Free Web NovelChapter 31: [31] "Rose Part 1"
The day after Corse felt like the first quiet day in weeks.
No travel. No press conference. No Valérie texting about Fontaine’s goals.
Just the cold morning.
Luc was already dressed when Juliette appeared in the kitchen doorway in her oversized white shirt, her hair loose and holding her phone in a way that suggested she had just received a message she wasn’t planning to mention.
Luc didn’t ask.
He poured her a coffee and placed it on the counter without turning around. "Your birthday is tomorrow."
"I know when my birthday is," Juliette said.
"I booked us a table somewhere." He turned. "Not L’Arc, somewhere quieter."
She looked at him over the rim of the mug she had just picked up. Her green eyes suggested she was intrigued.
"Quieter?" she repeated.
"You spend enough time in places with a lot of noise, whether you’re working pitch side or you’re in a meeting, " Luc said. He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair. "Tomorrow you don’t have to worry about any of that."
"Awww, Luc." She held the mug with both hands, looking very bashful. "What time?"
"8pm."
---
Le Clarence sat on the Île Saint-Louis like a secret the 8th arrondissement kept from the rest of the city. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
No red carpet. No paparazzi corridor. A black door with a discreet gold plate and a gaurd who wore an expression as if he were guarding a vault. The place had adopted silence as a feature.
Luc arrived at 7:55pm.
He wore dark trousers and a clean black shirt with two buttons open. He had come in the Porsche this time, it was a special day afterall.
An attendant showed him to the table. A corner booth, inside the restaurant was candlelit and had deep burgundy walls that made every conversation private by design.
He ordered a scotch and waited. Though he didn’t wait long as Juliette arrived at 8pm exactly.
She wore a deep navy dress, fitted to the shoulder, her dark hair pinned at one side. No clipboard today, no tight ponytail an certainly no clinical efficiency in her posture.
She looked like a different woman. The woman underneath the physiotherapist.
She sat down across from him without saying anything. Don’t worry, it was the silence of pure lovers.
The waiter appeared and she ordered wine. Red wine. She chose without even looking at the menu.
"You’ve been here before," Luc said.
"Once. A long time ago." She looked around the room for a moment. "Different company."
---
The food came in courses. Between them the conversation was different compared to what it usually was. No wager tallies or tactical breakdowns.
She talked about growing up in Lyon. The youngest of three. Her father had been a club doctor for a lower-league side and she had spent adolescence in physio rooms that smelled exactly like the one at SC Valois. She had hated it then. Now she didn’t know anything else.
Luc listened. He was not a natural listener. He was better at talking if we’re being honest. But he listened tonight.
He told her about his college years. Not the goals or the draft or the scholarship. The parts he hadn’t told anyone. The way the American game had begun to feel like a closed room with four walls of grass and predictable defenders and a ceiling he could already touch.
He had needed the door that Chloé had pointed at. Even if Chloé herself had been setting a trap.
Juliette listened too. Not that they hadn’t talked about these things before, they went just a little bit deeper.
---
At the far end of the restaurant, in a booth that mirrored theirs almost exactly, two women were finishing their second course.
One had short white hair cut close to her forehead, dark skin, a quiet stillness in her posture. She wore a simple black jacket and had barely touched her wine.
Her name was Zara Goza. SEE CHARACTER PROFILE
The other had long pink hair, loose around her shoulders, and wore an expression of easy warmth. She was talking about something completely unrelated to the restaurant, to Paris, or to the cold evening outside.
Her name was Rose Montgomery. SEE CHARACTER PROFILE
She stopped mid-sentence.
Her best friend Zara noticed immediately.
"What,"
Rose didn’t answer right away. She had tilted her head slightly, like when you see something unexpected and the brain takes a moment to think through it carefully.
She was looking across the room.
At the corner booth. At the man in the black shirt who was leaning slightly forward over the table, his forearms resting on the white linen, speaking quietly to the dark-haired woman across from him.
"Who is that?" Rose said quietly.
Zara turned her head. Her white hair bounced light from the candlelight.
"You’re staring." Zara said.
"I know I’m staring." Rose picked up her glass without breaking her gaze. "I can’t stop."
Zara studied the man. Her expression didn’t shift. She turned back to her food. "He’s with someone."
"I can see that," Rose said. She finally looked away. Took a slow sip of wine and set the glass down. "That doesn’t change what I asked. Who is he?"
Rose had played football since she was seven years old. She had been at Paris Royal for three seasons. She had won medals and dealt with managers, press conferences, and the attention that came from being a woman with pink hair in professional sport.
She was not a person who got startled by much.
But she felt it the moment she looked at him. A very inconvenient, completely involuntary pull. Her heart didn’t ask permission.
She looked again. Luc was laughing now, maybe from something the dark-haired woman had said. The laugh was short and unguarded, nothing like the cold face she had now recognised from TV. From the coverage of some wager involving a man her club’s star player appeared to be losing sleep over.
Luc Beaumont.
She placed the name carefully in her chest and felt it settle with a weight that wasn’t comfortable.
"You finally recognise him," Zara said. She hadn’t looked up from her plate.
"Yes," Rose said.
"He’s Fontaine’s problem."
"Yes. He’s Fontaine’s problem," Rose agreed.
She picked up her fork, took a small bite of her food... she looked one more time.
He had leaned back now, one arm over the back of his chair, at ease in the room. The dark-haired woman was smiling at something he said. They looked like two people who had carved out a pocket of silence for themselves.
Rose looked at that pocket and felt something uncharacteristically like longing.
Zara set down her cutlery.
"Rose."
"What?" Rose said.
"You don’t even know him."
"I know," Rose turned back to her food and made a sincere effort to focus on it. "I know, Zara."
Zara watched her for a moment, then decided to say nothing more.
Rose didn’t stop sneaking peeks at Luc’s corner booth.
---
Luc and Juliette left before 11pm.
The attendant held the door. Juliette took Luc’s arm as they stepped outside. She tilted her head up slightly. The city around them had gone dark and quiet.
"Thank you, Love. It was a good birthday, one of the best I’ve had," she said quietly.
Luc looked down at her and said mischievously, "we’re only just getting started."
She smiled and kissed his cheek.
As they left, the restaurant returned to its private hush.
At the far booth, Rose Montgomery sat with her wine glass and stared at the empty corner table for a moment longer than was reasonable.
And as she watched it, Zara watched her.
