She peered at the neon green digits of the alarm clock before turning her attention back to the dimly glowing computer screen with a sigh.

4:42 in the f’in morning, not that she needed the timepiece to tell her that. It was late; she knew that. She should be asleep too, curled beneath her bedspread, dreaming peacefully. She had to get up at 6:00 so she could beat the traffic and arrive on time to her nine o’clock class. She had so many things that she had to do this day, this week, this month: responsibilities that pulled on her chest like an invisible weight, causing her to stoop her shoulders and hunch forward, physically burdened by the shear magnitude of it all.

Too much.

Classes, graduation, setting up her new job, moving into a new house.

Marriage.

There, she’d said it. The one word that terrified her above all others, that caused her throat to constrict like she couldn’t breath, choking her until she gasped for air.

Marriage.

And she didn’t love him anymore.

She wanted to cry at the veracity of the statement. She’d loved him then. Why couldn’t she love him now?

But things had changed between them, so slowly that neither of them noticed it until it was too late. If he even noticed at all.

She sighed and bit her lip painfully as she returned her attention to the glowing computer screen in front of her. She’d always had a thing for romance stories; in High School she’d had her secret little collection of dirty romance novels—safety tucked beneath her mattress, hidden from her mother’s prying eye and her sisters’ teasing. Then on a dull Friday or Saturday night, she’d curl up in her bed, heart aflutter as the Duke of Ashbury finally revealed his undying passion to Ms. Olivia Brown, poor untitled thing that she was.

“Oh, Duke Ashbury,” Olivia would exclaim. “You love me?”

“Miss Olivia, I love you more deeply than the depths of the ocean, with more constancy than time itself,” the Duke professed.

“Oh, Duke Ashbury!”

“Kiss me Miss Olivia!”

Cheesy, she knew.

Still, she was a sappy romantic at heart, and in High School she had averaged about five or six of those novels a month.

Now? She was now averaging five or six a night.

It had become an obsession, a drug really. Reading those romance stories was the only thing that got her through the long, sleepless nights. She’d turned to the computer for her fix, devouring internet-romances because she couldn’t borrow enough novels from the library to meet her ever constant need– the last time she’d checked out more than five of those dirty books, the librarian had appraised her with such a strange look, that she’d found herself blushing to the tips of her ears.

But what that crotchety old librarian didn’t understand was that she needed those novels. She needed to read those scenes: the chance glances between lovers, the first kisses, the first hesitant “I love yous.” And in those novels she’d lose herself. She’d pretend that she was female lead, and she was loved, and she loved him back.

It was all she had left, really.

She absently pursued her computer screen, the page highlighting several possible choices: A historical romance perhaps? A modern day? How about a fantasy? Hell, she’d even read the slash fiction: she wasn’t discriminating. Love was love. And not loving, but being loved in return was Hell!

And that was the worst part of the entire damned situation. She was sure that he loved her back. Although, then again she was dead sure that he didn’t love her at all. It was too damned confusing!

Sometimes he’d come to her, all smiles and soft kisses, and he’d make her heart sing just to see that look in his eyes. Only to make her feel about five inches tall the next day, snapping at her sharply for something so mundane as sitting down next to him on the wrong side of the couch. She just didn’t understand him half the time. He could go from acting so loving and caring to being an absolute bastard. Not that he was abusive: he never called her names or hit her or anything, but it was more the uncertainty of his character. She could never fully trust him, never fully lose herself to his smiling eyes, because she was never sure when those eyes would stop smiling. And it was this, her inability to trust him, that had worn her down. Little by little. Day by day. Year by year. He had been her everything to her, and now there was nothing. Just a dull, numbing sensation where her heart was supposed to be.

On the outside, she supposed that no one noticed. Not her friends, not her family, not even him. She’d tried to talk to him—telling him when she first felt her feelings for him begin to erode; pleading with him, trying to make him understand how his little mood swings, his sudden bouts of anger hurt her. How his brutish comments stung her. And would he please stop it? Because she loved him. She really loved him, even though his cruel jibes hurt her so much. But he didn’t listen because he just continued.

--

“He was burned in the past; she has never known how to love. So what happens when a bitter Parisian socialite meets a shy, young debutante? Read and find out!”

She read the summary with a critical eye, before shrugging her shoulders. The story sounded as good as any other.

She clicked on the hypertext, opening the first chapter and began to read.

---

1

---

“Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Viscount de Flour.” Her grasped her proffered hand in his own, and unable to stop himself, placed a single, soft kiss onto the back of her hand.

“Viscount de Flour,” she said dreamily, feeling her pulse tapping wildly in her ears.

---

She had met him at a stupid summer job. He was her manager and three and a half years older than she was. Seventeen and twenty one. High School Senior and College Junior. But she’d fallen for him. Hard. And he had loved her back—well at least that’s what she’d always told herself. He was enrolled in the college she’d just been accepted to. He changed his degree-plan the year that she entered, and she’d always believed that he’d done it for her: he wanted to graduate from college at the same time as she did. But knowing him as well as she did now, she couldn’t believe that reasoning. He was much too selfish to perform such a noble act. Virtue was only something one found in cheesy romance novels.

She sighed softly to herself.

But they were the perfect couple, she reminded herself, almost bitterly. At least that’s what everyone always said. So much in common.

They both went to the same church, liked to run long distance, enjoyed doing yard work. They both were the oldest of large families—well she was the second oldest of her family, but her older brother had moved out as soon as he’d turned eighteen. She’d lived at home all throughout college—at her mother’s hinted suggestions: the younger kids, especially her youngest brother needed a good role model. And because her mother wanted her stay home as the “role model,” she had assumed that position without thought-- abandoning the college lifestyle she’d always imagined: her first dorm room, her first apartment, her first roommates—because it was expected of her, and she always met with people’s expectations.

It’s always about the damned expectations, isn’t it? She all but snarled to herself. Everything! At her father’s urgings she had studied a major she hated. She was getting a job in a field that didn’t stimulate her in the least.

And she hated herself. She hated herself for being too weak to ever stand up to her father, to her mother, to him.

There were those people who did what she had always wanted to do: who graduated High School and had then just left. Gone. Far from the city they had grown up in, making their own way through life.

But she couldn’t do that. He was so anxious that she’d leave him. And she loved her family too much. Or maybe she was just too damned responsible for her own good. Always had to think about how her actions would affect everyone else. Always had to consider everyone else’s feelings first. Her younger siblings needing a role model, her boyfriend unable to give her up, her father insisting she enroll in a major she didn’t really want to. And she did it. Everything. She always did; she never took the time to even consider what she wanted.

---

2

---

She could feel the Viscount’s gaze on her then. From across the ballroom, his large, luminous eyes boring holes into the back of her neck.

He was angry, she knew. Jealous even?

And why? Because she was dancing with the Marquee de Burague?

She bit her lip in vexatation. If only de Flour knew how attractive she found him.

--

Her bedroom was a mixture of old and new. She’d banished the High School trophies to a cardboard box on the top of her closet shelf, but she still had her stuffed animal collection skillfully arranged on her bed. The walls of bedroom were painted a cheerful yellow hue—she’d insisted on repainting her walls after her freshman year of college, so at least in her mind something about her life had changed since High School graduation.

Because college life sucked. She was lonely and disoriented, partially as consequence of living at home, partially because her father had ‘acquired’ her car after her younger sister had totaled his and he insisted they car-pool into the city together, and partially because of her choice of majors—or rather her father’s choice for her.

Engineers were guys. Plain and simple. Almost ninety percent guys, and he was jealous as hell. He’d never gone and accused her of cheating on him, but it was the little looks that he gave her: the hurt, side-long, little puppy dog looks that caused her to voluntarily shy away from befriending her male peers.

But she never understood those looks. After all, she couldn’t hurt him like that! She loved him!

However, if he needed the reassures of her exclusive attention then she’d give it to him without a thought. She’d sacrifice her friendships.

---

3

---

“But Viscount de Flour will never love me,” she cried in a small, tremulous voice. “He is the most declared bachelor of all Paris. Oh! Why am I so foolish to love him? He tells me that he will never marry!”

---

At one point she’d realized that things were falling apart. It was nearing the end of her junior year of college. They’d been together for four years then. Four years. However whenever she even brought up the idea of getting married, when she stopped him excitedly at the jewelry counter while they walked the mall, he’d be so strange. Angry almost. He’d tell her that ‘he wasn’t ready for that yet,’ or ‘he was too young to be thinking such thoughts.’

And it hurt her, those things that he said to her. It hurt her so bad. Because she knew then that he wasn’t serious. He couldn’t be. He couldn’t say that he loved her, but then not want to be with her.

So she broke it off: four years, her first love, her only boyfriend, the only boy she’d ever kissed for God’s sake—and she broke it off. She didn’t know what else to do.

And during that break-up, did she miss him? Hell yes, of course she missed him! She had absolutely no friends; she still lived with her parents; she no longer even knew her close friend from High School.

She was so miserable that she wanted to shrink in upon herself and die.

But slowly, almost tentatively, something happened. It was like she could slowly see again, after four years of blindness, and the colors were so vibrant! So vivid! And she was laughing again: sweet peals of laughter.

She was learning to be happy again, to be comfortable with herself again (or maybe she’d never been comfortable with herself to begin with—she was only just seventeen when she’d first met him, just a child really, and he was always that much older than her, that much more experienced. The arrogant ass, he’d always made a point of telling her how much more mature he was than her).

But the point being, that she felt happy—happier than she’d been in such a very long time.

But he’d had to ruin.

---

4

---

She stared at Viscount de Flour, the questions swimming through her mind. She was so confused! If he did not love her then why did he look at her with such passion in his eyes? Or was she yet another of his conquests? Would that she knew!

“Just trust me,” he begged. “Please, I will mend my ways. Just one chance is all that I ask!”

“And how do I know that you are not deceiving me now?” She asked, her need to protect her poor heart stronger than her desire to kiss his lips. “How do I know that you can change? That you will not hurt me anew? ”

“Because I give you my word,” and with a strangled, almost carnal moan, he pulled her into his arms.

--

He proposed to her. After he’d made it painfully clear to her that he wasn’t interested in marrying her and after she had just settled into her life without him, then he proposed to her.

She told him no.

But then he just kept coming back, didn’t he? And he just kept apologizing. He apologized for everything: for all the hurtful comments, the sharp retorts, the disgusted looks that made her cry inside.

And she was so damned soft, that she believed him.

It was just like in all those stupid romance novels she loved: the arrogant Viscount is humbled. He sees the error of his ways, and they lived happily ever after.

She sure as hell didn’t feel so much happier now.

Yes, things were better for a while. He was so kind, and caring. He smiled, and he actually laughed. He laughed. And in those wonderful months she relaxed, she opened her heart to him, and she wanted to make him happy. When he proposed again, she accepted without hesitation: he was different now, and he truly loved her.

They’d set the wedding date; her mother had placed the down payment on the reception hall. She’d even bought her wedding dress for God’s sake: a frilly, silly white thing that she convinced herself he’d love her in.

And then started the little comments. The little looks. The little gestures that hurt her so much, that made her feel like she was nothing to him. And she felt cheated. Robbed. Used.

Didn’t she deserve to be loved? After everything that she had given for him, didn’t he owe her that one thing?

Apparently not.

And it was too late now anyway. Things were too far along. Her mother had already invested in the wedding. Her relatives had already purchased their plane tickets for the big day. She ate dinner with her soon-to-be in-laws almost twice a week. She had a mountain of engagement presents piled in the corner in of her room, for God’s sake!

She was trapped. She was stuck. She was drowning beneath a sea of responsibilities, and expectations, and mixed messages. And all the time he just seemed to watch, oblivious.

She felt numb. Dry inside, and yet so cold. Tired even.

She’d cry, if she had the care left to do so. She’d scream, if she could free that chokehold from her throat.

How could she be so naïve to think that he could change?

---

5

---

How could she make him feel so much? The Viscount wondered amazedly. Just a simple look in her eyes, a simple smile, and it was enough.

The power she contained over his heart frightened him, frankly. If she chose she could reduce him to nothing. With one word, one cruel gesture, he’d be nothing.

She must have noted the apprehension in his eyes, because she said softly. “Do not be afraid, mi amour.”

--

The wedding looms over her like a drunken vulture and she just wants it to be over with. Just let it happen. Let her be bound in her cage already! Then at least she’ll be comfortable! Right now she feels like she is sitting behind the bars, the cell door swinging open, staring at the freedom beyond, but never having the courage to make a run for it.

After all, she is the responsible one. And she knows how embarrassed her poor mother would be. She knows the hollow look she’d receive from her soon-to-be in-laws (and she loves them as dearly as her own family: after five years, how could she not?) And she can’t face that accusatory stare; the one she knew would be burning in his eyes. The unspoken question: how dare you do this me!?!

And he’d never consider what he’d done to her. How he’d hurt her so much, that she can’t even force herself to be upset.

She just doesn’t care anymore.

Too numb to care.

Too unfeeling.

Just close the cage. Lock the door. Throw away the key.

She hates him.

---

6

---

“I love you!” Viscount de Flour said fiercely, pulling her roughly into his arms. “I love, and I’ll always love you. And I shall live the rest of my days loving you!”

And as the Viscount’s lips came crashing down, claiming her own, she sighed in happiness. Dreams really did come true.

They would live happily ever after.

--

She turns the computer off, and the screen goes black.

There is no such thing as happily ever after.