Page 2 of Belle Amour

She found them both sitting on the couch. Eddie had his head in his hands and was muttering about recklessness and stupidity while Casey rubbed his back. They both looked up when she appeared in the doorway but didn’t move away from one another.

“Mira!” Eddie started to get up. “Let me explain...” Mirabelle held her hand up, cutting him off, and he slowly sat back down.

“How long have you been fucking her?” She asked calmly.

“Mira.” Eddie looked around hopelessly, like he expected someone to appear and fix things magically. “Please, just hear me out; I know this looks really bad…”

“Answer the question!” She snapped. She had no patience for his stalling tactics.

“A year,” Casey said quietly, making Eddie turn and glare at her, but she ignored him. “We love each other.”

“Shut up!” He hissed, looking panicked. “What are you doing?”

“Thank you.” Mirabelle nodded and took off her wedding and engagement rings before Eddie had a chance to speak again, laying them quietly on the hall table, noticing her fake plant was missing. She hoped the smell of her vomit ruined the mood for them. There was no coming back from a year-long affair, and it would not have mattered if what she walked in on was the first time or the hundredth. “I'm going to go pack a bag. All further communication between us will go through our lawyers.” Shelaid Bastian's card on the table next to her rings. “He will let your lawyer know when I will be coming to pick up the rest of my things.” The house was in both their names, so she couldn’t legally kick him out. She also didn’t want to stay and have to deal with him every day, so Bastian was letting her stay with him until the house was sold and she was able to get a place.

“We don't need to go through lawyers, Mira.” Eddie's face paled. Mirabelle smirked. Bastian had made his name as a ruthless divorce lawyer over the years; the soon-to-be ex-spouses of the upper class of New York City fought to get to him first, and she knew the idea of going up against Bastian in a court setting was terrifying for most divorce lawyers.

“Oh, I think we do.” She turned and walked up the stairs to their bedroom, pulled her suitcase from the closet, and began packing it. Eddie scrambled up the stairs after her.

“Mira, come on, we can do this amicably. I know I fucked up here, but I am sorry.” He ran his hand anxiously through his limp blonde hair. “I truly never meant to hurt you, I just… I couldn’t decide.” He finished lamely.

Rolling her eyes, she pulled out her phone and texted Bastian to come in. She ignored Eddie as he continued to try and justify screwing another woman in their house and continued to pack her important documents, electronics, clothes, and jewelry, moving between the bedroom, the ensuite and her office as she filled up her bags with Eddie trailing behind her.

“All communication with my client goes through me from this point forward.” Bastian came into the room and stood to one side of the door with his arms folded. At 6'2 and 210 lbs. of muscle encased in an expensively tailored designer suit and an air of fuck around and find out about him, Bastian cut an intimidating and impressive figure. Looking at him resentfully, Eddie backed off and went downstairs.

Twenty minutes later, Mirabelle and Bastian walked down the stairs to hear Eddie and Casey arguing.

“If you had been a man about things with this all started, none of this would have happened.” Mirabelle wasn’t sure if it was her personal bias against Casey, but she could swear the woman sounded gleeful about this whole situation.

“You don’t understand.” Eddie groaned as they walked by the opening to the living room; they could see him slumped over with his head in his hands. “We’re fucked.”

Mirabelle and Bastian smirked at one another as they let themselves out. He had no idea just how fucked he was. Bastian always went above and beyond for his clients, but he would go to the ends of the earth for Mirabelle.

Chapter Two: How It Started

Mirabelle and Bastian grew up in an impoverished section of New Orleans’ French Quarter. Bastian’s family moved in next door to Mirabelle and her mother the summer before third grade, and they became instant friends. Mirabelle didn’t know who her father was; her mother was a prostitute and a stripper who loved her daughter dearly but was often away for long periods, leaving Mirabelle alone in the house for days at a time. Bastian would frequently hide out there while his parents screamed at one another. His biological father died when he was five, and his mother turned to alcohol. She married the first man who asked, and his stepfather was very verbally abusive until Bastian turned twelve, when it evolved into physical abuse. The first time his stepfather beat him was because he caught Bastian smuggling food out of the house for a nearly starving Mirabelle, whose mother hadn’t brought food back in close to a week. Mirabelle had patched him up as best she could, and they slept cuddled up together in her bed for the first time, vowing to always be there for each other.

It was during those nights, sharing Mirabelle’s twin bed, that they made their plans for the future. They were smart; they knew their best chance of getting out of their situation was to work hard and do well in school. One of their teachers, an older, stringent woman named Clara Bell, who never married or had children and was known for being a demanding teacherto please, developed a soft spot for them. She convinced her brother, Ned, to hire them at his convenience store when they were thirteen and to pay them under the table. They worked hard, putting out stock, keeping the store clean, helping customers, and when the store wasn’t busy, they would study in the stockroom. Clara and Ned set up bank accounts for them under their names after Bastian’s stepfather found some of the money he had hidden in the room and stole it.

It came out in the eighth grade that Mirabelle’s mother was a stripper who prostituted on the side when another parent who used her services saw her at an award ceremony and told his son. Mirabelle’s life became hell after. She never had many friends, but after that, she only had Bastian and two or three of his friends who didn’t abandon him for sticking with her. The girls bullied her, and the boys seemed to think her mother's occupation gave them free rein over her body. Bastian protected her and beat more than one boy up for groping her in the hallway or on the bus. He was arrested at fifteen when he walked in on a mutual friend attempting to rape her. They were at the boy’s house, and he took Mirabelle to show her where the bathroom was. When he didn’t return after, Bastian went looking for them and found them in his bedroom; Mirabelle pinned under him, sobbing while he held one hand over her mouth and tried to get her pants off with the other. Bastian broke the boy’s nose and knocked out several teeth before Mirabelle was able to pull him away and whisper that she wanted to go home.

The boy’s parents came home and called the cops upon finding their son semi-conscious in his bedroom, bloodied and bruised. Bastian’s stepfather came through for him at that time. When Mirabelle told him what had happened, he called a lawyer, found Mirabelle’s mother at the strip club, and then brought them both to the police station so Mirabelle could give astatement. Within four hours of Bastian’s arrest, he was released without charges, and the other boy was arrested for attempted rape. He ended up getting off with a slap on the wrist, but word got out at school, and the family had to move away.

While they both had crushes on each other on and off over the years and messed around throughout junior and senior high school, even losing their virginity to one another at sixteen – the only time they had sex - they mutually agreed that their focus was on school and work, getting straight A’s and saving money to move to New York City and attend Columbia Law School. When they were seventeen, Clara died after a battle with cancer, and to their shock and delight, Ned informed them that while she didn’t have a lot of money left after the medical bills, she did leave them her car and enough money to get them to New York. When they graduated high school and announced they had gotten into Columbia, Ned signed their bank account over to them, and they found out that he had been adding a little extra when he was able to. Unlike Clara, he had a wife and kids, so it wasn’t a lot, but it was the equivalent of about three months' rent in New York City. They packed up the car and left New Orleans the day they picked up their report cards.

Their relationship was never able to move past best friends, despite the love they had for one another, because Mirabelle was adamantly against having children. She babysat a few times as a teenager, and everything about children bothered her. She didn’t outright hate them and actually enjoyed the stage where they asked questions about everything, but when they cried or got too loud, her patience would vanish instantly. While a crying child had most people on their feet to check on them, it went through her like a fork scraping on a plate, and she was instantly annoyed. She also didn’t like having anything oranyone dependent on her for survival. She never owned plants, and while she loved animals, she didn’t want to look after them.

Bastian, on the other hand, desperately wanted a family. He wanted to prove he could do it better than his parents, and while Mirabelle thought that was a terrible reason to have children, she never said anything or tried to change his mind. His dream was a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, three kids and a dog, and hers was to travel and see all the things she had only read about growing up. She didn’t want to settle or be held back by outside influences.

It was in their first year of university that they realized their life goals didn’t align, and they were both broken by it. Mirabelle had always followed Bastian. He was the more outgoing and assertive of them, and while he never told her what to do, she was more dependent on him than he was on her. Because of this, he held on to the hope that she would change her mind about children for far longer than she hoped he would change his.

University was where Mirabelle found herself and her confidence. While Bastian did his undergraduate in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, she did hers in Earth and Environmental Sciences. For the first time, Mirabelle and Bastian were doing things without each other. Bastian joined the wrestling team and the debate society, while Mirabelle joined the Eco-Reps and Environmental Biology Society. They still did things together, like the Mock Trial Club and the Pre-Law Society, but they drifted apart despite sharing an apartment.

In their first year of Law School, Bastian met Ana Nickels and fell hard and fast for her. Mirabelle distanced herself even more, moving into an apartment with friends from her classes halfway through the year because she couldn’t handle Bastian bringing Ana back to their apartment at night. Ana moved inright away, and he proposed to her after passing the bar and getting his first job with a law firm.

It was after the engagement and when he was over the honeymoon period with Ana that he realized he barely saw Mirabelle anymore and began reaching out, wanting to spend time together. Mirabelle let him back into her life but kept him at arm's length for a while. Ana was not a fan of Mirabelle, and she didn’t want to step on her toes or create problems. Two years later, she sat with Bastian’s family at their wedding ceremony, silently crying throughout the whole thing. She ducked out of the reception early to go home and eat ice cream with her roommate.

But, in some weird twist of fate, both Bastian and Mirabelle got hired at the same law firm, Tulk and Associates, a year later, and it very quickly became apparent that they were a dream team. They rose quickly to become the stars of the firm. Mirabelle had the research and investigative skills that private investigators would kill for, and Bastian was a beast in the courtroom, arguing circles around the opposing council. It made for a lot of longer hours in the office together, and they slowly became closer again until their friendship had returned to normal, just a lot less physically affectionate.

---