At the exact moment I come inside this little cafe in Paris, and my eyes land on her I know why I'm here. I love her. Endlessly and desperately. She's everything I need and want. And I'll do everything in my power to make her mine. Officially and without fears. It takes every ounce of strength to restraint myself from running to her, taking her into my arms and kissing her, showing her how much I miss her. But she deserves more. Explanations, apologies, respect. She'll be the one to make the decision to forgive me or send me to hell. So I patiently wait while Alec is saying goodbye to her. When he passes next to me, and squeezes my shoulder in encouragement, whispering "it's gonna be okay, call me when you need me", I nod at him, and walk towards her. I can't help taking in every piece of her. She doesn't seem as frail as she was when I saw her the last time, even if dark circles are still showing under her greenish eyes. The black dress and leather jacket she is wearing are making her sinfully desirable but I quickly block those images in my head.

Now is not the time for lust, now is the time for redemption.

As I come closer, she gestures to the chair in front of her. She doesn't smile, her eyes teary.

I don't even have the time to utter a single word or even say hello, a waiter breaking our bubble.

"Monsieur, désirez vous commander? Nous commençons à servir le brunch", he asks, handing me a menu.

"Merci, je prendrais juste un café, ça sera tout", I answer, realising that apart from coffee, I won't be able to swallow any piece of food.

Clary looks at me surprised and laughs. "You speak French ? I didn't know." Her hair seems longer than the last time I saw her, and her front teeth nib at her lower lip, like each time she's anxious.

"Un petit peu".

I nod at the waiter putting the cup of coffee on the table between us. My hands immediately grab the porcelain, getting busy. Without this, I would have slowly put my finger on her lip, stopping the movement of her incisors.

"You'll always amaze me, Jace."

I scoff. "I've just asked for a coffee, Clary, that's not what I call speaking French. It's just a few words, really."

Silence settles between us. She keeps her fingers busy by shredding the receipt, her hands slightly shaking. But her eyes stay on me, determined and cold, and I've never wanted more than seeing her mouth curl into a smile. I want her happy, and joyful, and I want to hear her laugh again, mouth wide open and eyes lighting up.

"Clary, stop." I put my hand on her fingers, gripping the pieces of paper she's holding.

"Don't touch me."

My heart fails the moment the words leave her throat. Even if I know that there's a possibility she would reject me, her voice is giving more credit to that scenario. The selfish part of my ego was almost sure that after she heard me, she would forgive me and we would move forward, professing undying promises of love. But the tone of her voice is immediately making me envision the other scenario. I let her hand go, apologising. "I'm sorry, Clary. I just wanted to help you relax".

"Where were you when I needed someone to help me getting better?" She snaps.

My worst fears are getting real. She doesn't want anything more from me than getting explanations.

"I guess I deserve this" I admit.

She buries her face in her hands for a moment before looking at me again. "No, I'm sorry. You don't deserve this. I'm just so nervous about seeing you again."

"So am I Clary. Not seeing you but talking to you. Hurting you again. I guess there's no easy way to do it, so let's hear me, please."

She nods and her hands return to the small pieces of paper on the table. But her eyes remain locked with mine and the kindness I see in them urges me to start talking.

"The truth is I don't know where to begin. I've prepared my speech for weeks now, while I was in rehab. But it doesn't make sense anymore. Seeing your pain all written on your face, and in the traces my behaviour left, I don't know what to say except that I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything. For luring you into something I couldn't give you, for making you destroy your life for me, for not stopping this when I realised you had feelings for me. And also for abandoning you at the worst time, when you needed me the most and destroying myself, making you worry about me. I'm so sorry, Clary."

I watch as her green eyes fill with unshed tears and she shakes her head.

"I was the one who took the decision to get involved in this with you. I knew you didn't want a relationship, You told me your rules, I simply chose to ignore them. Don't beat yourself for everything, i have my share of responsibility."

How can she be so considerate and selfless? Here I am, with all my flaws and faults and she's willing to admit she made mistakes too?

"Don't blame yourself at all, Clary. You met me. If you hadn't crossed my path, nothing would have happened."

She grabs my hand which is nervously playing with my lighter.

"Exactly. Nothing would have happened and I would still be dead inside. I have no regrets, Jace."

And yet, I feel guilty for hurting her. All I want now is to hold her in my arms, promise we will be alright, that I'll treat her forever like the queen she is, that I'll love her until the end of times. But now isn't a good time. I need to explain her the whole thing before that. I need to make amends. And not just apologise.

"Before you, and for a long time, I didn't know what caring about someone meant. Of course I had the love of my parents, of my mates, but apart from that, it was a fucking masquerade.

I'm never alone in my job, I'm always amidst lots of people but I have been feeling so lonely and you are the first who makes me feel like I matter for who I really am. Not for my job, or my pretty looks, or my money, or my fame. No one else did before you. I'm just Wayland for the world but you saw Jace. What people want from me isn't something I am but something I can give them: attention, celebrity, pleasure. No one is interested to know the real me. They expect me to act in a certain way and they put me on a fucking pedestal. With them, I'm nothing more than a name. I'm no one, I'm not a person who feels and hurts. But with you and from the beginning, I have been feeling alive, I have been someone. You care about me and I have been stupid enough not to realise it from the beginning".

"I'm no one Jace, just a mundane English teacher, divorced and broken… I don't fit in your world."

"Don't say that. You're everything Clary. You are smart and strong and so beautiful. I wouldn't be there today if you haven't kicked my ass and made me realised I needed help. I have built walls around myself after Aline, promising myself I'd never trust a girl anymore. When you announced me your pregnancy and told me you felt sorry for yourself for loving me, I knew at that moment that I was losing the first genuine thing in my life. Our relationship. Because even if I didn't want to admit it, or put label on it, it was a relationship. Therapy made me realise that Love is what I crave the most and after that, as I couldn't have you anymore, I chose to destroy myself. Especially after how I treated you and the insinuations I made, and after your miscarriage, I didn't deserve the love you had for me, and I didn't deserve to live. So I partied a lot. Used a lot. That's the only way I found to feel a tenth of the emotions I had with you. And finally I told myself that if I died, no one would care. I would make the headlines, sell out a few magazines and be forgotten at last."

Her face contorts from the emotions running through her and eventually tears begin to fall on her cheeks. A strangled sob comes out of her throat and her grip on my hand gets stronger.

"But I was selfish. I know that that my family would be devastated, my friends too. Maybe even you. You had your fair share of grief and pain with the baby and with what I made you endure, and I couldn't add my death to this. So I fought. First for you, and eventually for myself. Because what we had was a blessing and just for this, I wanna stay alive. Just to remember our laughs and talks and sweet moments, even if it's all that's left. Even if after today, you decide you don't want to see me anymore. I'll understand and respect that. The truth is I miss the man i was with you, you taught me how to be better, you changed me Clary. And I cannot thank you enough for that, so please accept my apologies. Please"

I sigh, looking down at the table, her hand still around mine.

"No." She answers, with a shaking voice.

No? She isn't accepting my apology? I try to swallow before speaking, because I don't know if the first thing that will come out will be a sob or a word.

"I understand, what I did to you and our child is unforgettable. I'm sorry, Clary, for what it's worth, i don't know what to say." I mutter, slowly letting my hand slide from her grasp.

"Look at me Jace." Her voice is full of determination, and as soon as I look at her eyes, I see this fire burning behind her irises.

"I didn't change you. That man you speak about was always there, deep inside you. You're not that arrogant prick who denied I was pregnant with his child, or that selfish bastard who fucked his ex girlfriend while I was losing our baby. It's not who you are. You're a loving caring human being, but life made you hide this person. I was just there at the right time to reveal him."

At the thought of our lost child, I can't help the tears and sobs coming from my body.

"I'm so sorry Clary, I should have been there for you. I can't change that and I'll feel guilty all my life for this."

"I'm not gonna lie to you. When you insinuated that maybe you were not the father, it hurt. Because I was so deeply in love with you that I didn't know how you could imagine me sleeping with someone else. But thinking about this now, I should have been honest with you and I should have told you my feelings clearly. You're not responsible for my miscarriage, that shit happens to lots of women and it's just fate. But seeing you back with Aline hurt at the moment and still hurts now. How could you run back to her, knowing she used and hurt you when you couldn't stay with me, who was willing to put my life in your hands ? I felt like I was not enough for you. And that made me hit rock bottom. "

My eyes drop to the table once again and my hands start to shake, hearing how much she suffered because of me. She was right, at that moment I couldn't see the beauty of what we had and chose to destroy everything. I was afraid of being hurt again, and instead I chose to hurt her to protect myself.

"It won't change anything but maybe it will explain why I behaved like this. After Aline, I didn't want to commit again. Short story but my friends were right saying she wasn't honest with me. I still think she was with me for what I could give her and not who I was. When you came into my life, I thought the protective walls I built were strong enough, but you've been tearing them down since the first minute. Letting someone in scared me, Clary… you scared me.. because even if my mind refused to admit it, my heart knew since the beginning I cared for you. And I was afraid to get hurt again so I chose to shut it down. And to break you. And I'm so sorry for this, Clary." I explain.

"I'm still broken Jace. But I'm alive. And you're broken but alive too. That's all that matters today. So I accept your apologies. I forgive you."

Hearing those three words feels like heaven to me. She forgives me. After all the evil things I did to her. Her hand slips back into mine and she gently entwines our fingers, as the most natural gesture in the world.

"Thank you so much Clary. I know I don't deserve your pardon after all I've done. I'll promise to never hurt you again."

She opens her mouth to speak but closes it before any sound can be heard, as if she's afraid to tell me something. I press her hand, insisting on her to be able to speak her mind or ask me what she wants to know.

"Are you..I mean.. never mind it's not my business." She says, blowing her thoughts away with a wave of her hand.

"No please tell me. Ask me what you have in mind. I came here to be as honest as possible with you."

She closes her eyes tightly and nods. "Are you still with Aline? I mean, are you a thing now? I've read a lot online about how the both of you rekindled your romance."

"Oh Clary, don't believe everything you read online, especially when it comes to me. Despite what they wrote, I am very much alive, and not on the verge of dying as they often say. I'm clean, and not drugged up to the eyes. And I'm not with Aline. I've never been. I'm not proud to say I had a few encounters with her because it was easy to fall back in old patterns, but in my mind and heart, we were never a thing. I told her actually the night before my overdose and our conversation triggered so many things in me that I needed to forget. And well, you know what happened after."

"Why? What did she say?"

"That you wouldn't be stupid enough to love me and that I deserved it."

The silence settles but I can see the flick of many emotions on her face. The grip on her fingers on mine still present, she swallows, staring at me. That's the moment the waiter choses to ask us if we need something more, silencing Clary on what she's gonna say. She takes a look at her phone and seems surprised to see what time it is.

"I hate to say this because I'd like to stay longer with you but in fact, I have errands to do before tonight," she explains, gathering her stuff and putting everything back in her handbag.

Disappointment and sadness submerge me at once. Maybe I was expecting something more. Even if I urged myself to be ready for rejection, maybe I was expecting her confession of undying love and pardon. Maybe I was expecting her to take my hand and put her lips on mine, saying me with her body that she still loved me. Maybe i am still expecting the impossible.

"I understand, I won't bother you any longer. Thank you for your time Clary, it means the world to me."

"Are you busy tonight ?"

"No, we were supposed to have dinner together with the guys but nothing extraordinary," I reply.

She puts back her jacket and smooths her auburn curly mane. "Would you come with Alec and Jordan to home tonight? I'm having a dinner with friends and Maia."

"I'd love that". Hope lights up my eyes just the thought of spending more time with her puts a big smile on my face.

"Okay, I'll text you my new address. 8 pm is good for you, right?"

I nod, standing awkwardly in front of her. She grabs my hand and squeezes it. "See you tonight, Jace."

So how are we feeling ?