A/N: Ehe thank you for waiting patiently for this chapter I've been dying to write since the start of this entire series. HEHE. I'd like you to know that I am so, very honored if you're still here or have decided to stay and wait for this moment. It feels like the crystallization of a push and pull: that in the end, Vanilla and Leroy understand each other more than they ever thought they did.
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[Leroy]
I was seven when Annie had to explain what the term 'divorce' meant. She said it was a thing that happened when people who were once in love decided that was no longer the case. So papers needed to be signed and lawyers needed to be hired to do the talking because the people who were once in love would not—and when all was said and done, the people could spend their time apart no longer as one. She'd said that to some, this was the happier ending; that sometimes, going separate ways could be a different, but better ever after. Siegfried was the one who disagreed.
I never knew why he did; he wasn't the sort of person who'd bother explaining things to his kid that were a tad too complicated for seven years of living and figured I wouldn't understand either way. Annie said he had the mind of a sheep. The kind that moved in flocks and thought the same as others only because it was too fond of being liked and couldn't behave otherwise. He'd never do anything out of the norm—whatever that was, established by a society that existed only in the heads of the lambs.
So it made sense how he'd made it into the hearts of an audience. A following that grew so deep and rooted in his mind that it was near impossible for him to remove and turn around or start anew. He became what the audience thought he was and stayed that way.
A good, honest chef with a couple of Michelin stars, a handsome face, and the charisma of an entertainer; who just so happened to prefer keeping family matters private and separate.
So Annie and Siegfried never signed the papers. He didn't want to. Someone like him would never risk the possibility of being singled out by people looking for a scoop because reputation was key and quite honestly, all that he had.
I don't know if he ever found someone else and started anew like Annie did with Rexi but it was what he said sipping that coffee out on the veranda in the vanilla farm, looking up at the sky with the clouds in his eyes that gave me the slightest idea. That maybe he did.
And maybe just like before, he'd given it up like the coward he was; because falling in love with that someone else was a risk and to him, that was all it was.
The entire thing made the rest of the trip back to the resort feel a tad unreal and it was only after seeing my personal snowstorm reading a book in a corner of the main lobby with a cup of tea by his side that the noise in my head died out.
"Goodness, I've been looking all over the place for you!" "Aw you missed me." "You didn't respond to my texts! And mind you, the only reason I've been out here waiting for hours on end is because you asked me to." "So you missed me." "You asked to meet me and, well, admittedly I'd only gotten to reading your text an hour past the time that was arranged so I'd made my way here as fast as I could and look at all the panic you've caused! All this without an explanation. It's a miracle I still—"
You could see the gears in his head come to a gradual stop. His ears darkened.
"Still...?" I approached.
YOU ARE READING
Wax
Romance[Sequel to Vanilla] Seven years later, childhood sweethearts Vanilla Julian White and Leroy Cox reunite in the City of London for an unlikely reason. The latter-once a burning flame unfazed by the wind-had, since a couple of years ago, left the heat...
