with this sense of time
.
Of weight
.
As if she was part of this great sweep of existence that made her mortal and immortal both, as if she had existed before she ever played a note, and she would exist after those notes stopped.
Which was what her music did—made immortality out of her mortal human experience, turned it into something that would outlast her life. But…she’d always had to rely entirely on that music to anchor her into human history. She’d never been able to be a part of it just by being herself.
“And then, of course, you have the Rosiers and the Delatours.” Matt curled the tips of his fingers into hers for a gentle squeeze. “By adoption. So yeah…you have roots here.”
Her eyes stung a little. She bent her head.
Matt loosed her hand to reach into his pocket again.
She took a deep breath of that peace and time. “I’ll give it back. Your land. I don’t need it.”
Matt froze. “You…don’t?”
She shrugged, trying to do this lightly, so that he didn’t see how much it cost her to give it up to him. “It’s not important to me like it is to you.”
Matt rocked back a step, almost as if she’d hit him.
Was she saying something wrong? Maybe he just didn’t understand. “I can write my music anywhere. The land doesn’t matter.”
He took another step back. Why did he keep looking like that? She was doing the right thing, wasn’t she? Healing the hole in his heart, no matter what it cost her?
“It doesn’t really,” she repeated, insistently. “All of this”—her hand waved to encompass the church with its time, the views outside of the Côte and the valley, this whole world of his that was so beautiful—“is secondary.”
“It’s
what
?”
She shook her head, trying to get at what she meant. “None of that is the
heart
of things.”
“You don’t care
about it?” His voice sounded so flat, so numb.
Her words were coming out all wrong. Maybe she should have written this in a song first. With rewrites. “Not as much as I care about—”
“You.” His accusation cut her off. “And your music. And your fans. And your touring, and whether people are clapping for you. Not as much as you care about that, right?”
What? She stared at him, as shocked and hurt as if he’d slapped her. Even though she hadn’t been going to say any of those things at all, temper touched her at his tone, and she argued against the wrong thing: “Well, that’s my
career
, Matt. It’s okay if I value my career, isn’t it? That clapping you’re so contemptuous of is how I know if I did a good job.”
“And that’s more important?” His hand had come free of his pocket, fisted tight around something. The other hand flexed and closed. “You’re just going to dump
this? All of this? Like some toy you got tired of?”
“I don’t—” She scrubbed her hands across her face. How had this gone so wrong? Wasn’t he supposed to be overjoyed and relieved right now? Feel whole again? Trust her? Wasn’t he supposed to be showing her that even if she gave up her legal claim to part of his heart he would still keep her safe in it? “That’s not what I meant
.
”
“You weighed them up, and you figured it out, right? Between your music and this. What really mattered.”
“It’s not supposed to be an either/or choice,” she snapped, anger growing. This was the man who hadn’t even gotten properly mad at her for lying to him, and now, just when she was making herself the most vulnerable, he was acting like this? “And you shouldn’t make it one. If who I am and want to be really matters to
you.
”
He stared down at the hand he had fisted around something and then at her. “I can’t believe you would
give this up
. I—God damn it, I thought it meant something to you.”
He shoved hard at the nearest pew and turned and strode down the aisle.
***
God, Matt hated churches. They dotted this country so ubiquitously, and everything bad in the world happened in them. His parents’ funeral. His grandmother’s. Raoul’s mother’s.
A sulky, brooding child, being dragged there by his grandmother every Sunday, being made to go to Confession as he got older, when he wanted to punch the screen between him and the priest.
You stole my parents!
he’d wanted to shout.
All I did was sneak out of the house at midnight to build a bonfire with my cousins. So Tristan melted the bottom of his shoe! Why am
I
the one apologizing to
You?
He reached the back of the church. All those backs of churches. All those funerals and, yes, weddings and baptisms, at which he and the men in his family had stood, biceps pressed against each other as they squeezed in, leaving the pews to the women because they couldn’t all fit. That mass of heat and strength that they made when they stood together.
He stopped. The echo of his strides died away.
He reached out and rested his hand against the stone, pressing Niccolò’s seal against the same wall where his and his cousins’ backs always pressed when they were here for weddings. Or funerals. Always, a restless peace would settle over them as they prepared themselves to be patient and respectful and stand still for an hour of prayers and singing and, half the time, Latin. They’d done it so many, many times, to keep their grandmother happy, or to do their duty by the family and honor someone’s wedding or the new life being born into the family, or, yes, to grieve together, to press their shoulders together to bear up an unbearable weight. He could half hear the echoes of those Latin chants now, as if the stone held so many of them they sifted down over anyone present like dust motes dancing in soft light.
In this old church, the quiet sifted off the stone, centuries of pleading and gratitude, of grief and joy, of guilt and promises, all of that absorbed and cleansed from the air, released back out in this long, soft hush.
A hush that said: Even when hurt to the deepest part of his heart, a man could still be strong.
He looked back at Layla.
Her face had crumpled. She was hugging her middle as if he had hit her in it, and trying not to cry.
Oh, hell.
“I’m sorry,” he said uneasily.
Her face crumpled more as she stared at him, and then she did start to cry, covering her face with her hands.
Hell. He came back to her, pulling her into his arms. “I’m sorry, Bouclettes
.
I’m sorry.”
But you just…you want to throw me away? Give me back? You don’t want to keep me?
I’d do about anything to keep you.
His special present of himself. That she didn’t need
.
That didn’t matter
.
That wasn’t the heart of things. She was going to take it back to the store and exchange it for something more practical.
“I was trying to say something,” she cried. “I think I must not have said it right.”
Oh, hell, he was such a bastard. Such a grumpy, stupid, touchy bastard. “Come here,” he said, drawing her out of the church and away from the statue of Mary looking down at him with a maternal forgiveness that made him feel as if he’d just killed a damn kitten.
He drew her to the great rock that interrupted the wall of the terrace looking out over the valley. An old cypress shaded it, so old that Niccolò must have sought its shade once, too.
He leaned back against the rock and drew her weight against him. “I’m sorry,” he said yet again. “Tell me what you were trying to say.”
“I don’t want to anymore.” She tried to push a glare through her tears, but it got all blurred, and her mouth trembled over her attempt to scowl. “I don’t trust you with it!”
Ouch. That really hurt. “Okay, I’m sorry. Shh.” He rubbed her back, tightening her into him. “Shh. I’m so crazy about you, Bouclettes
.
I just…I thought you loved this valley, too.”
She slapped her hand hard against his chest. “I love
you.
That’s all I was trying to say. I do love your valley, but not as much as
you.
You jerk.” And she burst into tears again.
Shit.
And…oh, wow, really?
Really?
“Shh, shh, shh,” he murmured, easing her into him, soul lighting up with this strange, scared wonder. Did she mean
that? And had he just broken it?
“I wanted
you
to be happy,” she told his chest accusingly. “I wanted
you
to feel whole. I wanted
you
to feel safe with me. I thought for sure that I was safe with
you.
”
That hurt so much. “It’s just a fight,” he said anxiously. He was one of five male cousins. They had fights all the time. Most of the time they didn’t even bother to make up but shrugged and went on as if it had never happened. Once the dust settled, it was settled, after all. No sense stirring it up again. If any extra calming of the waters needed to happen, someone made a joke or someone shoved the other in the shoulder, and it was all good.
But she was an only child. Almost as bad, she was a
girl.
Maybe she didn’t know how to make up after fights by going on as if they’d never happened.
Maybe she didn’t know how to forgive a man for acting like a jerk.
“I just misunderstood.” He rubbed her back more and more coaxingly. “I thought—you know, for a songwriter, you really need to work on your word choice.”
“Hey!” She lifted her head and glared at him. Her eyes were still wet, but at least the tears stopped actually falling.
So the pushing-her-buttons had worked, a little bit like that would work with his cousins. He gazed at her helplessly, not quite sure of his next move to smooth things over. Probably not punching her in the shoulder and saying something rude.
“You certainly seemed to have some nasty assumptions about me ready to pop out at the least misunderstanding.” She scowled at him.
“I had a crappy experience with my last celebrity girlfriend.” He kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry, Layla.”
“Okay, quit saying that,” she said as her eyes filled again. “It makes me cry.”
Saying he was sorry made her cry? So…did that mean it was a good thing she was crying? It would be so
helpful if he had had a little more exposure to women growing up and could actually figure one out.
“Well, I am sorry,” he said firmly, and scooted them back on the rock, until he was sitting against the cypress and she was tucked between his upraised knees. The position anchored them into the very solidity of the earth and at the same time hovered them on the edge of the whole vast world, falling away below them and rising blue above them to the heavens. “Tell me what you meant?”
“No.” She scowled at him, very stubborn. But she wasn’t crying anymore.
He sighed. This was what he got for trying to defend his heart when he was supposed to be opening it. He kissed her hairline, and a little part of him still could focus on the pleasure of the texture of her curls against his lips. “Layla. I don’t want you to give me back the land, all right?”
“You don’t make any sense whatsoever!”
Well, at least it was mutual. “I want you to have it,” he said, and loosed his hand from her back to show her what he held.
“
What?
” She jerked her head up to stare at him, not even seeing what he offered.
He nudged it at her again, making her look down at what he held in his palm. A small, enameled gold oval depicting the valley, exactly as it looked from where they sat. The hills that framed it. The fine thread of the river. The tiny patch of limestone cliffs the river cut through to enter the valley.
“That’s beautiful,” Layla said, instantly distracted from anger and hurt by her own wonder. She was so generous she couldn’t stay wounded and mad worth a damn, could she? She stroked her fingers over the smooth enamel. “Is it a copy of the old seal you were telling me about? The one your ancestor had made…Niccolò?”
“It’s not a copy.”
It took her a second. And then she gasped. “You
found
it?” That fast, she had forgotten all about their fight. “Matt! That’s
wonderful.
” She hugged him.
“You’re a really nice person, aren’t you?” he said softly.
A sulky frown hinted its way back. “I thought I was the kind of person who cared more about whether people were clapping for me than anything else.”
He sighed and rested his forehead against the top of her head. “I was stupid,” he said. “Sometimes I’m a little sensitive.” That idiot soft heart of his. She’d slipped in under all its shields, and it made his heart a little jumpy to have someone in so close where it could get hurt.