The rain had been falling since dawn — not in a storm, but in the kind of soft, stubborn drizzle that felt like grief humming against the cobblestones of Amboise.

Inside the mairie, Éloïse Marceau sat beside a man she no longer called friend.

Lucien Vallois.

Childhood companion. National novelist. Now, husband by paper.

A quiet pen scratched the marriage registry.

One year.

A contract.

No promises.

Her signature bloomed elegantly, right above Lucien’s, both names now tethered in cursive ink.

Outside, someone closed an umbrella with a gentle snap. Inside, Éloïse stood without looking at him.

“C’est fait,” she murmured. “Let’s get this over with.”

Lucien didn’t flinch. He simply nodded and offered his arm — the same way he used to offer her his umbrella when they were thirteen and she hated the rain.

She took it now, out of habit. Not affection.

They walked out into the wet grey of a French autumn.

There were no flowers, no lace, no music. Just the soft percussion of rain and the clink of two rings that meant nothing to one of them.

Theirs was not a marriage made from vows whispered beneath starlight.

It was a solution. A truce.

A contract born out of debts and dying businesses — not romance.

But Lucien had signed without hesitation.

Because Éloïse had always been his story.

Even if she didn’t know it.

They arrived at his countryside home in Chinon by late afternoon — a quiet stone house wrapped in ivy, smelling of lavender and woodsmoke. She barely glanced at the old cherry tree in the garden, though he remembered her climbing it barefoot every spring.

She used to call it l’arbre des secrets — the tree of secrets.

Now, it was just another shadow she didn’t bother to notice.

Later that evening, as Éloïse unpacked her things in a separate bedroom, Lucien sat in his writing study — dimly lit, lined with books, and hauntingly quiet.

He opened the drawer on the left.

Out came a leatherbound notebook — its pages filled with her name in different ink shades over the years. Scribbled poems, pressed flower petals, stolen glances remembered in verse.

“Je t’ai aimée longtemps en silence,” he wrote once.

“Et peut-être… je t’aimerai mieux dans l’oubli.”

(I have loved you long in silence. And perhaps… I will love you better in your forgetfulness.)

He placed the journal back carefully, like a wound that needed to stay stitched.

She didn’t love him.

She didn’t even know.

But he would love her anyway.

Even if it killed him to pretend they were nothing more than strangers wearing rings.

                             ######################END######################

                                                                       Teaser

🖋️ From Lucien Vallois’ Journal

(Dated: 3 years before the contract marriage)

She is not a painting I wish to possess,

but a moment I want to live in, again and again.

The kind of girl who forgets umbrellas,

but remembers the way the river sounded in April.

She walks like the sky owes her light,

and laughs like the world is still beautiful.

I wonder, if I vanished,

would she remember the boy who saved her scarf from the Seine?

Would she recall the letters I never gave her—

or feel the weight of words I wrote with trembling hands?

I write her in ink because she already lives in my bones.

And maybe that is enough.

Maybe love doesn’t need to be returned to be real.

The rain hadn’t stopped in three days.

It was the kind of French autumn drizzle that painted the world in silvers and greys — melancholic, tender, and far too familiar for a man like Lucien Vallois. As the novelist watched from the window of their countryside manor in Chinon, he thought of her — not as she was now, stiff and distant in silence — but as she had once been.

Barefoot in museums, whispering stories to faded paintings. Her gloved hands brushing away centuries of decay like it was dust on a childhood book.

“Art remembers what people forget,” she had said once, eyes gleaming beneath the Louvre's golden lights.

She never knew she was talking about herself.

That evening, Éloïse had taken the car without a word. She needed air, she’d said.

Space.

Time.

Lucien had nodded, like always.

He never begged her to stay, even when everything inside him screamed to. Instead, he watched her go — her figure wrapped in a tan trench coat, hair pinned with a single pearl clip, the rain softly collecting on her shoulders like dew.

Hours passed.

The phone rang at 22:47.

His breath stopped halfway through the ring.

“Monsieur Vallois? Il faut que vous veniez immédiatement… c’est votre femme. Il y a eu un accident.”

He arrived at the hospital with trembling hands and ink still smudged on his cuffs. The halls smelled of disinfectant and loneliness. Under the harsh light, he looked ghostly — as if part of him had shattered the moment her name was spoken.

Through the glass, he saw her.

Pale.

Still.

A single cut on her temple bloomed like a crushed petal. Machines beeped with clinical indifference beside her. His wife. His muse. His story.

The nurse turned to him gently. “She’s stable… but there’s something you should know.”

When Éloïse opened her eyes hours later, Lucien was by her side.

“Éloïse?” he whispered, reaching for her hand. “C’est moi… Lucien.”

She blinked. Her gaze drifted over him — eyes a little foggy, expression distant.

And then she said it.

“Lucien… Vallois?”

“Yes,” he breathed.

“You’re the writer, right?”

Lucien froze.

She didn't say my husband.

She didn’t say you.

Just… “the writer.”

Her mind had pressed delete on their story.

He smiled through the breaking.

“Oui, je suis l’écrivain.”

(Yes, I’m the writer.)

And in that moment, Lucien Vallois made a decision.

If life had erased their love, he would write it back — not with ink this time, but with each moment, each glance, each kindness she no longer remembered.

Because even if she didn’t know it yet…

She was still the girl in the yellow rain.

chapter ends

Teaser begins

Then she saw it — a poem, marked with a folded corner.

She read the words slowly, aloud, barely a whisper:

She is not a painting I wish to possess,

but a moment I want to live in, again and again.

She walks like the sky owes her light…

and laughs like the world is still beautiful

Chapter Three: The Book She Forgot

The house was quiet.

Too quiet for a place filled with two hearts pretending not to beat for each other.

Éloïse padded barefoot across the old wooden floors of Lucien’s home, the smell of ink and lavender wafting faintly from the hallway. She’d spent the last week drifting between his guest room and silence — recovering physically, but still missing something unnamed.

Something not even the doctors could restore.

Her memory was a half-lit room. There were glimpses — flickers — a boy holding her hand under cherry blossoms… a paper boat on a river… laughter in a thunderstorm.

But every time she tried to hold on to the faces, they slipped through her like smoke.

And Lucien — her so-called husband — never pushed.

Never asked for space in her confusion.

Just left coffee outside her door every morning and turned off the lights before she entered the room.

That evening, the sky turned violet with rain again.

Éloïse wandered down the hall in search of something — she didn’t know what.

She found it in the study.

The room was dim, lined with books and paper — the scent of parchment thick in the air. A candle flickered low beside an unfinished manuscript on the desk. The fire had died, but the warmth lingered.

Her hand brushed against the drawer. She didn’t mean to open it.

But something guided her.

Inside, wrapped in a navy ribbon, was a leather journal — edges worn, soft from years of turning.

She hesitated.

But she opened it anyway.

And on the very first page, she saw her name.

“Éloïse.”

Not a greeting. Not a letter. Just her name — written as if it were both the beginning and the ending of every story he ever told.

Her fingers trembled as she flipped through the pages.

It was poetry. Prose. Memories. Longings.

Written in Lucien’s unmistakable hand.

Some were dated from their teenage years. Some just months ago.

But all of them… about her.

Then she saw it — a poem, marked with a folded corner.

She read the words slowly, aloud, barely a whisper:

She is not a painting I wish to possess,

but a moment I want to live in, again and again.

She walks like the sky owes her light…

and laughs like the world is still beautiful.

A lump rose in her throat.

She didn’t know why she was crying.

She didn’t know why her chest ached in a way memory couldn’t explain.

All she knew was this:

These words weren’t written to impress her.

They were written because she was his world.

Even when she had forgotten.

Behind her, the study door creaked.

Lucien stood in the doorway, rainwater glistening on his coat, his eyes wide with quiet panic.

She turned to face him, journal in hand.

“This is about me,” she said softly.

“Isn’t it?”

Lucien didn’t answer right away. He looked at her like a man caught between hope and heartbreak.

“Oui,” he finally said.

“But not because I wanted you to find it.

I just… couldn’t forget you.

Even when you forgot me.”