One Good Man

“Thank you for being here,” he said to me, his gravelly, bedroom voice sounding exactly as it was meant to be heard.

I smiled and kissed him gently. “Thank you for letting me in.”

Janey

Night fell outside Adrien’s small window. We lay tangled in one another, me lying over his chest, his hand lazily sliding up and down my bare back.

“You’re so warm,” I murmured, nuzzling his neck. “I’m not going to leave here ever, if that’s okay with you.”

His chest rumbled beneath mine with his gravelly voice. “I wasn’t planning on letting you go, so that works out.”

I grinned and propped my chin on my hand to look at him. “You are nothing like what I expected,” I said. “Nothing.”

“In a good way, I hope.”

“The best way.”

He raised a brow at me. “Don’t blow my cover.”

He was teasing but I answered him seriously. “I won’t. I won’t write a word for the article. I don’t care if Antoine fires me.”

Adrien’s chest rose and fell beneath me in a sigh. “I don’t know, Janey. I don’t know what’s supposed to happen next.”

“You go to that symposium with the doctors Kouchner and Recamiér,” I said.

Adrien’s gaze turned to the darkness outside the window. “There will be scouts at the game. Even if I don’t play, I have to be there.” He laughed shortly. “The team will hate me. I don’t know if showing up will help them or hurt them, but I have to go.”

“If they can’t win without you, they don’t deserve to advance, right?” I said. “A team can’t survive on one player alone. That’s too much pressure on you.”

“It’s not true anyway,” Adrien said. “They have the skill to win without me but there’s a mental game, too. Their confidence is obviously shaken, and they played like shit.” He sighed again. “What a mess.”

“You need to live your life,” I said gently. “Become a doctor. Save the world. I know you can do it.” I lightly grazed circles on his chest with my fingernails. “But whatever you decide, I’ll support you.”

Adrien smiled faintly at me. “Thank you, Janey. I feel like I can breathe again, now that someone outside the family knows what’s happened. And you’re still here.”

“Of course I am. I’m not going anywhere. I’m pretty sure we already established that.”

He bent to kiss me, and when he pulled back he regarded me a moment in silence.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I want you to write the article.”

I blinked, lifted my head off my hand. “The whole story?”

He nodded. “All of it. About living here, med school, about what Vietnam did to my father…”

“But Adrien…”

“Leave out the particulars of my family’s finances,” he said. “For my mother’s sake. She couldn’t bear the humiliation. But everything else...”

My brows knit together. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve never been more sure. It’s like confession that is long overdue.”

I nodded. “I’ll make sure I protect your mother, but I want to be honest about how you’re providing for them. More than anything, I want to write that.” I smiled. “It’s the angle.”

Adrien didn’t return my smile. “That’s not the angle. Vietnam is the angle. How war tears apart families and countries alike. It ended for France in ‘54, and yet we’re still feeling it.”