Page 5 of More Than A Feeling

But seven months in, she made me feel things I never felt before. I didn't like it when she stayed at her apartment in the Marigny. I didn't like it when she traveled for work. According to Sabine, she worked at some software company and barely made ends meet. She rented an apartment in the Marigny, which didn't look cheap, but Sabine had also told me that Brian and Lenora helped Fleur out financially. I thought that was generous of them, especially since she didn't attend many family functions.

Regardless, I wanted her to live with me.

I liked waking up to her. I liked how she made breakfast while she swayed, listening to jazz in the mornings. I liked how she surprised me with little presents—like a book of poems by Pablo Neruda the day after we discussed poetry, a golf club for mini golf since I'd never played, a walking tour of the haunted houses of New Orleans because even though I'd lived here for most of my adult life, I'd never been.

She filled our days with fun.

The only time she seemed stiff was when we were around her parents and sister. I was a guy who respected family—would die for them, so I couldn't understand Fleur's reticence.

Since my parents moved to EdinburghandSeamus died, the Landrys were my family in the States. Fleur should've also been my family, but she just didn't seem to care about her parents and sister. I'd asked her about it, and she prevaricated, cementing the idea that she just wasn't the family type.

She was flighty and enjoyed spending time with friends and pan-sexual musicians rather than kin. It would never work out between us, but I was enjoying my time with a woman so different from those who I dated before. She wasn't angling for anything from me—no ring, no promise, not even of loyalty and fidelity. She just lived in the moment, and I liked that about being with her.

"Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is not here. I want to live in today," she'd told me. "I like living in the present."

"What do you like about it?"

"Good or bad, my life at the moment is only for a moment. It's not some lifelong sentence or some past trauma to carry. Do you know that the Masai don't have a concept of time? They believe that now is where it's at."

"So, you're like the Masai?" I teased.

"I'm trying to be," she admitted seriously. "I don't want to dwell on the past because there were more bad times than good, and I don't want to worry about the future because I don't know how it's going to turn out."

I never asked her what she meant bymore bad times than good. I should have; because this happy and bright person didn't appear to have any baggage.

But everyone brought their past to their present. I just hadn't been curious. So, even after eight months together, I didn't know Fleur very well. She was still an enigma.

And I still wanted to fuck her.

Chapter 3

Fleur

Dad was upset with me.

"You can't tolerate your boyfriend having friends? Is that it? Or is this about your lifelong jealousy of Sabine?" he demanded when he came to see me at home.

I'd almost not opened the door, wondering if I could pretend I wasn't home. But my family so seldom visited me that I couldn't resist the need to be accepted so I'd let him in. It was a dumb thing to do, especially in the light of the conversation we were having.

"He left dinner as soon as she called, Dad. It was my birthday dinner." I sat on an armchair across from him, my hands clenching and unclenching on my lap. My family always made me feel like I was a sad little teenager, afraid of her own shadow, scared of being kicked out of the Landry household for saying or doing the wrong thing.

"So? Sabine was upset. She met someone who reminded her of Seamus and—"

"And then I heard him tell her that our relationship was just sex," I continued. My face heated because I was uncomfortable talking with my father about something so intimate.

"He asked you to move in with him," my father growled.

I kept my eyes lowered. "He also told her that it was temporary."Which was not how he'd sold it to me.

Dad scoffed. "He just said that to make her feel better. You have to understand that she lost her husband and her baby. She's feeling vulnerable seeing her sister move on. Where is your compassion, Fleur?"

My compassion? God! If only they knew how damned compassionate I was to Seamus's memory. How I wasn't telling them the truth. But I'd made Seamus a promise. I wouldn't tell anyone, and I wasn't going to betray that man, dead or alive, after what he'd been through right before his accident.

"You never approved of Callum and me dating, so I don't understand why you're here complaining about that relationship ending," I finally said, feeling exhausted.

I'd moved my stuff back and had spent the weekend unpacking. It had been three days and eighteen hours now since I saw Callum last, and I felt like breaking into a Sinead O'Connor classic song.

"He's upset. Sabine is upset. I don't like that."

---