Futile Resistance Ch. 08

*****

French had taken a taxi to her apartment and once there, had called and booked a seat for herself on the evening flight to London and from there, to Paris. She called her cousin, Marie-Josée, who lived in Paris and told her that she would be there the next day. Marie-Josée had been delighted that she was coming for a visit, but had known that something must be very wrong if French was taking a trip on such short notice. French hadn't had time to explain. She threw a few things into a bag and left for the airport.

Her life had suddenly gotten a great deal more complicated. In the space of only a few days, she had met Aidan's parents, encountered her biological father in person for the first time in her life, fought furiously with Aidan and parted from him on bad terms. Mixed in with all the stress, she had had an all too fleeting glimpse of what it meant, what it felt like, to be happy and hopeful. She had realized that Aidan was the man for her, the man to whom she wanted to commit, to spend the rest of her life with. He had stripped her bare and made her take a long hard look at what had been revealed. Her love for him, her need for him, her devotion to him had come blazing forth.

She had been shocked at the intensity of her feelings. She had always kept them buried, denied them because acknowledging them - sharing them - meant vulnerability. She hadn't realized that vulnerability was one of the things that defined loving and being in love. Trusting a lover to love, protect and cherish was part of what it was all about. Aidan did all of that for her, always had, but she had been unwilling to admit it.

So, she had told him. Patrick Hurst was her father. They had finished breakfast and were sitting around when his mother called. Hurst, in order to explain his presence at Aidan's apartment that morning, had concocted a story that Maggie had sent him there to check up on Aidan and French. Maggie had denied it. Aidan had been suspicious already, having walked in on what could only be described as a heated standoff between French and Patrick Hurst. He had let them think he was satisfied with their excuses, but he had known something wasn't right. Finally, he had forced French to tell him the truth about what was going on between her and Hurst.

She had equivocated, hoping he would just let it go. Of course he hadn't. They had gone back and forth, countering each other's arguments until he had said that his parents had made up their own minds about her and wouldn't care what anyone else said.

He was right about them. Iain and Maggie were smart people. Her conscience wouldn't allow her to sell them short. They were standup people who knew their own minds and she could tell that they were the kind of people who weren't afraid to speak up when they knew a wrong had been done. Aidan was just like them in that regard. In light of admitting that to herself, she realized that she had been stupid to withhold Hurst's identity from Aidan. If he was half the man she knew him to be, he'd be OK with what she told him; understandably, he'd be upset and shocked down to his bones, but ultimately, he'd be OK. To love, to be loved, meant to trust. She would just tell the truth.

She had then made a leap of faith, had decided to trust in him. When he had reacted with disbelief, she had been shocked, angry and scared. Angry because how dare he not believe her? Did he think she was capable of making up such a wild story? Scared because she had leaped off of a cliff and was in a free fall waiting for him to catch her. And he wasn't there. Instead of holding his arms out to catch her, he had stepped away at the last second, causing her to fall flat on her face.

How had she misread him, misjudged him, so badly? He kept telling her over and over again that she needed to trust him and as soon as she had placed full trust in him, he had deserted her. It's like it was all a game to him.Dupe poor little French in to falling in love, then dump her. The old dupe and dump. She felt like such a fool. Much more a fool than her mother had ever been, because at least Marcheline's relationships with men hadn't been based on anything but sex and money.

French passed the hours before her flight pacing the international departures terminal. She felt reasonably sure that Aidan wouldn't be able to find her there. She had turned off her cell phone, knowing that he would try to reach her. She knew that no one could get into the terminal without a ticket or boarding pass, so no problem there. The airlines wouldn't give out any passenger information if he called to ask if she was on a particular flight, so she was safe there, too. She was anxious to get underway, nonetheless, because the longer she was in town, the more time Aidan had to figure out where she was.

She was sure that Aidan would have expected her to be waiting for him when he came back from his run.Arrogant swine! she thought,As if I'm stupid enough to sit around waiting for him to come home so he could berate me and call me a liar! What a surprise it must have been when he'd returned to find her gone.

French wasn't above feeling a tiny bit of glee when she thought of him looking for her, frantically calling and going to her apartment.How long before he realized she was really gone? Not just hiding out in her apartment, but gone far away, out of his reach?

She needed time away. This impromptu getaway would wreck her budget, but she just couldn't deal with this latest spate of trouble. Paris always made her feel better. Being broody and depressed was almost impossible in the City of Light. The beauty and permanence of the city always made her realize that she could endure even the toughest of circumstances. Historically, Paris had seen war and plunder, yet had survived to become a world capitol, a center of art and culture, one of the most beautiful places in the world. If Paris could survive, so could she.

She only had one week in Paris in which to avoid reality. After that, she would return to Boston and face the music. She knew that leaving town was only an interim solution. Actually, it wasn't a solution at all. Her little sojourn in Paris would only delay the inevitable showdown with Aidan.Or maybe there wouldn't be a showdown, she thought, as doubt sprang into her mind,maybe he would be glad she had left and would just pretend that she had never existed. It was possible that he would feel nothing but relief that she had removed herself from his life.

Tears welled in her eyes at the very thought. Though she was angry with him for walking out on her, she couldn't really blame him. She knew she was a complicated person. This latest revelation about Hurst being her father may have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Aidan was unused to drama in his life and it seemed like she had brought nothingbut drama to their relationship from day one. Her fear of commitment, her inability to trust people, her aloofness... All had contributed to the constant push and pull within their relationship. While French had done everything she could to eliminate the drama in her life, the last few months hadn't been what she would call placid. Aidan deserved to have the peaceful life he wanted. She would allow him to have it.

*****

Aidan arrived at French's building and rang the buzzer. There was no answer and no way to tell if she was home and deliberately not answering or if she were truly gone. He sighed in dejection, hoping that she was there. If she was there, he had a chance of talking to her, of reasoning with her. He stood in the vestibule for a few more minutes, then buzzed her unit again. When he got no answer, he decided to sit in his car where it was parked in front of her building, just hoping that she might come home from wherever she was or, if she was inside, maybe she would go out and he would catch as she left.

He sat in his cold car, desperate to see her. His eyes never left the door of her building for fear of missing her as she came or went. As he watched and waited, he tried to figure out what she might be thinking. Knowing her, she had probably jumped to a wild conclusion about what his response to her 'news' had been. Hopefully she hadn't done anything rash.

She had been very angry with him when he'd left to go running. He had never seen her like that. Screaming and swearing at him in a way that was wholly uncharacteristic of her – she'd been totally out of control. In retrospect, he probably shouldn't have left her. He should have stayed to find out precisely why she was so upset. It's not like she hadn't known all along who her father was, though. She couldn't have been upset about only that. Which only left one explanation: she was upset withhim for some reason.

He called her best friend in town, Fifi, to see if she had gone there. Fifi was out of town until after the New Year, he remembered when the only answer he got was her voice mail. She was out of the country, so it was unlikely that she would have heard from French. He called Peter, the French horn player in her quintet. It galled him that he had to call the guy; they had never gotten along because Peter held atendre for French and made no secret that he thought Aidan wasn't good enough for her. French considered him a good friend, though, and she might have gone to him if she had wanted to avoid Aidan.

"Peter, it's Aidan Conal. How are you?"

"Fine, Aidan. You?" Peter responded guardedly.

"I've been better. Have you seen French today?"

"No," surprise was evident in his voice. "I haven't seen her since the last gig we played together. Isn't she with you? Is something wrong?"

"She was with me. We had an argument and I left in the middle of it to go for a run. When I got back, she was gone. She won't answer her phone, her cell is turned off and she won't answer her door. I'm sitting in front of her place and, since there are no lights on up there, I'm guessing she's not there," Aidan finished, his tone bleak.

"An argument, huh?" Peter asked, no doubt dying to know what it had been about. "Must have been a doozy for her to run away from you..."

"Look, she didn't 'run away',"You twit, he thought. "I was just wondering if you had heard from her. Since you haven't, I'll let you go."

Peter took pity on him. With a long-suffering sigh, he said, "Oh all right. I'll try her cell and her home phone to see if she'll take my call."

"That would be great, Peter, thanks. Call me if you hear anything. I'm pretty worried about her."

"Yeah, me too. I'll call you back."

Hope grew in Aidan's heart that French would talk to Peter and then he would at least know that she was OK. He'd looked up at her apartment, seen the dark windows and felt desolate thinking that she might be up there, sitting alone in the dark. Aside from him, Fifi and Peter were the closest friends French had. If Peter couldn't reach her, he didn't know what his next step would be.

His phone chirped at him. A text message from Peter.

Called. No answr.

Shit, he thought.Now what? He couldn't sit outside her apartment all night, her neighbors would think he was a stalker. He started the car and headed home.

*****

French's flight was finally called, late, as was the norm at Logan Airport. The controlled chaos of the boarding process began. After being nearly knocked over by an overeager elderly couple who had been dead set on getting to their seats ahead of everyone else, she was finally settled in her seat. She just wanted the plane to take off, there'd be no turning back then and no way Aidan could find her. With an ocean between them, maybe she could start to examine with more clarity how she felt about what had happened and decide what she would do about it. Until then, she could hardly bear to think about it.

She felt so lonely, which was unusual, because she had always been a loner. Growing up, she had preferred her own company to that of others and once she was out on her own, that preference hadn't changed. She had been happy with her own thoughts and playing her flute had provided her with the escape she often craved. She wrote in her journal or read when she didn't feel like playing. She wasn't the type to fall prey to boredom. When she wanted company, she sought it, but those occasions were few and far between. Usually, she could count on Fifi to be up for doing something and more often than not, it was Fifi who insisted that she get out more in order to prevent her from becoming a hermit.

It occurred to her that while she liked being alone, she had never actually beenlonely. Lonely was a whole different thing than being alone. Lonely was when everyone important to you had abandoned you. She had grown accustomed to her mother's absenteeism and no longer thought of it in terms of abandonment. In truth, her mother had never been there for her, so technically she couldn't have been abandoned by Marcheline. And her mother had long ceased to be anything other than an annoyance to her. She didn't even come close to rating on French's list of important people. Aidan, however, was different.

He had become the one person she could rely on. He was steady. Constant. She had trusted him. He had abandoned her, withdrawn from her in disgust when he heard what she had to say. It was her greatest fear come to fruition. She had known better than to let this happen to her. She had safeguarded herself from just this sort of eventuality and the one time she had let her guard down, look what happened.

She hauled her thoughts in, not wanting to travel the road they would lead her down. The plane had just pushed back from the gate. They would be airborne in a few short minutes. French dug around in her bag for the over-the-counter sleeping pills she had bought from an airport kiosk. She wanted to be blissfully unaware of the hours that lay between her and the safe haven waiting for her in Paris. Though the package insert cautioned against drinking alcohol while using the pills, she was tempted to throw caution to the wind and have a glass of wine, too. Wine and the sleeping pill would ensure that she would slide effortlessly into the numbness she craved right now.

*****

Aidan paced restlessly around his apartment. He'd racked his brain and hadn't been able to think of where she might be. He'd come dangerously close to stalking her. He hated himself for that. He wasn't like that normally. He scoffed. He hadn't been anything like normal since resuming his relationship with French. The real him would have walked away from a woman who needed so much. But French had tapped into something somewhere within him that had him wanting to give her everything, absolutely everything, she needed. He didn't know what it was about her. She was always so tightly contained, high-strung and stand-offish.

Initially, he admitted, she had presented a challenge to his masculinity. He'd wanted to figure out the mystery of why she was the way she was. Not to mention that she was gorgeous and unbelievably sexy. At first he'd thought of her as an untouchable ice-maiden. Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth and all of that. But, wow. Sex with her was explosive. No denying that. But it wasn't just the sex that had kept him coming back to her. It had happened gradually. Little by little, he had unraveled her and he'd liked what had been revealed. She was everything he wanted in a life mate. She was strong, loyal, classy and lovable. She would never be easy. He knew all of that and still wanted her.

He had thought they had made a lot of progress the night before. She'd tried to resist him with every fiber of her being, but she hadn't been able to do it – he hadn't let her. He had made love to her roughly, gently and in every other imaginable way, with every imaginable emotion underpinning their couplings. In the end, he thought he had shown her that he was trustworthy and that he'd always put her well-being first, but that he would no longer tolerate her continued resistance to him and to their relationship. He had thought she had finally been able to come to terms with the fact that he was in her life to stay.

Just before dawn – had it only been that very morning? – he had rolled over and taken her in his arms. He had pressed gentle kisses to her lips, waking her slowly. She had been cuddly in her half-awake state, had snuggled into him with a contented murmur. He'd kissed her more insistently and she murmured again, wanting to go back to sleep. He rolled on top of her, spread her legs and sank into her. They had both winced at the penetration, their genitalia having become acutely, almost painfully, sensitive during the many vigorous hours they had spent making love. But he hadn't been inclined to stop and he wasn't giving her a chance to resist or call a halt to the action.

He'd tilted his hips, shifting slowly back and forth inside her. He continued to kiss her, fusing their mouths together with lazy, drugging kisses. She grew wetter and hotter beneath him, accepting him easily. The wet, swollen heat of the walls of her pussy pressed tightly around his cock and he had wanted to stay in her forever. He rolled onto his back and let her ride him. She had taunted him, tantalized him, with the slow undulations of her hips. They had rocked together quietly, unhurriedly – almost casually - as they looked deeply into one another's eyes. In hers, he thought he'd seen a softening, a warmth, a knowing. He had taken what he'd seen there as signs of her acceptance - of her love - for him. The tumblers of his heart had clicked into place. Everything had felt just right, including the long, rippling orgasms that had bubbled up between them and swept gently over their bodies.

He groaned, feeling frustrated just thinking about it. At the time, he had felt fulfilled, had known that everything was going to be OK. He had to wonder now, though, if it was hubris that made him think she had really accepted and understood what he'd told her over and over again, in both word and deed.Wouldn't she be right here by his side if she had?

He had a fizzy, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was desperate with the need to have French by his side and felt a fool because of it. Here he was, a grown man and he couldn't eat, sleep or eventhink without knowing where she was, what she was thinking and how she was doing. He feared he would turn into 'that guy' - the one who was totally whipped by his woman. Truthfully, though, he couldn't have cared less; French could whip him or do whatever else she wanted to do to him. He had it bad for her and he would stop at nothing to see her back in his arms where she belonged.