CLANDESTINE : Spencer Reid

56

Nobody lets it go. We spend the better part of two hours in the car, and nobody forgets for more than ten seconds that I would promised I'd tell them about Spencer. I try to ask about Stéphane's secret girlfriend. He says she's not a secret girlfriend but a fling. Caro latches onto that but Bastien is persistent. I bring up Bastien's relationship with the girl at the gun range, I ask about the girl he brought to the wedding, I try to bring up the trouble Bastien and Stéphane got up to after Caro left the wedding, and truly, really, nothing works. Nada.

"I'm not sure where we stand," I finally admit, only because we are ten minutes away according to Bastien's GPS. "I told him not to tell anyone about us. That... well that we were an accident."

Stéphane shakes his head in the front seat, "and did you apologize?"

My silence answers for me.

Even though Bastien is driving, he reaches back toward me and flicks my knee. I glare at him, and he glances back at me through the rearview mirror. Stéphane chastises him, and Bastien starts to argue back. Caro takes my hand.

"Why do you think it's an accident?" she asks. "Because you are coworkers? Because you want to leave Washington? Or is it because you don't want to let him in close?"

"It could be because she's an idiot," Bastien offers.

Caro kicks his seat. Stéphane snaps at her too.

"I don't know," I admit. "All of the above? I don't want him to know about what happened because he'll stare at me. You all remember how everyone stared at me after it happened. And I don't want to leave but I'm worried I will, and I'm worried that I'm not exactly in a good place to screw someone, let alone my co-worker."

Stéphane twists his head, "ew. Cole, nasty."

"Prude," Bastien cuts him off.

Caro rolls her eyes before she looks at me, "I didn't tell Cletus until after he decided on the May wedding date. Well, I agreed to it, but I didn't want to send the save the dates. He kept asking me to send them. I just... I couldn't. It wasn't until I had to send them in January that I finally told him."

I squeeze her hand.

"I told a few ex-girlfriends," Stéphane admits. "The first was when there was the custody issue happening and I was trying to explain why Bastien and Caro were better off with me, and then another when she came home late at night without telling me where she was. As soon as I told them, I knew we wouldn't last. They just... the way they looked at me. Like I was wounded. Not broken. Like they knew exactly how to fix me."

"I told some friends in high school," Bastien offers. "After Dad died. They were worried I'd move back to Québec. Then I had a fight with George, and he made a joke about it. And I snapped. I knew that telling anyone would only make me seem weak."

Caro lets go of my hand. She leans forward in the car, over the middle seat. This time, Stéphane doesn't tell her to sit down. She fiddles with the radio, turning the stations. We are closer to where she lives now, so she'd know what stations play good music. After a few clicks, a jazz radio station comes on. Bastien laughs. Caro leans back next to me, and both of us watch how Stéphane's hands move as he taps his seatbelt.

Two songs play before we pull over. The road looks like any other. None of us had committed to actually crossing the border, and Caro hasn't even brought her passport. The car stops slowly as Bastien parks. I bolt out of the car, barely undoing my seatbelt before I'm running across the ground.