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Last Round

Fighting for Love

Frankie Page

Frankie Page Books

Copyright © 2023 LAST ROUND by Frankie Page

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording,
or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright
law. For permission requests, contact frankie@frankiepagebooks.com

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or
deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Octagon and UFC are a registered trademark of Zuffa, LLC and is used purely in a fictitious manner.

Edited and Proofed by Kat Pagan

Cover designed with licensed images from Adobe Stock:

109026618

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Because every girl deserves a moment of panic with a few notes of excitement and curiosity...
 CONTENTS

1. Wake-up Call
2. Breathless
3. Some Things Never Change
4. New-Hire Orientation
5. Dick Move
6. Uniforms
7. Punishment
8. Not Going as Planned

9. As Good as Dead
10. K-fucking-O
11. Plan B
12. Motivation
13. Egg Rolls
14. A Gentleman’s Agreement
15. S.O.
16. Cockblock
17. All the Reasons
18. Keeping Perspective

19. Research

20. A Dream Come True

21. Carpal Tunnel

22. Nerves
23. Victory
24. Climbing the Ladder
25. In the Light of a New Day

26. Friends
27. Ri-DICK-ulous
28. The New Order
29. Fed Up
30. Real
31. The Naked Truth
32. Moving On
33. Tense
34. Practice Makes Perfect

35. The Challenge

36. Achievement Unlocked
37. Distracted
38. Last-Ditch Effort
39. Something to Lose
40. Fight of His Life
41. The Plan
42. Happily Ever After Part One
43. Happily Ever After Part Two
Bonus Content

Thank you

Moore By Frankie Page

 WAKE-UP CALL
Killian

“GET UP, DUMBASS,” SEAN’S recorded voice repeats. Growing louder as I blindly reach around
the cluttered nightstand in search of the offending device alerting me that it’s morning. Bastard has
been my wake-up call for so many years. It’s the only thing that can get a rise out of me when I’m
dead to the world. A marching band could stampede through here, banging their drums and clinking
their cymbals next to my head, and I’d barely roll over. As helpful as his verbal broadcast is, him
being here with a bucket of ice water would be a hundred times more effective. At least this annoying
ass wake-up call can be muted.
“Fuck off, Sean,” I grumble, my voice still thick with sleep.
“Dude, get the fuck up,” he replies sternly.
Did he adjust the alarm? Just as that question pops into my head, it’s answered by something hard
and cold colliding with my nuts.
“What the fuck?” I shoot upright, shoving the object away from my exposed testicles, and quickly
realize it’s a large bottle of water. A half-frozen bottle of water. Despite having my AC set at full
blast, the plastic is sweating onto my sheets.
“Seriously, this is why I made you the alarm, so I didn’t have to look at that…” Sean gestures to my
morning erection, standing proud and undeterred by Sean’s arctic strike. “Is that a new piercing?
Wait. Don’t tell me. It’s bad enough that your dick is so burned into my memory that I even noticed.
You can spare me the confirmation.”
Swinging my legs over the side of the mattress, I lower my feet onto the cool hardwood floor. It
feels so fucking good. Maybe I should sleep on the ground. It might help me get through this heatwave
from hell. I spot my half-consumed cigarette in the ashtray next to the ridiculous neon-pink Bic I got a
few months back. My eyes land on the jizzing cock I drew on the side in black Sharpie, and I grin. It’s
my longest-standing lighter to date.
For some reason, no one’s stolen it yet.
I bring the butt to my lips, the stench of tobacco stronger from having been lit and left to smolder,
light it and take a heavy drag, savoring the burn of menthol before chasing it back with the bit of
whiskey still coating the bottom of my glass. With the cigarette dangling from my lips, I stand and
stretch my limbs. Everything is sore and stiff. Though I’m only a wee bit into my mid-thirties, with the
number of injuries my body has been subjected to over the years, some mornings leave me feeling like
I’m ninety.
“Go shower,” Sean orders. “I’ll make breakfast. We’ve got an hour.”
“An hour?” I ask, reaching behind myself and scratching my ass.
Sean rolls his eyes. “Yes, you’ve got that interview downstairs today with the news station about
the gym.”
“Is it the anchorwoman with the tits?” I don’t have to explain further. We all know the one. I may
not care much for the news, but I’d happily watch it on mute. Even made it a game at the bar. If her
button pops, everyone gets a round on me. It’s the one time I love to lose.
“No.” With that one word, Sean kills the slight pep in my step at the thought of finally getting my
hands on the real twins of this city. Shit, I’m sure I could’ve had her spread wide, ankles over my
shoulders, on the adjustable bench before the interview even started. Talk about B footage. “It’s the
dude.”
“Halitosis Henry,” I groan, raking a hand over my face. “When did I even agree to this?”
“You didn’t. I did.”
“Then you do it.” I extinguish my finished cigarette in the glass tray.
“Because they want K.O. not me.” Sean tosses some clothes in my direction, presumably what he
wants me to wear today.
“K.O. is dead.” I drop them, stepping over the discarded pile on my way to the bathroom.
“No, he’s hungover.”
I turn, my arms crossed firmly over my chest, and arch a brow at him. “Don’t you ever utter that
blasphemy again. Murphys don’t get hangovers.”
Sean lets out a laugh that has one of my eyes twitching. “Kill, none of us are immune to aging.
Especially at the rate you’ve been going these past few years…” He shakes his head, all signs of
humor gone. “Just shower up already. You smell like a bar.”
 “Because I own one,” I yell to his retreating form as he heads to the kitchen.
“No excuse,” he hollers back.

“When’s the last time you went grocery shopping?” Sean huffs as I stand in the kitchen’s entryway. He
eyes my appearance. “Well, at least you look halfway presentable. I still think the button-down is
more professional.”
“It’s an interview about the gym and our fighters, not for a job. The last person I’d ever want as a
coach is some suit-and-tie. Leave the managers to play dress-up, the puppeteers up in their private
booths, counting their millions earned by someone else’s blood, sweat, and tears.”
I love the man. Sean’s been my brother since the sandbox. But sometimes he gets so caught up in
appearances he forgets what’s at the heart of it all.
“Whatever.” He knows I’m right. “Look, if we hurry, I can probably grab you a sandwich from
Caribou before they get here.”
I ignore him on my way to the fridge, pull out the carton with only a half dozen eggs left, and call
out to him over my shoulder. “Nah, I’m good.”
“Fine.” He opens the cupboard, grabs a pan, and sets it on the stove. “What are you doing?” he
asks, observing as I crack each shell and empty the contents into a large cup.
“Making a shake.”
“With what? You have nothing but eggs and beer.”
“Exactly.” I reach back into the fridge, grab a bottle of Guinness, and pop the top off on the counter
before pouring it into the container. Then I shoot him a toothy grin and chug the concoction. On tap,
it’s Murphy’s all day. But at home, I have to lower my standards.
Unless I install a tap? I file that away for another day.
Sean throws his arms up, shaking his head as he stomps to the front door. “I’ll die of fucking shock
if you make it to forty. Let’s go.”
I slam the empty glass down and wipe the remnants of my meal from my lips. I don’t know what
he’s bitching about. He acts like he’s never drank eggs for breakfast before.
 After watching Rocky for the first time, Sean and I were blown away. So, at just five years old, we
decided on becoming the “biggest and baddest” fighters ever to hit the ring. However, seeing as we
were nothing more than a pair of scrawny little runts at the time, we knew we needed to bulk up. We
rushed to the kitchen and, like Stallone, filled each of our cups with as many eggs as we could get our
hands on. Ma was so fucking pissed. Let’s just say we weren’t proficient when it came to cracking
them and drank probably more shell than yolk. The counter was covered in residue. Not to mention,
she’d just bought the dozen, and this was back when we were beyond broke.
“Okay, so remember to highlight the facilities. Drive home the point that we have two former belt
holders training now,” Sean continues, as I meet him at the threshold.
“Yeah, yeah,” I dismiss him as I lock up.
“Come on.” Sean sighs. “I need you to take this seriously.”
“I am. What’s going on?” I know this man better than I know myself. And something’s definitely up.
His shoulders drop as he lets out a deep exhale. “Jessica—”
“Enough said.” The woman is a grade-A bitch. But my best friend already knows this. I’ve
publicized my feelings about their relationship on several occasions. But the lovesick fool is deaf and
blind to reason when it comes to that particular pair of tits.
“I proposed.”
“No…” Shit, this is worse than I thought. “What’d she say?”
“What do you think?” He crosses his arms and glares at me as though the answer is obvious.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I groan, combing my fingers through my still-damp hair.
“We can’t be bachelors forever, Kill. Eventually, it’s time to settle down… grow up.”
“I’m not opposed to you getting married.” While I don’t understand the urge to limit your options
for the foreseeable future, I’m not one of those guys who’s looking to talk his buddies off the marital
ledge. “Just your choice in bride.”
“I love Jess,” he repeats that godforsaken mantra with so much conviction I’m not sure who he’s
trying to convince, me or himself.
“Sean—”
“Look, Kill, I know Jess isn’t your favorite person.” He cuts me off, his green eyes wide as they
contrast with the slight hint of auburn in his hair. And I can’t help but think how he looks like the
fucking cat from Shrek.
How the fuck can I say no to that? I can’t. Every armor has a weakness. Apparently big-eyed
pussycats are mine. If I’m going to be whipped by any form of a pussy, it would be nice if he at least
had one. Wait, does this make me dick whipped?
Fuck, my man card is in serious jeopardy.
“No, she isn’t,” I confirm, and Sean’s eye twitches as he stands there staring at me. There is no
talking him out of this. The bastard is on a crash course for disaster and there ain’t shit I can do about
it. I guess, sometimes, you just gotta let them burn. It’s the only way they can learn not to touch the
damn hot stove in the future. “But it appears she’s yours,” I concede. Because despite his horrific
taste in women, he’s my best friend. Which means I need to suck it up and pray the divorce is quick
and clean like a left hook to the jaw in the first round.
A goofy smile spreads across his face. “Does that mean you’ll be my best man?”
“As if I’d let you pick anyone else.” I pat him on the shoulder and approach the pole in the middle
of the loft. “And your bachelor party—whew, that shit’s gonna be insane.”
Sean rolls his eyes. “Can we take the stairs like normal people?”
“Where’s the fun in that?” I offer before gripping the fireman's pole and sliding down to the gym
below. What’s the point in renovating an old firehouse into a state-of-the-art training facility if you
don’t utilize its most awesome feature?
It isn’t long until Sean is following me. He might argue, but his eyes still twinkle with childish joy
each time he does it. However, the second his feet hit the ground, his all-business persona resumes.
“Look, we need to get some bigger talent. The gym is in the red. We need some big names, champs, to
come in here for their training camps. I’ve put a couple of feelers out, but this feature could help
really highlight what we have to offer.”
“And the bar?” I ask. Sean has a better head for business and numbers. While everything is in my
name, he’s the true brains behind the operation.
“Great. It’s the only reason we haven’t gone bankrupt. But if we can get a title holder training at our
gym—”
“Everything will be gravy.”
“Yes,” Sean says with a relieved sigh. “Now go be your charming self.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I wave him off and turn towards the camera crew positioned at the entryway,
and my dick perks up as my eyes land on Tits McGee, who’s currently testing the elasticity of her
blouse. This interview got a thousand times more interesting. A smile spreads across my face as I
reach over my head and take off my shirt.
“Kill,” Sean cautions.
 “Just being my charming self.” I wink at him as I slide my athletic shorts lower. Her warm honey
eyes lock on to my tenting shorts like a heat-seeking, horny missile. And her pink tongue darts out as
she moistens her lips. This is going to be easier than I thought.
“Hi,” she says in a deep, breathy voice. “I’m—”
“Alyssa Lee,” I finish for her, something I plan to do in more ways than one, and raise her extended
hand as I press my lips to her knuckles. “I’m a huge fan.” Emphasis on the huge. My eyes dart to the
real stars of that news channel, and the anchorwoman’s face flushes as she bats her lashes in my
direction.
Her hungry gaze travels down my torso. “That’s a very interesting tattoo.” She’s laser focused on
the colorful arch that extends from my side, down the center of my abdomen, before trailing all the
way to the base of my cock.
“Aye, care to find the treasure at the end of the rainbow?” I ask her, my accent thicker than the
organ swinging between my legs. She chews on her bottom lip and nods. Every fucking time.
“Follow me. I’ll give you a private tour of our finer facilities. Show you where the real action
happens.”
“Yes, please,” she all but moans, pausing to clear her throat as she turns to her camera crew and
rambles off some instructions about them filming a few of the guys currently sparring in the ring.
Arm in arm, I lead her to the back office.
“Hey,” Sean yells at my back. “You’ll be at the bar tonight? I need to talk to you.”
I wave him off in acknowledgement. He probably wants to talk wedding bells, when all I want to
do is plan the bachelor party. I wouldn’t be surprised if he broke out some frilly binder with a page
dedicated to each facet of his dream ceremony.
However, right now, there is only one brain I’m thinking with, and it definitely isn’t the one he’s
interested in discussing at the moment.
 BREATHLESS
Killian

IT’S FUCKING HOT, AND humidity gives the neon shamrock sign a hazy halo. This ridiculous
summer heat wave is going to be the death of me. I thought nothing could top last year.
Crossing West 7th, I suck down the last drag of my cigarette and flick the butt into the can outside.
My sanctuary is tainted by the knowledge that my best friend is about to marry a succubus and I’m
going to spend the rest of my life hearing about it.
The woman already thinks she has a say in my bar because she’s fucking Sean. I dread to think how
far she’ll sink her talons when it’s all legal. Because this bar, the club, it’s all half his. Yes, my money
got us started. But the businesses would be nothing without him—fuck, I’d be nothing without him. I
just fucking hope he’ll listen to me about a prenup. It’s one thing for Jessica to lead him around by his
dick, but I won’t let her suck Sean dry before she kicks his ass to the curb.
“Yo, Kill,” Lukas, one of our new fighters, greets me as he rounds the corner, finishing his own
smoke just outside the door.
“Luke, dude. Don’t you have a fight coming up?”
He shrugs his shoulders, and I snatch the cigarette from his fingers.
“No smoking, no drinking,” I remind him. “Not when you’re this close to a fight.” These young guys
forget fighting is about more than just who can hit the hardest or how tough you are when it comes to
blocking or taking a blow. Stamina is the difference between being good and becoming a champ.
“It’s just one.” The son of a bitch rolls his eyes at me, and I smack him upside the back of his head.
“Yeah.” I take a long drag, finishing his smoke before putting it out in the canister. “And it’s also
one too many.” The fucking kid needs to learn. He has all the makings of becoming one of the next big
names, but lacks fucking discipline. Fortunately, he’s got mean Ol’ Daddy Killian to whip his ass into
shape. “Give me your keys.” I hold out my hand.
 “I haven’t had anything to drink.” He scrunches his brow at my request, which was more of an
order.
“Don’t care. Give me your keys.”
With a heavy sigh, he digs into his cargo pocket and retrieves them before slamming them in my
palm a little harder than necessary.
“Perfect, now run home.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He all but stomps his foot—he might as well have with how
whiney he sounded.
A victorious grin spreads across my face. “Dead serious. Oh, I almost forgot.” I unclip his house
key and toss it back to him. “You’ll need that.”
“Dude, it’s like ten miles.”
“Twelve,” I correct him and glance down at my nonexistent watch. “You better get going. It’s late
and you need to rest up for our session tomorrow. And you’ll have to be up early if you want to make
it on time.”
“You’re going to make me run to the gym. That’s even farther!”
“Better hurry.” I spin the key ring around my finger, then tuck it away in my pocket.
“Fuck off, old man.” Lukas flashes me a cocky grin before doing a quick stretch. Glad to see he’s
taking this seriously.
“Oh, don’t be late. Believe me, you won’t like what I’ll have in store for you tomorrow if you are.”
With my parting warning, I open the door to the bar, close my eyes, and enjoy the brief blast of cold
air that hits me in the face. It’s short-lived as this place is packed tonight. More bodies, more heat.
As I weave in and out of the growing crowd, offering the occasional greeting, the clamoring of
voices gets louder. I won’t lie. In the beginning, I doubted this place would be successful. But Sean
was adamant. And I figured fuck it. What’s the worst that could happen? Six years later, this bar is
still thriving. It might not draw in tourists as much anymore, since I’m no longer relevant in the
fighting world. But I don’t give a flying fuck. While it is a job, most of the time I don’t notice. I get to
spend the night drinking and chatting with my favorite people. Then, at the end of it all, select a lucky
lady or two to warm my bed. Just to wake up the next day to rinse and repeat.
“How’d the interview go?” Sean asks with a half-cocked grin. He might roll his eyes at me, but the
bastard wouldn’t love me any other way.
I make a show of fishing around my pocket. As soon as I find it, I hook my finger and pull, bringing
the black lacy thong to my nose and giving it a quick sniff before grabbing a pushpin and displaying it
with the rest of my trophies. “It was climactic.”
“No way,” Jack says in astonishment as he inspects the undergarment. “Did you seriously bang that
hot-as-fuck news chick?” He was training at the gym this morning and likely saw me walk off with
her.
“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.”
“Like fuck you don’t,” Sean chimes in. “You’re literally advertising your kiss on a goddamn
billboard with the rest of your victims.”
“The only victim is the unfortunate bloke who’s going to have to follow up this performance.” I
gesture to my genitals with both hands.
Sean shakes his head, laughing. “It’s packed in here tonight. Get to work and we will talk later.”
An icy shiver runs down my spine. For a moment, I forgot all about Sean’s latest brilliant idea. I
don’t know if there’s enough alcohol in all of Minnesota to prepare me to talk wedding with the man,
and not remind him what a stuck-up cunt his future bride is. While my preference is a smooth whiskey,
that’s something you sip and savor. No, tonight I need hard and dirty.
I snatch a bottle of tequila from the shelf and pour myself a shot. Skipping the lime and salt, I slam
it back and pray good old José will help me through this. Just to be sure, I quickly down another. Then
I shake my head and stick out my tongue as the burn settles in my gut.
Now to wash off the lingering aftertaste. I grab a pint, fill it to the brim with Murphy’s, and chug.
The rest of the evening goes by in a blur as I laugh, joke, and serve up drinks, sharing the
occasional war story with the handful of tourists who slink in between locals. I’ve lost count of the
phone numbers girls have shoved into my pocket. It’s the same song and dance as every other night…
until I see her.
My blood pumps like I’m back in the ring. It’s the fifth and final, with the championship on the line,
and I’ll be fucked if it goes to decision. The ref gives the signal, the cheering crowd all fades away,
and all I can see is my opponent. Nothing and no one can stop me because I have my eyes on the prize.
And tonight, with her heart-shaped ass peeking out the bottom of her frayed denim shorts, she’s it.
She’s also new. A man doesn’t forget an ass like that. Likely a tourist. Which means she’s here
looking to get a piece of the K.O. I have a piece for her. It’s long, hard, studded, and will gladly make
sure she gets her fill.
I quickly pour myself a shot of Dr. M’s peppermint schnapps to freshen my breath and finger comb
my hair back as I navigate the crowd. My dick is a heat-seeking missel. Eyes closed, I let him guide
me as he’s already locked on his target. If her orgasm is half as sexy as her laugh, I’m not sure she’ll
ever walk again. Everything about this chick, even the whiff of her floral perfume, sets my blood on
fire.
I tap her shoulder, interrupting her conversation. But before I can get a glance of the fucker she’s
talking to, she spins on her heel and the world around us falls away. Her loose curls graze my chest,
sending a shockwave of something unfamiliar through my every nerve ending. I haven’t even seen her
face yet, and I’m already dying of anticipation. Desperate to taste her.
Craning her neck, she looks up at me. I’ve heard about this anomaly before. I’ve never once
experienced it though—assumed it was a figure of speech and not literal. But, fuck me, I’m left
gasping as her bright-green eyes go wide and take me in. Her mouth forms an O as she gawks at me.
Standing nearly a foot taller than her, I feel like a giant as my gaze travels over each nuance.
Despite her attempt at hiding them with concealer, I can make out the faint dusting of freckles that
cover her cheeks and nose as heat creeps up her neck. Fuck, I want to lick every single one of them,
trace them with my tongue like an adult version of connect the dots.
Come on, Kill, it’s showtime.
I shoot her my signature panty-melting grin. “What brings you here tonight?”
Her face glows a deeper shade of red. “I just got into town.” She sucks her pink lip between her
teeth.
“Well, lass, it just so happens I know all the best places ‘round. Startin’ with this pub.” I purposely
brush her cheek as I tuck a loose curl behind her ear. “Perhaps I can give ya a private tour.”
She opens her mouth as though she’s about to ask a question, but snaps it shut.
Okay, I need to turn up the charm.
I lean down and whisper, “Of the supply closet. It’s one of the hottest tourist destinations in the
city.”
Pulling back, I pause, excited to see how dark her blush can turn. She’s crimson all right. Except,
instead of her being doe-eyed, her brow is furrowed and I could swear I see smoke spouting from her
flared nostrils. I guess I laid it on a bit too strong. She must need a bit more wooing. But before I can
attempt a smooth recovery, I’m blinded by an ice-cold beverage being thrown in my face.
“Fuck,” I groan as I wipe at my eyes. I’ve been turned down before—it’s rare—but it happens on
the occasion. “I can think of a better way to have my face dripping, one that doesn’t involve wasting
perfectly good booze.” I chuckle. “I think we got off on the wrong foot—”
I blink away the alcohol, only to find that she’s gone. All that remains is the empty glass on the
table. I glance around, but she’s nowhere to be seen. Before she can get too far, I rush to the front
door. I look up and down the street, swiping at the usual haze of cigarette smoke collecting at the
threshold. Nothing.
Shoulders slumped, I return to the bar. Defeated.
“What happened to you?” Sean asks.
“She got away,” I say as I rest my elbows on the bar and my face in my hands.
“Who?” Sean scans the crowd. “I want to buy her a drink.”
“Fuck off,” I groan, tossing a lemon wedge at his face.
Sean laughs, pouring me a drink. “Here, this should cure your infatuation.”
“Doubt it.” I swallow down the liquid.
“Sorry, bud. There’re plenty of chicks here tonight. I’m sure you’ll find someone to fluff your ego.”
“You don’t get it, Sean.” I turn and look him in the eye. “You remember that Halloween we all
dressed up as old school WWF wrestlers and I lost that stupid fucking bet to Danny?” It’s uncommon
for me to lose a wager. Especially one that involves tequila. But on those rare occasions when I do…
I fucking lose.
Sean ponders for a moment before recognition dawns on him. “Yeah, he was dressed like the
Ultimate Warrior.” He scrunches his brow. “Who were you that night? I was so smashed I can barely
remember.”
“Hulk Hogan.”
He bursts out in laughter. “Oh yeah. You make a shitty blonde by the way.”
“Not the point.” I rein him back in. “Anyway… remember how I had to let him fucking Gorilla
Press Drop me, then finish off with that stupid Running Splash?”
“Oh yeah.” He chuckles. “What about it? Is he here?” Sean searches the crowd again. “Does he
want to reenact it? I’d fucking pay to relive that. We got phones now. I can record that shit and watch
it on replay.”
“No, just… remember how I had the fucking wind knocked out of me?”
“Yeah.” He shakes his head. “Wait? Dude, how drunk are you? What does this have to do with
whatever chick had enough self-respect to turn you down?”
“It was like that… It was like she fucking Ultimate Warrior’d my ass. But worse.”
Sean scratches his head. “You were breathless?”
“Yes! That. Just like all that fucking nonsense my sister used to go on about. It was that.”
Sean covers his mouth, but I hear his chuckle. “That sounds horrible.”
 “It was.” I grab a pint and pour myself a beer. “She’s gone, and I don’t even know her name.” I
swallow down the knowledge along with my Murphy’s. Hopefully, this will help me drown my
sorrows.
Like the good friend he is, Sean holds back whatever comment he was going to make and pats me
on the back. “Well, I got some good news for ya. It’s what I’ve been meaning to talk to you about—”
“Ugh,” I groan. “Please, I can’t talk about your execution right now.”
“My execution?” He’s silent for a moment. “Not my wedding. We have months to plan that. No, I
hired us a new waitress. At least for the rest of the summer.”
“Whoopy.” My voice lacks all enthusiasm as I twirl a finger in the air. I’m not sure why he would
think I’d care. I wasn’t even aware we needed additional waitstaff.
“I should’ve run it past you. But I didn’t think you’d mind. Chelsea is going to need to cut her shifts
with the baby coming in a few months and we could use the extra help.”
“Sean, you’re the budget guy. If we got the money, I don’t care.”
“Yeah… it’s just… You know I don’t enjoy using the business for personal reasons. But she really
needs a job.”
My face pales as the pieces click together. “Sean, don’t tell me you hired Jessica?”
“What? No.”
“Oh, thank fuck.” I let out a relieved sigh. “Then who is it—”
“Hey, Sean.” If her floral scent didn’t give her away, that honey-sweet voice would have. I look
over, and sure enough, there’s my firecracker. She returned.
Wait… How does she know Sean?
He rushes around the counter and pulls her in for a hug. My fists clench as I hold back the desire to
punch my best friend—where the fuck did that come from? But I don’t dwell on it because I don’t
care to know the answer.
Arm draped over her shoulder and dopey grin spread across his face, Sean looks back at me. My
chest squeezes and my throat thickens, making it difficult to swallow. I rub at my sternum. What has
me so uneasy? I should be happy. She’s back. But as her striking green eyes narrow in on me, I get this
awful feeling of déjà vu.
“I was just informing Kill that you’d be starting as our new waitress. At least until you get settled.”
Sean tilts his head as he looks at me. “You’re okay with this, right?”
I nod. Unsure what to say. It’s like looking at one of those scrambled puzzle pictures. There’s
something here. It’s familiar. But I can’t put my finger on it.
 “Sorry.” He turns to my future wife—I mean, if she’s working here, I’ll have time to convince her
to be anyway. “Kill met the love of his life tonight and lost her.”
“I wasn’t aware the great K.O. was capable of love.” Fuck, her sharp tongue has my dick bursting
the seams of my pants.
“Molly,” he scolds. “Be nice.”
Molly… Click. I finally see everything as clear as fucking day. This is bad. Really bad. I quickly
pour myself a shot of whatever’s in arm’s reach and chug it. It goes down the wrong pipe, sending me
into a coughing fit.
“You okay?” Sean asks.
“Yes.” No. I pound my chest to clear my lungs. I’m not, nor will I ever be again. Because the first
time I ever felt anything other than hard for a chick, it’s the one I can never, ever with an extra side of
never, have.
Sean hugs her tighter. “I’m so excited my baby sister is home. This is going to be so much fun.”
Yup, that’s right. I’ve fallen head over heels for my best friend’s little sister. And the fucking cherry
on top of it all is I didn’t even recognize her. It’s only July, but they might as well hand over my
“asshole of the year” award now. Because I fucking earned that shit.
“Yay,” I say as enthusiastically as possible while pouring myself another shot. I have a feeling I’m
gonna need a lot more of these if I’m going to make it through this in one piece.
 SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE
Molly

I’M NOT SURE WHAT would have been worse. Coming home after seven years to realize nothing’s
changed or that everything has?
Except, in my case, I got hit by both. How that’s possible, I ain’t got a clue. But since stepping foot
off the Greyhound and knocking on the front door of my childhood home the other night, for the most
part, everything’s been the same.
Sean still lives here. That doesn’t surprise me since the house was paid off with Dad’s life
insurance—it’s only practical. What isn’t, though, is the fact that the cream lace curtains Dad and I
bought at the Goodwill are still hanging in the kitchen, while the cupboards are that same awful
sunshine yellow that’s as atrocious today as it was back then. Albeit, the color has toned down some,
but I recognize it all the same.
I had this fantasy of coming home after I’d been gone so long, how I’d need a minute to find our
house. That I’d get lost in the ever-expanding neighborhood. But, nope. When I stepped out of the cab,
it stood out like a sore thumb in the middle of the street, bottom half painted a dark green with the
upper portion a dingy white. The rest of the neighbors have made updates. Maybe not drastic, but you
can see new siding, upgraded fences. Not Sean.
Stepping into my old room, it was like I never left. If it wasn’t for the fresh linen scent from the
carpet deodorizer my brother loves to use when he vacuums or the fact my linens didn’t make a cloud
of dust when I lay down, I’d think he hadn’t opened my door in years. He said that I’d always have a
place to come back to, which I appreciate. I just assumed it would be a pull-out couch in the office
and my room would be redecorated with exercise equipment.
Nope. As I lay in bed and stare up at my ceiling, Tom, Travis, and Mark look back down at me.
“Don’t judge me,” I say to my Blink 182 poster. “It isn’t like you guys haven’t returned to your roots
either.”
For as much as everything seems the same within the walls of my childhood home, outside,
everything feels different. It’s more than just friends getting married or having children. Or the fact
that several have moved away, whether it’s to a new town or different state altogether. No, it’s
something else that I haven’t been able to pinpoint.
Perhaps it’s me who’s changed. I’m not the same girl who took off when she couldn’t handle the
torment of living each day seeing someone who would never see her. That clueless teen ran away
from it all. She saw and experienced things I wish she never had, and has returned home with her eyes
a little less bright with scars below the surface.
I reach up and unplug my phone. It vibrates on contact.
Great… Who’s texting me this early?
Inhaling a deep breath, I prepare myself. I didn’t tell anyone I was returning home. Then, out of the
blue, I just messaged saying: hey, let’s all meet at the bar. As if I hadn’t ditched them all while the
ink on my high school diploma was still wet.
Last night went well… until I got thrown on a confusing rollercoaster known as Killian Murphy.
The screen wakes up, and I let out a relived exhale as they are all from Rebecca. Or, better yet,
Bex, my BFF from the life I thought I left behind. Not that we haven’t stayed in touch over the years,
and she’s visited me while I was living in New York. It’s just that, no matter how many social media
apps are developed, it seems impossible to really keep in touch with someone. It’s different when
they aren’t down the road and able to come over when you need them.
Nothing on my newsfeed is real, well, not completely. It’s only half the story, the good part. The
stuff you want everyone to see. To the outside observer, it appeared as though I was living the high
life in New York: glamorous parties, athletes, a gorgeous condo, picture-perfect meals. To my
Instagram followers, I was living a dream. The dream. While, in reality, it was a nightmare with shiny
wrapping paper and a bow.

Bex: OMG! Please tell me I didn’t imagine that Killian was totally flirting
with you.

No, he wasn’t. Yes, he was laying on the Murphy charm, but it wasn’t to the real me. It was to
whomever he had mistaken me for. The alcohol was strong on his breath. If he ran into me a few
drinks earlier, that would’ve never happened.
 Me: You need to lay off the LPRs. He was def not flirting with me.
Bex: Do not blame this on the liquid panty removers. I know what I saw. And
that was K.O. ready to go to pound town with little Miss Olly. I told you long
ago all you needed to do was grow out the hair and flaunt those assets. The
reason Killian didn’t notice you back then was because you were too busy
blending in, trying to be one of the guys.

No, it’s because he’s twelve years older than me. Even though the age of consent in Minnesota is
sixteen, at that time, he was twenty-eight and in the media spotlight, at the height of his professional
career. Legal or not, the mere suggestion of him messing around with a teenager would have made
front-page news, and not in a good way. Since he’d been living with me since I was six, there would
have been a ton of speculation about when our relationship started and if he groomed me.
As sad and frustrated as I was back then, as a less-hormonal adult, I get it. There was no teenage
makeover that would’ve gotten me what I wanted, and if it did, I would’ve destroyed someone I cared
deeply about. It’s why I had to leave. Because even when I was eighteen and he was out of the
limelight, he still didn’t want me. It was time to move on.

Me: Sean really needs to change the name of that drink.

Bex: Why? It’s accurate.
Bex: Don’t change the subject. So, did you????
Me: Did I what?
Bex: Ride the rainbow?
Me: WTF is that?
Bex: I forgot you’ve been gone. That’s what the girls call fucking Kill, riding
the rainbow.
Me: Yeah, I don’t need to hear any more about that. But, no, I did not “ride
the rainbow.”
Bex: (emoji of pouty face)
Me: He was drunk. The second he realized who I was, it about made him
vomit.
 Bex: Stop being overdramatic. It probably caught him off guard. I mean,
you’ve changed a lot. I almost didn’t recognize you. Long hair and tits can
do that. BTW, were you a late bloomer or did you go under the knife?

I don’t dignify her with a response. She’ll draw her own conclusions. As horrified as I’ve felt over
this exchange, I can’t help but smile. I’ve missed this.

Bex: What am I saying? Late bloomer. Sure, you’ve got a decent handful
now. But if you were going to go artificial, might as well go Pam Anderson.
Make those babies really pop.

I cup my breast—seems like a little more than a handful to me. Killian has enormous hands. I
doubt they’d even register in his palm. I shake the unnecessary image from my mind.

Me: It doesn’t matter. No amount of puberty, makeup, or clothes can change

the fact I’m Sean’s little sister, and Killian will only ever think of me that
way.
Bex: I get it. You can’t change who your brother is. Doesn’t mean Kill won’t
change his view of you. You’re smoking hot. I doubt any friendship on the
face of the planet is strong enough to keep a guy from a girl he wants.
Me: Have you met Killian?
Me: Can we drop it? I’m not even interested in dating anyone at the
moment.
Bex: Who said anything about dating? Kill doesn’t date. He fucks. Word on
the street is he does it really fucking good too. Which is what you need. A
bigger, better dick to help you forget about your douchebag ex so you can
move on and find your Mr. Right.

Ugh, I know in a way she’s right. But it’s more complicated than that.

Me: I’ll think about it.

 Is all I can say. Hopefully, this will satisfy her. I know her well enough that if I don’t mildly agree
to appease her, she’ll continue to push. And Bex can be very persuasive when she wants, which is
pretty much all the time. She would’ve been an awesome lawyer if she had any interest in schooling. I
can imagine her as the real life Elle Woods from Legally Blonde.

Bex: Okay, I’ll let you think about it while you practice with your B.O.B.
Me: You’re gross.
Bex: Don’t act like you haven’t thought about him while you rubbed your
nub. For how in love you were with him, I’m willing to bet you were thinking
about him when you lost your V-card.
Me: Goodbye, Bex.
Bex: I hear it’s pierced now, just to help your imagination.

I toss my phone onto the nightstand, grab my pillow from behind me, and pull it over my face to
muffle my scream. Coming home was a mistake. I was stupid to think that, after seven years of not
seeing or even speaking to Killian Murphy, all those naïve butterflies that would flutter in my chest
each time I thought of him died. Instead, they went dormant. Because despite the asshole not realizing
it was me he was talking to, the second our eyes locked, those traitorous insects didn’t just flutter
their wings. They fucking soared.
The sweet scent of batter wafts up through the floor vent, and my mouth waters. Tossing my hair up
into a messy bun, I brush my teeth and rush downstairs.
Sean’s at the stovetop with a spatula in hand. “You still like pancakes, right?”
“Who doesn’t?” I bunch my nose in disgust as I take a seat at the small, round breakfast table—the
same one that’s always been here. It’s forever stained with Sharpie marks and cup rings.
Sean shrugs. “I don’t know. People in New York are more: give me a bagel with smear,” he says
in a horrific attempt at a New Yorker accent—it’s so bad even he laughs. My brother is definitely not
cut out to be an actor. That’s for sure. At least not portraying anyone from the east coast.
“It’s because everyone is always on the go,” I say as I pour an obscene amount of syrup over the
stack he just laid out in front of me. “You can’t eat this while fighting traffic on the way to the office.”
“Napkin?”
My bite was perhaps a little too large, and delicious maple gold is dripping down my chin.
“Glad to see they didn’t change you too much.” He chuckles and turns back to the stove.
 For as much as I might bitch about nothing changing in this house, after everything that just
happened, this familiarity is exactly what I need.
“Eat up,” Sean says, his tone suddenly stern. “You’ve got a long day of new-hire orientation ahead
of you.” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “I hear the boss is a real jerk, and it’s going to be painfully
boring.”
Yup, some things never change. My corny-ass brother being one of them. Me still being haplessly in
love with his best friend is another. Now, to get dressed and face that fact head-on. Clearly, I didn’t
think this through when Sean mentioned needing a hand at the bar.
 NEW-HIRE ORIENTATION
Molly

STARTING A NEW JOB sucks. The first day or two always go by in a blur of names and unfamiliar
faces. Major info-dump of every company policy and guideline, which you won’t remember two
seconds after hearing because you’re suffering from intellectual overload. After your first shift,
you’re so beaten down it’s like you’ve been getting your ass kicked by that job for the last twenty
years and counting down the days to retirement.
I assumed working at the bar wouldn’t be that bad. For starters, I know most of the staff who work
here, since it’s a bunch of people from the neighborhood. Also didn’t expect to have all these formal
hoops to jump through, given it’s slinging drinks and my brother’s my boss. I figured, worst-case
scenario, I’d have to do the standard paperwork today for taxes and payroll. Then, after that was
done, shadow someone for a bit until I got the hang of the system.
But, nope. Not my big bro. He takes his new-hire orientation to a whole other level. I’m starting to
think this was all a setup, special torment just for me. I’m on hour five of these ridiculous safety
videos and ready for a drink… or eight. Maybe that’s the point? To bore you into becoming an
alcoholic and lifelong paying customer.
“This is my favorite part.” Dani cranks up the TV as the guy gives several examples of sexual
harassment. If it weren’t for her sitting back here while on break, I might have gone insane. “Pretty
sure Killian violated this one twenty minutes ago when he told Chels that her pregnancy tits are
plumping up nicely.”
I bite my inner cheek. Another disadvantage of having to work with someone you want, but won’t
ever have, is being forced to witness him want everyone around you. Even a six-month pregnant
waitress.
 “Instead of paying all these actors, they should just follow Killian around for a day with a
disclosure at the bottom that says: don’t do this,” I grumble, hoping my hurt is masked enough to
appear as a joke, instead of the jealousy that’s burning in my chest.
Thankfully, Dani laughs before she shovels an overloaded nacho into her mouth.
“I can’t believe Sean actually makes everyone watch these,” I change the subject. Nothing against
my brother… I just never assumed he treated this like a proper business. From what he told me, it
sounded like a bunch of friends who drank and hung out all day.
“I love our annual employee training sessions. Sean will order up several pies and hoagies from
Hot City.”
Now, that sounds more like him. I couldn’t see him as some uptight rule-follower.
“Oh, and then we make up a few drinking games. Like this one…” Her statement is cut off by
chuckling as she folds in half. “Oh my god.” She wipes a tear from her eye. “Do you know what?
Never mind, I’ll let you find out for yourself. So much better when you go in blind.”
“Looking forward to it.” I don’t bother mentioning I probably won’t be here long. This is just
temporary while I figure out what to do with my life moving forward.
Dani pulls out her phone to check the time. “Ugh, better get out there.” She shoves a couple more
bites into her mouth before chugging down the last dregs of her beer. “The evening crowd will be
here soon, and I can’t trust those two dumbasses to make the drinks by themselves.”
“Thanks for hanging out with me.”
“Absolutely, I’m so excited you’re home.” She taps her chin. “Maybe we should plan a night like
the old days?”
I arch a brow at her. “You mean the old days, as in when you were stuck babysitting me?”
“You weren’t a baby. But, yes, exactly like that. We can order up some pizza, pop in a Disney
movie.” She jumps up excitedly. “Oh, I can paint your nails, and if I look hard enough, I bet I can find
a tube of that cucumber face peel stuff.”
I shiver at the memory. “The stuff that tore out all your peach fuzz?”
“Yup, made it as smooth as a baby’s bottom when you were done though.”
Shaking my head, I chuckle. “Sounds like a date.” I loved when Dani would watch me. If it weren’t
for her, I’m not sure I’d know anything about being a girl.
Alone again, I try to stomach the rest of the video. But without Dani here to lighten the mood, it’s
difficult to get past the bullshit. Truth is, managers could make their staff watch hundreds of these
videos every month. However, at the end of the day, none of it matters.
 “Oh, shit. Sorry,” Killian states, scaring the crap out of me.
Shocked, I sit straight in my chair with a hand resting on my pounding heart. With the same urgency
as if he just walked in on me in the bathroom, he turns on his heel to flee and runs smack-dab into the
wall. Crossing my arms, I slouch back into my chair and try not to look at him.
Told you, Bex.
He’s so repulsed by my presence that he’s literally trying to Kool-Aid man himself through the wall
to avoid me.
“Sean told me to sit here.” I’m not sure why I feel the need to justify my actions, as though sitting in
this back room is forbidden and he just caught me doing something wrong. I wouldn’t doubt that he’s
still kicking himself for the stupid mistake he made last night. He was drunk—I know that. He can’t
honestly believe I took any of that flirting seriously.
From the corner of my eye, I glance at him. He stands with his back against the wall, like a wild
animal that’s just been caged. Is it always going to be like this? It didn’t use to be. I mean, sure, I was
a bit awkward at times. On my side of things, not his. There was a point when, on a semi-frequent
daily basis, I was mortified and often praying my extremely fair complexion wouldn’t give my
attraction away. But Killian was never on edge around me. Nothing like this. It kills me to admit it,
but he always treated me just like a little sister.
The only thing worse than not being with him is having him act like I’m the plague or something.
He looks towards the ceiling and combs his fingers through his hair. “I forgot. Need straws.”
I glance over at the supply shelf and spot them right away. Given I’m officially an employee now, I
grab the box and bring it to him. “Here,” I say, since he refuses to look at me.
Killian reaches out to take it. His large hands cover my grip. He tilts his head down and his
magnificent blue eyes lock on mine.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…
I count in my head to keep my breathing even and the butterflies at bay. The last thing I need is
those assholes to wake up and start fluttering. The second one of those insane insects flaps their
wings, my face will heat up and turn redder than a ripe tomato.
Killian can never see the effect he has on me.
Not If I’m going to work here with him. I need to get my ridiculous crush under control for both of
our sanities. I’m not some stupid, hormonal teenager anymore. I can rein this in.
His thumb brushes the top of my hand. Is he caressing me?
 My heart’s pumping so fast I can’t hear anything beyond the blood rushing to fuel the engine that’s
about to go on overload.
Stop it, Molly. You’re just imagining things.
Still, we’re standing here and he’s stroking a nerve that sends a signal straight to my core, making it
clench. Damn it, those traitorous bastards are flapping away.
His brow furrows as he finally realizes that he’s touching me. He yanks the box from my grasp.
“Thanks,” he says before successfully making it through the doorway this time.
“Get ahold of yourself,” I chastise my body as I reclaim my seat on the hard, metal folding chair.
Pulling out my phone, I shoot a text off to Bex.
Me: How do I stop crushing on someone?
She responds instantly.
Bex: Fuck them.
I’m not sure why I expected her to have any other reply. It’s her answer for everything.
Me: What’s option number two?
Bex: Fuck someone else???
I huff out my annoyance before aggressively texting back.
Me: Is there any option that doesn’t involve fucking someone?
Bex: Did moving halfway across the country help?
Me: No…
Bex: Then, nope. Those are it.
Damn it. I tuck my phone away. Why did I even think she’d be able to help me? She has no idea
what it’s like to love someone and know they will never feel the same way about you. That the thought
of you in any manner other than his best friend’s baby sister makes him so repulsed he has to run
away.
Moving to New York might not have cured me. But not being exposed to him did help. It also
allowed me to meet someone else. Not a great someone, but it gave me a chance. Just because the east
coast was a flop doesn’t mean that the west coast is doomed too.
I just need to survive long enough to save up. And, this time, I won’t make the same mistakes. Last
thing I want is to ever have to return here. Not until I learn how to finally remove this malignant crush
and fully recover from my hopeless affliction.
 DICK MOVE
Killian

HOW COULD SEAN HIRE Molly? Okay, I know how.

First off, she’s family and she needed help. Even if she weren’t, we’ve never turned down anyone
in need. Take Chelsea for example. We didn’t meet her until she came in looking for a job. She cried
halfway through the interview, confessing that her boyfriend ditched her in the Twin Cities after she
told him she was pregnant. Her dipshit ex was the member of a band who played here a few nights
before she came looking for the job. Needless to say, his band has been blacklisted from ever being
allowed to play here again. I also warned some of the other bars I’m friends with to spread the word
about the douchebag singer.
The point is I get it. Molly’s in a tough spot and needs help. Logically, I very much understand why
she’s working here. If she’d shown up on my doorstep, asking for help, I would’ve done the same.
With all the understanding though, I still have to ask… why? Is Sean out of his ever-loving mind?
How is he okay with his sister working here?
Drunk assholes leering at her with their filthy eyes as she prances around in those short shorts and
tight tops. If anyone should be upset, it should be him. He can’t be okay with watching his sister
flaunting her assets for everyone to see. Cassie’s worked a couple shifts here before, helping us when
we’ve been short staffed. If she ever dressed like that, I’d either be in an asylum or prison. Not sure
which at this point. But I definitely wouldn’t be here.
Keep telling yourself that.
I down a shot as I pour one for a customer. Fine. The truth is, short of seeing someone doing
something to her or her pushing the boundaries of nudity, I’d never say a word to my sister. Not
because I didn’t care. More because, unless it was an issue, I’d never notice. When it’s your sibling
or relative, there is the force field that develops around them that forces you to avert your gaze and
prevents you from noticing how fucking sexy an outfit might be on them. Because it’s not. Under no
circumstances, do you think or register that your sister looks hot in something.
Which is exactly why Sean doesn’t notice how his sister is prancing around. Because he’s not
supposed to. I shouldn’t either. She might not be my blood but she’s my best friend’s, which makes her
my honorary little sister. However, the reaction presently happening in my pants as my eyes remain
trained on her perfect ass is not at all brotherly.
I’m fucked. I need a distraction. Anything to keep from thinking about her.
There is a god, I think to myself as the front door opens and the answer to my prayers walks in. I
slip out from behind the bar. Dani gives me an annoyed look as she watches me weasel my way
between the happy couple just as their asses hit the stools.
“Miss me?” I say, offering my strongest panty-melting grin. While this particular woman has
remained immune to it in the past, perhaps today will be my lucky day. Ever since the night Molly
made her grand reentry into my life, none of the very available girls who’ve all but dragged me to the
bathroom have sparked an ounce of interest. However, the challenge of this girl always puts a fire in
my belly.
“What would give you that idea?” Letty arches a brow at me.
“For starters.” I brush back a loose strand of her pink hair. “You’ve come all the way up here from
Tral Lake to have a drink at my bar. Considering you have a fully functional bar of your own, the only
viable conclusion is that you want a second chance to make that firefighter of yours jealous.”
And, as if on cue, my former rival pulls me off his girl and pushes at my chest. I don’t fight him,
because Letty and I both know this was my goal all along. “Seriously?” Jake seethes. “She’s
married.”
“And?” I look between him and his wife. “Not to me, she isn’t.”
Letty snickers, and Jake shoves me again. I get a tickle of excitement at the idea of brawling with
him, and not for the first time. Except, instead of coming at me, he turns to her, and in a display of
rather ridiculous and unnecessary possessiveness, he claims Letty’s lips in a near NC-17 rated kiss.
When they break apart, he flashes me a triumphant grin and she fans at her very flushed face.
On a normal day, I’d end this now. Pour them both a drink and call it a day. But because I’m in a
mood and feel the need to poke the bear, I don’t stop. I lift the back of Jake’s shirt, revealing the little
shamrock I tattooed on him after losing our bet. “You know, since I marked you, I feel like that makes
Letty part mine too. Don’t you think?”
Jake’s face is red as he clenches his fists.
 “Okay, now, settle down, boys.” Letty stands between us to stop the inevitable fight. Well, more to
call off her husband. My hands were tucked into my pockets. “Killian, I told you it would never have
worked between us. Jakey-poo.” With the way his nostrils flare at the ridiculous nickname, I can’t tell
if it makes him angry or horny—though I’m willing to bet another tattoo a bit of both. “You know he
does this because you make it easy for him. If you stopped reacting, he’d stop hitting on me every time
I come here.”
“But that brings me back to my original point. Why are you here? If not to make your husband
insanely jealous.” Her tan skin flushes at my question, and there it is. “You do come here to make him
jealous. Am I part of a little sex game? Do you two hate-fuck in the parking lot when you leave?”
Neither of them responds, but based on the heated gaze they share, the answer is definitely a yes.
“Can I watch?” I add with a grin.
“You wish,” Letty finally says. “We aren’t here for you, Killian… this time.” Ha! I fucking knew it.
“We’re flying out. Figured we could stop in for a bite before we go to the airport.”
Now that the fun is over, time to get back behind the bar. “Yeah, where are you two crazy kids
going this time?” I ask, pouring them a couple of beers.
“Disney,” she says with a giant smile.
“Didn’t you guys just go there?”
“This one is in Tokyo.” She and Jake look at each other, their expressions equally excited.
Last year, if you were to ask me about Letty, I’d tell you she would work at that bar of hers until the
day she dropped. Probably die there, have her corpse preserved and stuck on a stool. This isn’t the
first time these two have stopped by on their way out of town. They usually do on their way back too.
It’s become a routine for them. One I don’t mind, since I get to relive the old days of making Jake
jealous.
Now, though, I think that bar of hers keeps getting smaller in the rearview mirror. I’m not sure if
she’s going to give it up. But it’s like ever since these kids have learned there is a larger world
beyond their small town of Tral Lake, they’re itching to see it all.
And they should.
“What’s the matter, old man?” Jake asks. His tone is empathetic to the point of mocking.
“Huh?” I glance between them, uneasy with the look they’re both giving me.
“You seem to be off your game today,” Letty joins in on the interrogation.
“Your boy toy doesn’t seem to think so.”
 “Nah, I agree. I mean, your attempt at seduction lacks its usual…” Jake ponders for a moment.
“Flare. Like I went along with it because it’s our thing. But I never once believed you were actually
trying to get into her pants. It was kind of embarrassing if I were being honest. But we’re friends…
ish, and you’re my bro-in-law, so I wasn’t about to leave you hanging.”
Letty stares at me before her eyes go wide. “Shut the fuck up,” she yells and slams her palm on the
counter. “You met someone.”
I shush her when a few customers start glaring in my direction. “No.”
“Oh my god,” Jake adds. “He has. I get it, dude, seriously. It’s weird, isn’t it?”
“What is?” I lean in to listen.
“You know…” He shrugs, and I urge him to continue. Because, no, I don’t know. “How once your
dick’s decided on the one, the many are no longer appealing. It happens without any fucking warning
too.”
“Ah,” Letty coos. “You never told me you couldn’t get it up for anyone else.”
“Two burgers, right?” I interrupt their exchange, because this conversation just took a very
uncomfortable turn—one I don’t want any part of. “Extra pickles?” I’m already walking to the
kitchen. “I’ll put a rush on them. Wouldn’t want you guys to miss your flight.”
Jake and Letty are not even listening to me as I flee the situation, their laughter following me when I
push through the doors. Not paying much attention myself, I run into a tiny human. Molly looks up at
me, her green eyes wide and both of us covered in whatever drinks she was carrying.
“Watch where you’re going,” I say to her.
Yeah, I’m a dick.
That wasn’t her fault. I know it. Hopefully she does too. But instead of apologizing or helping her
clean it up like any decent human would do, I drop the order off with the kitchen, then get the hell out
of dodge like the fucking coward I seem to be now.
 UNIFORMS
Molly

“HOW’S IT GOING?” SEAN asks, picking up the saltshaker I just filled and inspecting it. Chelsea
snickers.
“Good…?” I know my brother. He hates small talk. He wants something. The question is what? I
could ask him outright. But watching him sweat as he dances around the subject is way more fun.
“So, I mean… you like working here?” He continues to prod.
“I do.” My focus is locked on the container as I pour in the salt. Chelsea stops refilling the ketchup
bottles, observing our interaction instead. With the way her eyes bounce between us, you’d think she
needs a bowl of popcorn.
“Oh, that’s good…” Sean fidgets with a bundle of rolled-up silverware.
Unable to stand it any longer, I snatch the utensils from his hand before he messes them up. Okay,
there isn’t much to mess up. It’s just a bunch of silverware, wrapped in a napkin and secured with a
paper band around the handles to keep it together. But still… this went from amusing to downright
sad.
“Is there a problem, Sean?” I peer up at him, cocking my hip and resting a palm on it. “Are you not
satisfied with my performance?” I’ve been working here for a couple of weeks now. There has been
some growing pains, which is totally expected with any new job. However, I’d like to believe I’ve
found my groove.
“What? No.” Sean shakes his head. “No issue… it’s just…”
“Out with it.” I snap my fingers.
“I figured maybe this wasn’t your thing,” he finally says.
“And why’s that?” I look at him, confused.
 Sean’s eyes dart to Chelsea, then back to me again. “Can we talk in the office? No offense, Chels.
It’s just a family matter.”
“Don’t even know what you’re talking about. I’m just here doing prep work. Hadn’t even realized
you were there. Hi, Sean, how are you?” Chelsea gives him a glowing smile.
Sean rolls his eyes. “We’ll be back in a minute.”
She chuckles as I follow him into the office. Killian glances up from the paperwork on his desk
before refocusing on it again. His head snaps back up as he registers my presence. I fight the urge to
deck him in his handsome face. I’m still pissed about the other day when he ran into me, spilled my
tray of drinks, and then had the audacity to blame me. Dick never did apologize. However, I can’t
help but squirm as he slowly looks at me from head to toe.
“Sorry, Kill. I needed privacy to talk to Molly. Didn’t realize you were in here.”
Killian continues to glare at me. “It’s fine.” Though, based on his tone, it doesn’t seem fine. He
slams the logbook he was going over and stands. “I was finished. Need to get out to the bar. Things to
prep.”
“Okay, we’ll be out in a second,” Sean says, oblivious to the suffocating tension in the room.
I’m frozen like a deer caught in headlights as Killian stands before me. He showered this morning.
Droplets of water glisten in his dark hair. It’s hot enough that they could be perspiration. But the
potent scent of bergamot wafting towards me says he bathed.
Fuck, he always smells amazing.
“Are you going to move?” Killian asks through clenched teeth.
“Huh?” I glance behind me and notice I’m blocking the doorway. “Oh, sorry.” I step to the side.
As Killian exits, he makes purposeful steps, maintaining his distance. Why do I let this hurt me so
much? It isn’t like I had any delusions that he would be magically head over heels for me when I came
home. Granted, his flirting with me didn’t help much. But the second I realized he didn’t know it
was me, well, that glimmer of hope was snuffed out.
Killian and I will never happen. I’ve accepted that. I’m Sean’s little sister. He’s known me since I
was an infant. I get it. Someone can’t just change the way they view someone else. What bothers me,
though, is that he has to be a dick about it. Killian never used to be that way. At least not to me. He
was always nice, cool. When I left, I knew he was going through some shit. The injury, being forced
to retire, it wasn’t easy on him.
Is that what happened? Did it break him?
 Guilt eats away at me. If I hadn’t been selfish, so obsessed with him and hurt that he would never
want me the way I wanted him, I could’ve been here. Took care of him, like he had always taken care
of us. Instead, I couldn’t get over my own shit and left him when he was down.
Oh my god. Is that why he hates me? It has nothing to do with disgust. It’s because I wasn’t here.
“So, what do you think?” Sean asks.
“What?”
“Did you seriously not hear any of that?” No, I didn’t. “Nice to see you’re still the same old
Molly.” Sean chuckles. “You and those daydreams. Anyway, I was asking about the gym.”
“What about it?”
“Look, I don’t know what happened in New York. You don’t want to tell me, and while it kills me,
you’re an adult. I respect your right to privacy. But come on, Molls. Waiting tables at the bar?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I cross my arms. “You sling drinks here. How’s it good enough
for you and not me?”
“For starters, I wasn’t smart like you. College, all that, was never in the cards. If Killian hadn’t
made a job for me, I would’ve applied to the union, just like Dad.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“I know.”
We don’t say more than that. It’s never been easy for us to talk about Dad. The local would’ve
welcomed Sean with open arms. I mean, that was always his plan. And there’s no doubt he would’ve
made a good living. But I’m not sure either of us could've handled it after Dad died.
“But the point is… you’re smart. Always have been. You went to college, got a degree. You
interned and got a full-time position at The Fuel.”
The Fuel is one of the top five public relation firms in the United States—many would argue it’s
likely the most elite. If you’re one of their clients, you’re a god. While I was good at my job, I’m not
foolish enough to ignore the fact the only reason I was offered the prestigious internship was because
of Killian’s influence.
“I get that it didn’t work out there. But you shouldn’t throw all that training away. If you don’t want
to work for a big company like that, then help the guys out at the gym. We could use someone like you.
I’ve looked at a couple of firms, but they haven’t been right. Not for us… But you, you’d be perfect.”
“I don’t know.” I hug myself.
“Come on, Molly. Even if it’s just part time.”
“Can I think about it?”
 Sean opens and closes his mouth. He swallows down whatever argument he was about to make.
“Sure.”
“Thank you.”
My brother pulls me in for a hug. “I’m just happy you’re home. And will support whatever you
want to do. Even if that’s waiting tables here.” Sean looks at the clock. “We should get out there. We
open soon and Dani will put my balls in a vise if I don’t finish my prep work.”
I laugh. “Aren’t you her boss?”
“Have you met Dani?”
“Touché,” I agree and follow Sean back out to the bar.
“Everything good?” Chelsea asks when I approach the table. She’s finished filling the bottles and
has already started to set them at the booths.
“Yeah, he just wanted to make sure I was cool working here.”
“Oh.” Chelsea bites her lip.
“Why? What did you think?”
“It’s silly.” She reaches for more place settings, busying her hands and looking anywhere but at me.
“No, what is it?” While I haven’t known her long, I like to believe we’ve become friendly enough
that we wouldn’t shy away from saying what’s on our minds.
“Well, I thought maybe he wanted you gone because of Killian.”
“Because of Killian? What did he say?” I know he’s not happy with me and a bit of an ass. But
does he really dislike me so much now that he’d talk shit about me behind my back? That doesn’t
sound like the guy I grew up with at all. I peek over my shoulder, and sure enough, his nostrils are
flared as he stares me down.
Asshole.
“Look, I don’t judge. I mean, what eligible girl in a ten-mile radius hasn’t hooked up with Killian?
Well, besides me… and Dani. Sean puts up with it. But, come on, you’re his baby sister. No way he’d
let Killian hang your panties on the board.”
“Wait! You think I’m fucking Killian?” I lean in and whisper the last part.
“No judgement. If I hadn’t just been dumped and already knocked up, I probably would’ve
considered it too. But after Brad, well, let’s just say the last thing I need is another guy screwing me.”
“Killian and I aren’t… anything.” It sucks to admit, but it doesn’t even seem like we’re friends
anymore.
“Oh.” Her brows scrunch together. “I just… never mind. Pregnancy brain.”
 Grabbing her wrist, I stop her before she walks away. “Why would you think that?”
She shrugs. “I might be new here, but since you started, he hasn’t taken any of the groupies home.
And with the way he eye-bones you nonstop whenever you both are working, I just figured you guys
were doing the dirty.”
“Killian eye-fuck me?” I fold over, holding my gut as I laugh. A tear rolls down my cheek and I
quickly wipe it away. “You’re hilarious. I really needed that. Thank you.”
Now it’s her turn to stop me as I grab saltshakers. “I wasn’t being funny. I mean. Even now.”
I look over my shoulder again and she’s right. Killian’s icy blue stare is on me. That naïve voice in
my head perks up with the idea. “He doesn’t see me like that,” I reason. “He’s mad at me.”
“Why?”
“Long story…. Look, I can promise you Killian Murphy has ZERO interest in me. Zilch. Nada—”
“UNIFORMS!” Killian yells abruptly, gaining the attention of everyone.
“Uniforms?” Sean seems just as confused by the outburst as the rest of us.
Killian clears his throat. “We need them.”
Chelsea and a couple other staff members groan their disapproval. “I hate to admit it,” Chelsea
says so only I can hear her. “But these milk makers have doubled my tips recently.”
A sad fact I’ve noticed since starting. I don’t dress as revealing as most of the girls here. I don’t
have the assets to flaunt like they do. But I won’t deny that with the shorter shorts and more midriff on
display, I’ve seen an uptick in my cash profits.
“Since when?” Dani jumps in. I’ve noticed while she isn’t technically a manager or owner, she has
as much say around here as the guys do. It’s funny how two of the strongest men I know cower in fear
at a girl half their size. It’s always been that way, for as long as I can remember.
“Now.” Killian tugs at the collar of his black t-shirt. “This heat wave is killer. I get it. But we need
to draw a line.”
“Is that so?” Dani raises her perfectly penciled brow. She’s wearing a black bikini top with a
fishnet crop top over it. Her micro, skintight shorts are sliced along the sides. I’m not sure I would
ever have her level of confidence. Then again, she’s never been shy. And when what’s exposed is a
flesh canvas of exquisite ink, I can’t exactly blame her. You don’t invest that much time and energy
into your body to keep it hidden.
“Yes, we have a reputation—”
“Kill, don’t even start. The only one with a reputation here is you.”
 “Calm down.” Sean assumes his usual role and steps between them. Dani, unfazed by the obvious
height and weight difference, puffs out her chest. Ready for a fight. If I had to wager, I’d put my money
on her. She’s always been scrappy, had to be if she wanted to be part of the trio, but she’s gotten
tougher over the years. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this.”
“Ha!” Killian gives a victorious grin to Dani.
“BUT… Dani is right,” Sean finishes.
“What?” Killian falters in his steps.
Sean rubs the back of his neck. “As long as no ordinances are violated, how someone dresses is
their choice.”
Dani sticks her pierced tongue out at Killian, behind Sean’s back.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Killian throws his rag on the bar. He locks his eyes on mine. “It’s
fucking obscene,” he says before storming off.
Suddenly feeling self-conscious, I hug my exposed stomach.
“Told you,” Chelsea whispers in my ear. I turn and look at her, unsure of what she’s referring to.
“Killian… he wants you.”
“That’s what you got out of all that?”
Chelsea shrugs a shoulder. “Maybe I’m wrong. It’s not like I’ve ever seen him have a crush before.
But all that…” She gestures to the interaction across the room. “…is not Killian. And the only thing
that’s changed recently is you. If you say that you two aren’t doing the deed, then I assume this sudden
change is because he’s not getting what he wants. And let’s just say that’s not usually a struggle he
has.”
“I’m going to take my fifteen.” I need to get some air. Chelsea smiles at me but doesn’t object as I
rush outside.
I fish my phone from my pocket and shoot Bex a text.

Me: I can’t breathe

Bex: What’s up? Where are you?
Me: Work.
Bex: What happened? Did a customer get handsy with you?
Me: No.
Bex: Do you need me to come? I’ll be there in five.
Me: No…
Bex: I don’t like this. Talk to me.
Me: Chelsea, you know her, right?
Bex: Of course, did she say something?
Me: Yes.
Bex: I knew it! The sweet, quiet ones are always the biggest bitches.
Me: OMG, no. It’s not like that.
Bex: Okay, you need to start talking then.
Me: She asked if Killian and I were doing it. When I told her no, she didn’t
believe me. She went on about how he’s always looking at me. Then Killian
shouted something about us needing uniforms. He and Dani got into a huge
fight over it. Sean agreed with Dani. He stormed off, and then Chelsea was
all like SEE?
Bex: OMFG
Bex: *GIF of people celebrating*
Bex: I knew it.
Me: Stop it. You know better than anyone. I’m the last girl Killian would
ever think about in that way.
Bex: Test him.
Bex: Come over tonight. I’ve got a plan.
Me: What?
Bex: Do you trust me?
Me: With this? No…
 PUNISHMENT
Killian

WOULD I SAY I’M a good guy? By Ma’s definition, that would be a resounding no.
For starters, I quit going to church the instant I moved out of the house, and she couldn’t force me to
attend anymore. The threat of if you’re not dressed and in the car in five minutes, then you can pack
your bags didn’t quite hit the same once I was paying my own rent.
Not to say getting out of church was the only reason I moved out, but it sure helped sway me to
accept Sean’s offer to live with him. His invitation was less about getting me out from under Ma’s
thumb, and more about him needing help after his dad passed.
I never missed a service before. Not even when I had chicken pox or that time I had mono. Ma
insisted on extra bible studies when I got sick with the kissing disease. Let’s just say after that first
Saturday night mass I skipped, I waited anxiously for a higher power to smite me down. The only
smiting happened when Ma called and told me all the ways I’d disappointed her and how they would
continue to pray for my damned soul in her group.
There was a time I was pissed at my brother Cian for enlisting in the Army the second he turned
eighteen and determined Cassie and I were old enough to manage on our own. Ma had always been a
bit eccentric, but she kicked it up several notches when he shipped out. At first, I understood. We
were all scared. Except it never mellowed.
Although I might not be the devoted Catholic my mother is, guilt over my poor attendance still ate
away at me. Not that I lacked faith, just wanted to explore it my own way.
To help alleviate my guilt, keep the nightmares at bay, and hopefully save my soul, I made sure to
do good with the bad. In hopes it would outweigh or at least neutralize some of my miscreant ways.
Take the Lord’s name in vain: donate to charity.
Have premarital sex: drop nonperishables at the shelter.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
journalism there stands a figure equally attractive, but intended for a
greater part. Camille Desmoulins was one of the many young
advocates who, at the outset of the Revolution, forsook for dreams of
literature and politics the barren realities of law, and in return for the
doubtful sacrifice found themselves suddenly a power in the State.
Raised to fame on the 12th July by his memorable harangue in the
Palais Royal, Camille Desmoulins determined to dedicate to
journalism the gaiety, the light touch, the mocking eloquence and
careless wit, which veiled his unconsidered views and his genuine
love of freedom, and in the autumn of 1789 he brought out the
Révolutions de France et de Brabant. Lastly, in September, 1789,
there appeared the first number of a newspaper, which, under the
title of the Ami du Peuple, was soon to acquire a sinister fame, and
which, by the violence of its language, and the wild, suspicious
indignation of its tone, represented more truly than any other journal
the temper, the fears, the bitterness, the passions, which animated
the most ignorant and necessitous class.
Marat, the editor of this celebrated paper, had already had a
remarkable career, and his ascendency in the Revolution is one of
the phenomena of the time. From his childhood upwards he seems
to have been of a morbidly nervous and sensitive disposition, keenly
intelligent and alert, ambitious of knowledge and rapid in acquiring it,
fond of science, and at the same time devoted to speculative
enquiry, endowed with an extraordinary belief in his own powers and
a jealous distrust of the abilities of others, strongly pronounced in his
own opinions, and unrestrained in attacking those who differed from
him. In later life it is probable that his constitutional, morbid irritability
impaired his reason, but there is no ground for denying that his
abilities were really considerable, although they were often vitiated
by a perverse singularity of view. Early in life Marat made a
reputation as a physician and man of science, and for several years
he resided in England, where he seems at one time to have enjoyed
a practice in Soho. His writings on all sorts of topics made him well
known, and he signalised himself by attacking Newton and Locke,
and by engaging in controversy with Helvetius and Voltaire. From
science and philosophy Marat plunged into politics. He became
connected with some of the popular societies in England, which were
then busily agitating for reform, and his democratic opinions made
him keenly alive to the defects of the English Parliamentary system
in the eighteenth century. On returning to France, he received an
appointment on the establishment of the Comte d'Artois, and
obtained some experience of life at Court. His scientific work
continued to win him reputation, but it appears that his views, or
more probably his manner of expressing them, made him unpopular
in his profession, and the coldness with which he was treated still
further embittered his irritable nature. The approach of the
Revolution at last gave him an opportunity to display the devotion to
democratic ideals, which was perhaps the most genuine passion of
his mind; and his real love for what he thought was freedom, his
unceasing insistence on the needs and sufferings of the multitude,
his fearless attacks upon the powerful and great, his jealous hatred
of superiority, whether of wealth, of wisdom, or of station, struck a
chord in the hearts of the poor, and won for Marat the enthusiastic
attachment of thousands, who could feel panic and hunger, although
they could not think. From the first, the Ami du Peuple preached the
doctrine of suspicion. It attacked, often with reckless and cruel libels,
all who were in power. It spared no invective. It hesitated at no
calumny. It was always urging the people to action, always warning
them to guard against the traitors in the Court, in the army, in the
Assembly, and in the clubs. It claimed for itself the utmost license,
and boldly threw upon those whom it denounced the burden of
proving their innocence to the people. In vain the authorities
attempted to restrain it, and threatened its editor with prosecution
and punishment. In vain Lafayette exerted his influence to crush the
dauntless advocate of the needy, the dauntless minister of sedition
and spite. Persecution only made Marat more bitter in his warnings,
and endeared him more to those who half believed his warnings to
be true.
But while the democratic Press claimed the largest indulgence for
itself, the people who accepted its teaching would permit no
indulgence to their opponents. From the reactionary Press they had
not much to fear. Three newspapers of some importance were
subsidised by the Court, the Actes des Apôtres, the Ami du Roi, and
the Journal général de la Cour et de la Ville, popularly known as
Petit Gautier. But none of these productions showed any real literary
or political merit, and for the most part the contributors to them, of
whom the Vicomte de Mirabeau is a not unfair type, contented
themselves with ridicule and obscenity, with witty personalities or
vulgar abuse. Only one journal of the first rank, the Mercure,
continued to brave unpopularity by a steady defence of liberty and
order, and under the guidance of Mallet du Pan, supported with
eloquence and staunch moderation the views which Malouet vainly
endeavoured to recommend to the Assembly. But again and again
self-constituted critics, deputations from the Palais Royal,
representatives of the mob, and even the agents of the local
authorities, denounced, remonstrated and interfered with the writer,
and plainly threatened with violence and death any one who dared to
use the freedom of the Press to defend unpopular, though liberal,
opinions. Under such conditions, and having regard to the
disorganisation and unwisdom of the royalists, and to the energy and
enthusiasm which pervaded the popular party, it is not surprising that
the power of the Press came to be enlisted almost entirely upon the
democratic side, and helped to render irresistible the victorious
advocates of the Revolution.
Among the politicians of this early period, there were a few men
whose importance raised them above others, and whose attitude
demands special attention. When the States-General met at
Versailles, the two most popular men in France were probably
Necker and the Duke of Orleans. Philippe of Orleans was a cousin of
the King. His lax principles and enormous fortune had won him
celebrity as a leader of fashion, and his dislike of Louis, increased by
the scanty favour shown him at Court, and stimulated by his own
ambition and the advice of interested friends, induced him to
espouse the popular cause. Before the outbreak of the Revolution,
the Duke had displayed his liberal opinions by taking a conspicuous
part in the opposition which the Parlement of Paris offered to
Brienne. His money was of the greatest service in circulating popular
pamphlets. His rank and the political position which he assumed,
secured him the honour of a triple election to the States-General.
The gardens of his residence in the Palais-Royal, already thrown
open by the Duke to the public, became the headquarters of the
revolutionary party in Paris. His agents, not, apparently, without his
sanction, deliberately encouraged disorder in the capital, and hoped,
by rendering Louis' position untenable, to secure for their master
high political position, and possibly the title of Constitutional King.
The Duke himself, though unprincipled and mischievous, was rather
a man of pleasure than a skilful politician, and his influence was due
less to his abilities than to his rank and fortune, and to the energy of
his supporters. His wealth and prospects procured him the services
of Duport, one of the ablest tacticians in the Assembly, until Duport
found that nothing was to be made of so disappointing a leader.
They gained him the support of the licentious but clever Laclos, who
proved himself a most useful auxiliary at the Jacobin Club, and of St.
Hurugues, a worthless, brawling nobleman, who headed all the
important riots in Paris during the early years of the Revolution. How
far the Duke's money and influence were used to stimulate panic
and insurrection, and to spread false rumours in the capital, it is not
possible accurately to say. But it is certain that his name played a
large part in the riot which ended in the capture of the Bastille, and it
is certain that the rising of the 5th October was encouraged, if not
originated, by his agents, in the expectation that the violence of the
rioters might clear the way for Orleans to the throne. On that
occasion, however, the Duke was outmatched by his watchful rival
Lafayette, and soon afterwards he allowed himself to be driven by
Lafayette's menacing attitude into the polite exile of a mission to
London. His banishment, and the tameness with which he submitted
to it, disgusted his adherents and shattered his party; and although,
on his return, he still remained for some time longer influential for
mischief, and from the resources which he commanded, a
dangerous enemy to the Court and to Lafayette, the Duke's
opportunity was really over, and he gradually descended into the
contempt which he deserved.
Necker, too, lived to learn the bitterness of being found out. At the
beginning of May, 1789, he was the only man high in the counsels of
the Government believed to be a friend to freedom, and as such he
enjoyed a popularity somewhat undeserved. For a few months that
popularity lingered. His disappointing speech on the meeting of the
States-General, and the vacillating policy which followed it, very
soon opened the eyes of those who came into contact with him; but
his dismissal in July saved his reputation for the moment, and made
him, until his return, the popular hero. From the day of his return,
however, his popularity declined. His unsatisfactory finance and his
inability or unwillingness to face the economic situation, rapidly
destroyed his fame as a financier. His indecisive views, his jealousy
of rivals, his determination not to admit Mirabeau to power, and the
indirect support which he consequently gave to the disastrous
decree of the 7th November, 1789, his entire want of statesmanship,
if statesmanship implies insight and resource, and his helplessness
on all occasions when people turned to him for help, rapidly made
him a non-entity. 'M. Necker,' said Mirabeau, with bitter truth, 'has no
idea of what he wants, of what he ought, or of what he is able to do.'
In September, 1790, thoroughly alienated from the revolutionary
leaders, vexed by the decline of his popularity, and harassed by the
vagaries of an Assembly which he was powerless to control, Necker
at last resigned his post, and carried another lost reputation into
exile.
Another politician of high place, but of less importance, was the
King's eldest brother, Monsieur, le Comte de Provence. From the
first, this prince had been the persistent enemy of the Queen, and
had busily intrigued against her influence and reputation. His exact
hopes are not easy to discover, for his conduct was not always
consistent or clear; but it seems that he cherished the idea of
supplanting Louis on the throne, and waited with quiet, deliberate
selfishness, to see if the Revolution would bring the opportunity of
doing so in his way. He did not, like Orleans, throw himself headlong
into the arms of the revolutionary party, nor did he, like his younger
brother, the Comte d'Artois, put himself at the head of the
reactionary royalists. He refrained from committing himself to either
side, and continued to exercise a great deal of influence over the
mind of the King. The part which he took in bringing Mirabeau into
relation with the Court seems to indicate some degree of political
wisdom; but whether in so doing he intended to serve the King, or
only wished to preserve the interests of a crown which he hoped to
secure for himself, it is impossible to say. The intrigues and
manœuvres of the Comte de Provence ought not to be viewed in the
same light as the more guilty ones of the Duke of Orleans, and his
character is less entitled to contempt. But he cannot be regarded as
loyal or friendly to his brother, and his attitude emphatically illustrates
the precarious isolation of the King.
Two men, however, Lafayette and Mirabeau, during the first two
years of the Revolution, surpassed all competitors in influence and
power. Of these two, in actual authority Lafayette stood first, and in
the middle of the year 1790 he was by far the most powerful man in
France. Lafayette's disposition was not without elements of
nobleness. He was a brave and high-principled man, very capable of
fine feeling and enthusiasm, and by no means devoid of generosity
or honour. He was strongly attached to his own idea of freedom, and
he believed it to be his peculiar destiny to secure it for his country.
His rank and fortune, the wide reputation which his enterprising
voyage to America had won him, his well-known advanced opinions,
and above all the fortunate chance which made him Commander of
the National Guard of Paris, and thus controller of the armed force of
the Revolution, combined to raise him to an extraordinary position.
Had he only known how to use it, Lafayette might have made himself
master of the destinies of France. Never again, till the days of
Brumaire, did such an opportunity fall to the lot of a French politician.
In some respects Lafayette is a character to whom it is difficult to be
just. His opportunities were so great. His limitations were so obvious.
His failure was so complete. But it is possible that his failure inclines
us to judge him too harshly. It is not fair to condemn a man because
he could not understand a portent, to censure a politician who could
not cope with the French Revolution. Had Lafayette been a worse
man, he might have fared better than he did. Had he been a less
conspicuous man, he would have borne a higher reputation to-day.
He was certainly ambitious. He was certainly vain. He had little
breadth of judgment or of vision. He was too much the slave of his
own formulas. He was too ready to echo democratic phrases,
without considering whether they applied or not. He was too ready to
destroy the authority of the Crown, to reduce the ministers to
puppets, to encourage the rash schemes of the Assembly. He was
too ready to spend time and pains in winning popularity from the
bourgeois of Paris. He was too ready to countenance dubious acts of
policy and intrigue. He had not sufficient statesmanship to see the
dangers of the time and the imperative necessity of combined and
well-considered action. His stiff propriety would not permit him to
associate with Mirabeau, even for public ends. But still, in a day
when the character of many public men was low, Lafayette's motives
were neither sordid nor corrupt, and all through his long career he
displayed a staunch loyalty to his honest, if limited, ideals.
Unwavering consistency, although the virtue of weak men, often
lends dignity to conduct, and that dignity Lafayette possessed. The
worst charge which can be brought against him in the early days of
the Revolution is that his policy mingled too largely with ideas of
personal aggrandisement. From the 5th and 6th October, when his
doubtful behaviour secured him the first power in the State,
Lafayette's chief object seems to have been so to organise the
National Guard, as to maintain his own dictatorship, to assert the
predominance of the middle classes, with whose views he cordially
agreed, and to repress all attempts from the Court, from Mirabeau,
from the multitude, or from any other quarter, to lead the political
movement into courses which would take its direction out of his
hands.
But where all other politicians failed, one man, Mirabeau, displayed
in the general confusion the high capacities of a statesman.
Mirabeau brought to the States-General at Versailles the reputation
of great abilities and even greater vices, and the fame of a man who,
in the vagaries of an astonishing career, had almost exhausted the
resources of politics, of literature and of dissipation. He found himself
thoroughly distrusted by the Court, by the Government, by the
nobility, by the vast majority of respectable people. He was received
with murmurs in the Assembly itself. But before a month had gone
by, he had won the ear of the Assembly, and after his great speech
of the 23rd June, 1789, he became, whenever he chose to speak, its
leader. To Mirabeau's mind the first thing to be done in France was
to destroy the despotism which paralysed alike freedom, ambition,
thought, trade, industry and labour, to sweep away the foundations
of privilege and oppression upon which it rested, and to build up in
its place a system which should offer liberty to all. For that end he
was prepared to encounter any hazard and, if need were, to face all
the risks of revolution. But, could that object be effectually attained,
he had no wish to destroy more than was necessary to gain it, and
he was anxious to carry through the change with as little loss and
ruin as might be.
Almost alone in his generation, Mirabeau had noticed what his
contemporaries had missed. He had caught, as they had, the spirit of
the time. He had welcomed, as they had, the idea of reform. He had
learned, as they had, the doctrines of the day. He had conceived, as
they had, a passionate hatred of tyranny and misrule and a hot
desire for liberty and justice. But, instead of skimming the surface of
democracy, and of filling his brain with theories which could not fit
with facts, Mirabeau had tried to understand the new science, and
had realised that it was the task of a statesman not to advertise
theories, but to apply them. Politics were not to him merely a stage
for strayed enthusiasms, but rather the business of conducting
government, so as to redress the wrongs from which the men around
him suffered, and to give them the opportunity of living in future with
satisfaction and self-respect. Almost alone among his
contemporaries he brought to the task of reform no fixed
preconceptions or systems, but only a desire to appreciate the
circumstances round him, to foresee and meet the difficulties which
were certain to arise, to use such instruments as might be necessary
to his purpose, whether he liked them personally or not, and to draw
out of the confusion, at whatever sacrifice of his own predilections, a
constitution which, by guaranteeing freedom, should meet the
wishes of reasonable men. Mirabeau steadily refused to waste time
in talking about abstract equality, or to contemplate millenniums
which he could not advance. He had no wish to pull down the throne
which Frenchmen had loved for ages, to level the old order, to sweep
away the ancient traditions of the land. He did not covet change for
its own sake. Unjust privilege, caste distinction, Court extravagance,
bigoted intolerance, partial justice, personal insecurity, burdensome
taxation, false economic laws,—these things he was determined to
abolish, and he looked to the experience of other nations to help him
in establishing a working system in their place. Almost alone among
his contemporaries, he set himself loyally to discover what France
needed, and what at the least cost of suffering she could gain.
One consequence of this attitude was that from the first Mirabeau
took the lead in assailing the abuses of the old system. Another
consequence was that, as soon as he saw that the Revolution had
unquestionably won—and his penetration enabled him to see this
before most people found it out, and when other minds were still
engrossed with apprehensions of an impossible reaction—he
devoted his energies to giving a practical shape to the policy of the
Reformers. As a practical statesman, he looked with contempt on the
'orgy' of the 4th August, on Lafayette's voluminous Declaration of the
Rights of Man, and on the agitation in favour of the suspensive veto.
As a practical statesman, in October, 1789, when his adversaries
were trying to make him responsible for the march of the Parisian
mob to Versailles, Mirabeau was endeavouring, through his
connection with La Marck, a brilliant young Flemish nobleman, who
was both a member of the States-General and a devoted friend of
the Queen, to induce the Government to face the crisis and to adopt
a definite policy for the future. His acquaintance with La Marck had
opened to Mirabeau a channel by which his advice could penetrate
to the Comte de Provence, and so to the King. Even at this time he
is found urging the King to withdraw from Paris to Rouen or to some
other town in the interior, where his freedom would not be
threatened, to put himself at the head of the reforming party, and to
surround himself with a strong Ministry of well-known and popular
leaders. This aim, the establishment of a Government powerful
enough to act with vigour, and popular enough to secure support,
Mirabeau never ceased to pursue. The coldness of Lafayette, the
jealous egotism of Necker, and the distrust which he personally
inspired at Court, defeated his project, and the fatal decree of the 7th
November destroyed that prospect for a time. Still Mirabeau did not
despair of reconciling the King with the Revolution, and of securing
for the support of constitutional monarchy the services of the chief
revolutionary leaders. He made repeated efforts to break down
Lafayette's stubborn aloofness, and to induce him to co-operate in
his plans. 'Lafayette,' he writes to him, 'we must unite, I cannot act
without you.' In vain he warns him against the 'little men,' who were
endeavouring to keep them apart. 'You have many followers and
agents,' he writes again, 'but only a few real friends and servants
among them, and none of ability. You and I need one another. Why
refuse to act with me?' But to all these overtures Lafayette returned
steadily the same chilling refusal, and after June, 1790, Mirabeau
gave up trying to win him, and contented himself with watching the
General, and with defeating his manœuvres, whenever he could.
Meanwhile, in the Assembly, Mirabeau's ascendency increased
every day. On all questions, in all difficulties, his wide knowledge and
practical ability contrasted conspicuously with the vagaries of his
colleagues, and made him inevitably, except when intrigues or
theories carried the day against him, the leader of the House. His
speeches on financial questions showed him to be by far the ablest
financier there, and more than once decided the Assembly's policy in
that department. In foreign affairs he undertook the entire
management of the policy of France, and with the assistance of
Montmorin in the Ministry, and of his own surpassing knowledge and
eloquence in the House, steered the King's tottering administration
safely through diplomatic troubles till his death. On the question of
giving to the Executive or to the Assembly the initiative in matters of
peace and war, Mirabeau fearlessly risked his popularity in order to
secure that essentially executive function to the Crown. On the
questions of enforcing order, of forbidding emigration, of re-
organising the army and navy, of strengthening the administration,
Mirabeau alone showed in a high degree the instinct of a sound and
practical statesman; and if eloquence, enthusiasm, courage and
understanding could have made his views prevail, the labours of the
Assembly might have taken a happier direction and might have had
happier results. On one point only, the question of the Church, did
Mirabeau fail to display his wonted wisdom. The violence of his
language and advice upon this point is in marked contrast with his
usual sagacity, and is, it may be, largely responsible for the errors
into which the Church policy of the Assembly fell. It is possible that
his action in urging the House to take extreme measures against the
non-juring clergy, was part of the Machiavellian scheme which he
had formed for discrediting the Assembly by driving it into reckless
courses. But even that explanation, if it be true, is very far from
relieving him from censure, and it seems more probable that his
language on Church questions was the genuine expression of his
feelings. Apart from that, and apart from other faults of judgment and
of temper which he sometimes showed, but which, considering his
ceaseless activity and the innumerable subjects with which he had to
deal, were singularly few and rare, Mirabeau's conduct in the
Constituent Assembly reveals him as one of the most extraordinary
statesmen whom a great crisis ever produced.
From March, 1790, when La Marck, after some months of absence,
returned to Paris, Mirabeau's relations with the Court assumed a
more definite character, and in the following summer his notes for
the Court regularly began. In his first letter to Louis, Mirabeau
denounced all schemes of counter-revolution as 'dangerous, criminal
and chimerical,' and made it plain that to his mind the only hope of
saving the Monarchy lay in frankly accepting the Revolution, and in
placing the King in cordial co-operation with the large and loyal party
of reform. In the memoranda which he forwarded to the Court in
rapid succession all through the summer and autumn, he laid stress
upon the dangers to be feared,—the increasing disorder, the
untrustworthiness of Lafayette, the mistakes of the Assembly, the
intrigues in Paris, in the provinces, in the army, the terrible risks of
bankruptcy and of winter. He urged unceasingly the necessity of
facing these dangers, and pointed out the steps to be taken and the
means to be employed in order to escape them. On the 14th
October, 1790, in a note of great thoroughness and insight, he
recapitulated the whole political position, and laid down what must
be accepted as the bases of the constitution for the future. He again
exhorted the Court to recognise the new departure and to abandon
for ever all reactionary ideas. He again urged the desirability of
securing the repeal of the decree of the 7th November. With singular
breadth of view he suggested the formation of a Ministry, in which
the Jacobin leaders were to be included, in order to teach them
moderation and the responsibilities of power. And he sketched out
the plan, which he afterwards matured, of sending out recognised
agents into the provinces, to instruct the people upon politics, to
begin an agitation against the action of the Assembly, and to prepare
the way for recovering the influence of the Crown.
As time went on, Mirabeau became more and more impatient with
the behaviour of the Assembly, and less confident of the feeling of
the departments. He foresaw, and was prepared to face, the
possibility of civil war. He found that the Queen was listening to other
advisers, and would not put herself unreservedly into his hands.
'They are more anxious,' he bitterly confessed, 'to hear my advice
than to take it.' Still he persisted in his labours. When one scheme
had to be abandoned, he soon had another ready to take its place,
and the increase of his difficulties only rendered his plans and
precautions more elaborate. At the end of December, 1790, he
presented to the Court the most complete and weighty of all his
memoranda. In it he pointed out the dangers arising from the King's
indecision, from the Queen's unpopularity, and from the 'frenzied
demagogism of Paris.' He urged the necessity of taking measures to
re-organise the National Guard, and to diminish Lafayette's influence
over them. He advised the Government to take advantage of the
mistakes of the Assembly, to encourage it in its most foolish and
least popular measures, and by forming a party in it and winning
over its important members, to induce it to consent to its own
dissolution. He urged the Government to bring all its forces to bear
upon organising public opinion in the provinces in favour of the
restoration of order and of the modification of the constitution. Then
he hoped that, if a dissolution were secured, the Government would
be able to assert itself in the interval, while the elections were going
on, and that the departments, tired of disorder, recognising the
King's honest intentions, and learning experience from the errors of
the past, would return a body of representatives friendly to freedom
but friendly to the Monarchy as well, who would revise the
constitution in a reasonable spirit and on moderate lines. In order to
further these objects, Mirabeau drew up an elaborate plan, the
supervision of which was to be entrusted to Montmorin, who was to
be in daily communication with Mirabeau himself. One part of the
plan consisted in persuading able and popular deputies to support in
the Assembly the views of the Government. Mirabeau hoped to
secure in this manner the co-operation not only of members of the
Right, but of some of the wire-pullers of the Left also, who were
discontented with Lafayette, and even of politicians like Barnave and
Thouret, who were beginning to think that on some points the
Assembly had gone too far. Another part of the plan, the most
important, was the scheme for organising support in the provinces.
For this end Mirabeau proposed that a number of agents, in
correspondence with Montmorin alone, should be sent out, to
influence local opinion against the Assembly and in favour of the
King, to prepare the way for a dissolution, to mix intimately with all
classes, and to report minutely upon the inhabitants and the opinions
of the districts through which they passed. Besides that a smaller
body of agents was to be appointed, under the direction of Clermont-
Tonnerre, principally to furnish and circulate political literature in the
interests of Mirabeau's ideas. A third part of the plan consisted in the
establishment of a secret police organisation in Paris, under the
direction of Talon and Sémonville, two former agents of Lafayette,
who possessed considerable ability for intrigue, to watch carefully
the movements of the capital, and to do what they could to win
supporters among the journalists, the National Guard, the clergy, the
administrative bodies, the cafés, and the clubs. In this plan no stress
was laid on the necessity of the King's leaving Paris; but that idea
Mirabeau continued steadily to entertain.
It is idle to enquire whether this or any of Mirabeau's busy schemes
could have succeeded, and whether even his ability could have
driven into one groove of public advantage the Revolution and the
Court. It is equally idle to pretend, that, because he laboured to save
the Monarchy, he must have been a traitor to freedom, or to rail, as
some have railed, against the democrat bought over by the King.
Mirabeau never labelled himself with names of uncertain meaning,
and he was never bought. He exerted himself to make the
Revolution triumphant, because he believed in freedom. When the
battle of freedom was won, he exerted himself to save the Monarchy,
because he believed in that as well. Other men may differ from his
views, but it is not necessary on that account to assail his motives. It
is perfectly true that the Court paid 200,000 francs to free him from
his debts, and while he wrote memoranda for them, a salary of 2,000
francs a month. But the money was not paid to win his services, for
the Monarchy had those already. It was not paid to change his
opinions, but because the Court wished to be kept informed of what
his opinions were. The constitution did not permit him, while he was
a deputy, to take office openly, and obvious reasons made it
desirable to keep his connection with the Government secret; but
Mirabeau always regarded himself as an unrecognised Minister in
the service of the Crown. Of course a relation of that kind is rightly
open to censure and suspicion. Mirabeau's standard was not always
a high one. He bears no pure and no unsullied name. The record of
his early life never ceased to injure and embarrass him. He could be
impetuous and capricious. He could stoop to acts of intrigue and to
tactical devices which a serener statesmanship would scorn. To a
certain extent, although not corruptible, he was corrupt. But when
that is admitted, the worst is said. The greatness of his character, the
range and variety of his powers, the breadth of his keen and
vigorous wisdom, his absolute freedom from littleness and
meanness, his unsparing labour for the public cause, his splendid
gifts of eloquence and genius, and the infinite charm which made
men work for him and love him with an enthusiasm which even
friendship rarely shows, overwhelmingly decide our judgment in his
favour, and make his career one of the most absorbing pages in the
absorbing history of the time. Mirabeau did not live to see his hopes
accomplished. On the 2nd April, 1791, worn out by work and illness,
the great statesman died, and with him died any hope that still
existed of reconciling the Revolution with the Crown.

CHAPTER VI.
The Rise of the Jacobin Party.
The French Revolution can be divided into many periods, and
several parties directed it in turn. But, broadly speaking, besides its
minor phases, it contained two movements, successive and distinct.
The first movement began in 1789, and lost its force in 1791. The
second movement came to the front in 1791, when the earlier one
was dying out; helped by external circumstances, it quickly swept
everything before it; and it carried on the Revolution, by new
methods and for different objects, until 1794. The first movement
was chiefly political in form, and although social questions entered
deeply into it and gave it its irresistible force, still to the end its social
aspects were subordinate. Its leaders were politicians. Its object was
the creation of a new political order. Its attention was fixed upon
political change. The second movement had its political aspects too,
and political issues mingled largely with it. But it sprang primarily
from social causes. Its leaders succeeded because they claimed to
be social reformers. Its favourite objects were the transference of
property, the extinction of poverty and riches, the creation of a new
social state. The one movement of course was inextricably bound up
with the other, and no exact dates marked their beginnings or their
ends. But the rise of the new principles, and their triumph over the
old, was the chief characteristic of the later Revolution, and was the
reason why, after 1791, the Revolution went forward and developed
afresh.
There is no doubt that in 1791 there were many signs of a pause and
a reaction. The Revolution was clearly victorious. The worst features
of the old system—its despotism, its privilege, its inequality, its
corrupt Court, its antiquated law-courts, its favoured aristocracy and
Church—had been swept away. The widest freedom in politics, in
industry, in discussion, had been established, though it was not
always observed on the popular side. The blight of feudalism and the
intolerable burdens of taxation had disappeared. The majority of
Frenchmen felt that their wishes were satisfied and their aims
attained. Accordingly, the fever and enthusiasm of the earlier days
naturally abated. Men began to long for a period of quiet, after the
stormy triumphs and excitement of the past two years, and to fall
back out of the turmoil of politics into the routine of daily life. Such a
movement was both natural and inevitable, and in 1791 it involved
no serious danger to the cause of progress. The consequence was
that the great mass of citizens gradually withdrew from politics. The
numbers at the polls steadily fell. In 1790 and in 1791, all over the
country, the elections showed an increasing number of absentees. In
many places only a third or a fourth of the electorate voted. In others
only a tenth or a twelfth appeared. In Paris less than one-tenth of the
number of voters continued to take part in the elections, and even
that proportion steadily tended to decline. The duties of voting
imposed by the new Constitution were so cumbrous that they
demanded a great sacrifice of time. Politics had become both
laborious and disorderly; and most men would only consent to the
sacrifice and discomfort which they involved, under the influence of
strong excitement. Thus, when the excitement began to lessen, the
part which busy people played in politics declined, and the control of
the elections, and the power which it carried, fell to those who had
no pressing occupations and whose enthusiasm had not waned.
But while the majority thus passed out of politics, an active and
dissatisfied minority remained. All over France, and especially in
Paris and in the great provincial cities, there were many, in 1791, to
whom the policy of the leaders of the Revolution, and the action of
the great party which ranged itself behind Lafayette and the
Lameths, had caused increasing discontent. To them the Revolution,
so satisfactory to many, had brought only disappointment. Their
vague but ardent anticipations of a new social state seemed as far
as ever from realisation. The leaders of the Assembly were
beginning to speak of the Revolution as accomplished, and yet all
over France there were unmistakable evidences of disorder and
distress. It is true that trade had been largely stimulated by the issue
of the Assignats; but the credit of the Assignats did not last long, and
the improvement was consequently temporary and fictitious. The
condition of the labouring class was still unsettled. The pressure of
hunger, in spite of the abundant harvest of 1790, was still in many
places keen.
The middle classes, both in the towns and in the country, had clearly
been great gainers by the Revolution. They had broken down the
insolent ascendency of the class above them. They had secured for
themselves the chief authority in the State. They were enjoying to
the full the sense of their new importance—the sense that from a
position of utter insignificance they had risen to be the actual rulers
of the land. Thus the tradesmen, the lawyers, the prosperous
artisans, the 'active citizens' of the towns, proud of their rights and
places in the new Constitution, in the municipalities, in the National
Guard, rejoiced in the success of the Revolution, and only regretted
that it gave them so much to do; while the farmers and proprietors in
the country districts, set free from the yoke of feudalism, shared the
satisfaction of the bourgeois in the towns. But below these classes
came another, which had no such cause for self-congratulation. The
Métayers and smallest land-owners, the holders of an acre or half an
acre of land, the labourers who had no land at all, had gained far
less than their superiors. They had indeed escaped from the cruel
burden of the old taxes, from the personal tyranny of their seigneurs,
from the militia-service, from the necessity of forced labour. But they
looked for more than that. They had not yet seen opened to them
any path towards prosperity. The wealthy neighbours, who added to
their earnings, had been scared or swept away by the Revolution.
Wages were even more difficult to obtain than before. The prospect
of living without hunger seemed to their troubled minds to be as
distant and remote. Men who had no capital could not profit by the
sale of the Church lands. Even some of those who, having a little
capital, had hurried to invest it in the purchase, found too late that
the bargain was a bad one, for the lands had been so much
neglected that they required fresh capital to work them up. The
consequence was that, although the sale of Church lands must in
very many cases have been of advantage to the peasants, yet in
some cases the small buyers, who had expended all their savings in
the purchase, were ruined by the rash investment, and joined the
great army of the needy poor.
The causes which led to disquiet in the country were reproduced still
more strongly in the towns. To Paris and the great provincial cities
flocked many of those who could not find subsistence in the country.
There work might be more easily forthcoming. There, at any rate, it
was easier to make their voices heard. But in Paris the same
dislocation of industry prevailed. The National Assembly had
abolished the guilds and the old restrictions upon trade, and had
established complete freedom of labour. But a change so large,
however beneficial it might be—and there were not wanting
politicians in Paris, among whose voices Marat's diatribes rose most
shrilly, to criticise the Assembly's action—could not be accomplished
without much confusion. Moreover, the influx from the provinces
tended to make employment scarcer, and the influence of political
excitement did not help towards tranquillity. The consequence was
that the general destitution did not disappear. In vain the State came
forward to appease it by opening public workshops in Paris. The
regular work and the high wages offered, which were actually equal
to the highest day-wages then to be obtained in France, drew
applicants from all quarters, but only increased the difficulties of the
problem. The great towns in the departments followed the example
of the authorities in Paris. Toulouse and Amiens, Besançon and
Lyons, and many other places speedily found that they had
thousands of applicants for work which nobody required to have
done, and which was generally neglected by those who undertook to
do it. In Paris the numbers employed by the municipality rose to
twenty and then to thirty thousand, but still the outlook remained as
unsatisfactory as ever, and the discontent of the poorest classes
unallayed.
There were thus, by the summer of 1791, large numbers of people,
both in town and country, who would not tolerate the idea that the
Revolution was over, and who still hoped for a share in the spoils of
freedom. To meet and govern their wishes, to remove the causes of
their trouble, to convert them into fairly contented citizens, was no
easy task. The greatest statesmen might well have failed in the
endeavour, for social perplexities are wont to tax the wisdom of the
most experienced politicians. Unfortunately, the politicians then at
the head of affairs in France were neither experienced nor wise.
They were not alive to the dangers which threatened. They did not
attempt to understand their cause. Satisfied that they had
regenerated France, they did not fully believe in the existence of the
grievances put forward, and they had no notion of what they ought to
do to meet them.
The truth is that the dominant party in 1791, the party represented by
Lafayette and Bailly, by Barnave and the Lameths, were in an
impossible position. They were pledged to support the King and the
new Constitution. They were pledged to resist republicanism. Their
instincts led them to sympathise with the idea of a well-ordered
freedom, based on property and on the predominance of the middle-
class. But such a system was difficult to reconcile with the theory
which they preached. For two years past they had been proclaiming
the absolute equality of men, the sovereignty of the whole people,
the pure democracy of Rousseau's dream. For two years past they
had been busy stripping the Crown of its attributes, denouncing its
agents, limiting its power. Thus, when they endeavoured to pause,
when they began to insist upon the necessity of maintaining the
monarchical system, when they plainly showed their intention not to
admit the poorest class to power, that class retorted by echoing the
theories which they had taught them, and by resenting the
consequences which they deduced. Logically, the position of the
Constitutional party was untenable, and to fail in logic was then a
crime in France. Morally and materially their position was untenable
too. For their action could not be reconciled with the dogmas on
which they professed that all government was based.
Accordingly, as the Revolution went forward, the moderate majority
found itself growing unpopular with the poor. The decrees which
imposed a property qualification for all the rights of active citizenship,
for electors and elected alike, were bitterly resented by those whom
they excluded from power, and were clearly inconsistent with the
philosophic formulas to which their authors habitually appealed. The
manner in which the municipal authorities and the National Guards
used the force at their disposal to support the new order and to
suppress all who seemed inclined to resist it, was sometimes
irritating and oppressive. The uncertainty on each occasion whether
the party in power would applaud and sanction a popular outbreak,
or would take fright and endeavour to punish it, deprived their action
of its moral weight. The policy which first abolished the old industrial
system to clear the way for free combination, and which then, in
June 1791, taking alarm at the unions which sprang up among the
workmen, interfered to prohibit all combinations for the future, was
not likely to ensure respect. The policy which first induced the State
to seek popularity by an enormous extension of public workshops,
and which then, in the summer of 1791, frightened at the results of
its folly and at the number of strangers flocking to Paris, drew back
and suddenly dissolved the workshops, and bade the strangers
return to their homes, was certain to lead to distress and
disappointment. Had the party in power been consistently firm, had it
shown its determination at all costs to keep order and never to yield
to threatening agitation, it might have been wrong, but it might have
been respected. As it was, it was never strong enough to be feared.
It was only strong enough to become disliked.
Thus, with the large discontented element in France, with the people
who were most miserable and needy, and who were specially
numerous in Paris, there was, in 1791, a growing sense that the
Revolution had so far been a failure, that it had not corresponded to
its own promises or to their passionate hopes, that it had not in any
way materially benefited them, and that a new Revolution was
needed, to do for the poor what the earlier movement had done only
for the comparatively rich. The strength of this feeling it is difficult to
estimate, but there seems no doubt that it was widely spread. With it
there went a deep conviction that the new movement would never
come from the party in power, and that new leaders and principles
were wanted to carry the democratic theory logically out.
It was on these grounds, and supported by this sentiment, that the
Jacobin party rose. The root of the Jacobin theory was that all power
and right resided in the people, and that when the people acted, law
and government must give way before them. The people were
sovereign and could not do wrong. Consequently, it was the
business of the people to watch their rulers very closely, to supervise
their conduct jealously, to remind them that they were only agents
and puppets of a sovereign always suspicious and alert. If the
sovereign chose to come forward, no Ministers or rulers must
interfere to thwart it. They must obey, whatever it might command.
Obviously, according to this theory, popular movements, whatever
their character might be, were merely the highest expression of the
law. Even if attended by violence and murder, they were still the
action of the sovereign. Those who obstructed them were traitors
and usurpers. Those who punished them were guilty of a crime. It is
possible to understand how this theory, which is no travesty of the
Jacobin creed, planted deeply in mediocre minds, where the baldest
logic took the place of reason, might lead those who believed in it to
anarchy, while they believed they were on the road to freedom.
Another direct result of the doctrine was the dogmatism and self-
assertion which it bred. The people having become the sovereign,
every man in his own estimation, however ignorant of politics before,
became a responsible ruler too. The Jacobin was filled with a sense
of vast responsibility, puffed up with pride in his new importance. The
Government, the Law, the Church, the public functionaries, had
suddenly become his nominees, and he must personally see that
they did their duty. A curious inflation accordingly appeared in his
tone. His language became that of a dictator. His belief in himself
mounted to an extraordinary level of conceit. The self-confidence
which goes with youth perhaps helped to throw him off his balance,
for it is interesting to notice how largely the doctrine found recruits
among the young. Not only individuals, but public bodies, seemed to
catch the spirit of self-assertion. Even small municipalities began to
insist on acting as independent sovereigns, refused to listen to any
superiors, and placed their own laws above the laws of the
Assembly. An extreme instance was afforded by the little town of Issy
l'Evêque, where the priest, an enterprising politician, acting
apparently as leader of the parish, assumed a brief but magnificent
dictatorship, issued a complete code for the government and
administration of the town, imposed taxes, imprisoned his
opponents, seized upon grain, confiscated and partitioned the land in
the neighbourhood, and exercised undisputed the prerogatives of a
sovereign prince. When the people were admittedly sovereign, it
followed, in the view of the enthusiast, that any proportion of the
people could be sovereigns too, and, provided that he were a patriot,
every man might be a law unto himself.
When these deep-rooted ideas showed themselves in action, the
results were inevitably disastrous. The labouring population,
possessed with the belief that supreme power had been transferred
to them, naturally wished to use it, as their superiors had used it in
the past, in order to enrich themselves. A general resistance began
to rent, tithes, taxes, and money-claims of any kind. While abolishing
feudal sovereignty and privilege, the Assembly had endeavoured to
confirm all those rights which the feudal seigneur enjoyed as
contractor and lessor; but this distinction the peasant naturally did
not understand. While abolishing many odious imposts, the State
had of course been compelled to substitute some taxes for them. But
the peasant, who had only grasped the idea that the Revolution was
in some way to set him free from all irksome demands, resented the
new taxes as an encroachment on his rights. In many cases he
proceeded to help himself to any property of the State which came
within his reach. Squatters settled upon the confiscated Church
estates. Bodies of men assembled and cut down the timber upon the
public lands. Mobs stormed the custom-houses and drove out the
clerks. Armed associations prevented the collection of taxes. The
idea, originating in minds easily confused, tended to become a
passion, and when it was resisted, violence was the result.
It was in this way that the Jacobin theory, deduced from philosophy,
welcomed by young enthusiasts, scarcely understood by the mass of
the people, who applauded it because it opened the way to the
satisfaction of their wants, spurred on by opposition, embittered by
panic, suspicion, persecution, and translated into action by physical
distress, gradually took root in the minds of the poor. But it was by
violence that the theory triumphed. It is exceedingly difficult to form a
just impression of the part which force played in politics in France in
the years 1790 and 1791. On the one side, writers pass over the
incidents of disorder. On the other side, they amass them without
analysis or explanation, and thereby produce an impression which is
probably in some measure false. Historians seem on this point to
imagine that facts are a matter of political opinion. There were
undoubtedly, in 1790 and 1791, tranquillising influences at work. The
decisive triumph of the party of reform, the satisfaction ensuing on
the sale of the Church lands and on the issue of the Assignats, the
establishment of the new Constitutional authorities, the activity of the
bourgeois guards, who went so far as to organise combinations
between National Guards in different districts for the common object
of suppressing anarchy, the natural instinct of every nation to secure
as soon as possible the reign of order—all these causes made for
peace, and produced periods of general tranquillity. But still the
records of those years are full of signs of deep-seated confusion, of
riots, murders and acts of pillage, which were perhaps to be
expected, but which cannot be ignored.
The spirit of disorder appeared in many forms. In some cases the
outbreaks were due to fear and hatred of 'aristocrats.' In some they
were a recrudescence of the peasant war against the châteaux. In
some they arose from the conflict between the priesthood of the old
ecclesiastical system and the decrees of the National Assembly, and
these religious controversies, heated by passion and embittered by
ancient rancours, produced, especially at Nîmes and Montauban and
over the whole of the South of France, a terrible agitation almost
amounting to civil war. In some cases they were due to purely local
and personal reasons. In many cases they were caused by the fear
of starvation, and their object was the seizure of grain. In others,
especially at Lyons and Marseilles, they were due to the excessive
severity displayed by the National Guards in maintaining order, and
to the bitter conflict that was beginning between the bourgeois and
the labouring population. Elsewhere, as at Avignon, they originated
in a political revolution, and called to the front the large ruffianly
element which, under the lax rule of the Popes, had for long been
allowed to harbour in that city. In other cases, again, there is little
doubt that criminals took advantage of the disorder of the time to
make politics the pretext for private plunder. All sorts of opportunities
for disorder offered, and in the midst of such vast changes it was
inevitable that those opportunities should be sometimes abused.
The most serious feature of these outbreaks was that, instead of
their becoming rare and abortive as time went on, the tendency of
events, especially after 1791, was in the opposite direction. Their
political influence increased. Instead of the law becoming stronger,
and the disorderly element falling under the ban of the respectable
majority, the law appeared to grow steadily weaker, and the
resistance of the respectable majority declined. The disorderly
element organised itself, won elections, proclaimed its principles,
and seated itself in the seat of power. The National Assembly
decided to 'veil the statue of the law.' Mob-leaders were enthroned
as law-givers in the towns where their violence had made them
supreme. Their opponents, royalists, priests or bourgeois, became
their prey, for outrages committed on those who were unpopular
were almost certain to go unpunished. It was not the number of
people killed which made the riots serious. It was the fact that they
could be killed with impunity, the fact that there was no certain
protection against violence for anyone who by creed or opinion or
report was obnoxious to the mob. It was this general insecurity which
brought the Jacobins to the front. For, wherever the law is paralysed,
the most violent are the most powerful, and the French bourgeois,
brave enough in the pursuit of glory, seems to lack moral courage for
resistance, when intimidation and outrage threaten him within his
gates.
Another very noticeable point in the history of the Jacobin triumph is
the completeness of the party organisation. It is the first modern
example of what organisation in politics can do. Although the club-
lists afterwards included a great variety of names, the number of
genuine Jacobin politicians, apart from the vague crowds whom they
directed, seems never to have been very large. So far as one can
judge by the polls, the Jacobins in Paris, even at the height of their
power, appear not to have exceeded ten or eleven thousand. Two
good judges, Malouet and Grégoire, who had many opportunities of
observation, and who belonged to totally different parties, agreed
later in reckoning all the Jacobins in the country at about three
hundred thousand, and the highest estimate only gives them one
hundred thousand more. The leaders of the new party belonged
chiefly to the middle class. Lawyers and small professional men,
clerks and journalists, men accustomed to take the lead in practical
affairs, ready with tongue or pen, anxious to make their way in life,
with sufficient knowledge to be self-confident and insufficient
knowledge to be wise, played the largest part among them. From
this class came most of the conspicuous leaders, Danton and
Robespierre, Desmoulins and Fréron, Hébert and Chaumette. A few
others were writers and professors, students like St. Just, actors like
Collot d'Herbois, priests like Grégoire, Jean Bon St. André, Chabot
and Lebon, gloomy visionaries like Marat, or foreigners like the
amazing Anacharsis Clootz, who assured the Legislative Assembly
that his heart was French, though his soul was 'sans-culotte.' Later
on the quality deteriorated, and a lower and worse element
enveloped the rest. But the important Jacobin leaders were men of
education, although they often condescended in pursuit of popularity
to adopt worse manners than their own.
It was through their success in organisation that these men attained
to power. From the first the Jacobin Society in Paris, with its many
great names and high prestige, had attained an exceptional position,
and that position it immensely strengthened by establishing branch
societies all over France. In the autumn of 1790, the Club in Paris
founded a newspaper to circulate among its members, and entrusted
the task of editing it to Laclos. Before the end of the year, it was able
to publish a list of over a hundred and twenty provincial clubs, all
affiliated to the Society in Paris, in constant correspondence with it,
taking their views from its leaders and directing their policy by theirs.
To these clubs flocked the energetic young Radicals of the provincial
towns. They became centres of advanced revolutionary feeling.
Their members had faith, enthusiasm, recklessness, ambition; they
organised local politics, suggested or connived at political riots, and
every day claimed a larger part in the direction of local affairs. In
some large cities the authorised Jacobin Club had an unauthorised
club or combination behind it, composed of less respectable and
responsible politicians, who popularised the doctrines of the superior
body, and supplemented them, when necessary, by force. As the
year 1791 advanced, the number of affiliated clubs steadily
increased. In August, it had risen to nearly four hundred. In the
autumn and winter, it rose more rapidly still. In June, 1792, it had
reached twelve hundred; and by the end of August in that year, one
fairly competent observer reckons that there were twenty-six
thousand Jacobin clubs in France. The value of this widespread
organisation in giving to the party strength and cohesion cannot be
placed too high. When it is remembered that this was the only
federation in existence—for all attempts made by other parties to
found similar organisations were broken up by force—it is more easy
to realise the influence which the Jacobins wielded upon politics, and
to understand how the Club in Paris, even when distrusted and
unpopular, was able to face its enemies and to hold its own.
Meanwhile another organisation, destined to give the Jacobins
command of the capital, had been growing up in Paris. The
Revolution had restored to Paris the local freedom of which the
monarchy had stripped her, and one of the first objects of Parisian
politicians had been to establish a municipality in the capital. After
the taking of the Bastille, the informal Assembly of Parisian electors,
which, in the collapse of the old system, had temporarily usurped
administrative power, was replaced by a more regular body, entitled
'The Three Hundred,' elected by the various districts, and charged
with the task of preparing a permanent constitution for the city. It was
this body—The Three Hundred—which, with Bailly at its head, had
governed Paris during the year that followed, and which by its
somewhat irritating action had earned unpopularity with the poor. But
on the whole, in spite of many mistakes, and in the face of many
difficulties, it did useful and necessary work. However, in the early
autumn of 1790, this body was replaced by a new system which
remained the responsible government of Paris until the reaction after
the Terror. Under it, the city was divided into forty-eight Sections. The
Sections elected a number of representatives, who formed the
municipal council, and some of whom formed the municipal
executive[7]. At the head of the whole organisation was the Mayor,
elected by the votes of the citizens of Paris. The Mayor, as the head
of this great organisation, became an official of the first importance.
The National Guard was under his orders. The resources of the
capital were at his command. He and his council controlled the
politics of Paris, and the politics of Paris governed France. Besides
that, each of the forty-eight Sections had its own elected authority, a
permanent committee of sixteen members, to carry out the orders of
the municipal body, invested with some powers of administration and
police. The Jacobins, in accordance with their theory, argued that all
the Sectional Assemblies ought to sit permanently, that the active
citizens ought to meet every day, and that the municipality ought
daily to take their opinions on current questions. The sovereign
people, they declared, could not properly delegate their authority to
representatives. The more practical theory, however, of
representative government carried the day. But the Jacobins carried
a clause which provided that the voters of any Section should
assemble, whenever fifty active citizens in that Section demanded it,
and that all the forty-eight Sections should assemble, if eight of them
simultaneously presented a request. The result was that, in quarters
where Jacobin views prevailed, and especially in the poorer Sections
of Paris, the Sectional Assemblies were constantly meeting, and
urging their opinions on the municipal body. When the majority in the
quieter Sections ceased to take an active part in politics, the
revolutionary Sections were able, by persistent pressure and by
resorting to violence and riot, to manipulate the municipal elections,
to dictate to the municipal body, and ultimately to control that great
organisation and to use its forces for the furtherance of their views.
The death of Mirabeau prepared the way for the accession of the
Jacobin leaders to power. Even before that, Robespierre was a
familiar figure in the Assembly, but during the summer months of
1791, his influence and importance in it steadily increased. From the
first, he had been the most conspicuous advocate of Rousseau's
theory, the most deeply convinced exponent of the Jacobin belief.
His principles were to his mind absolutely clear. To gain complete
equality for men, to protest in the name of justice against any law
which permitted considerations of circumstance or necessity to
interfere with abstract rights, to establish in the world the reign of
sentimental logic, based on the philosophy of the Contrat Social, this
was his unwavering creed. It governed his hopes, his policy, his life.
He loved to expound its principles, to revel in its phrases, to declaim
about its fine desires. He never tired of speaking, and this, in one
shape or another, always was his theme. The Assembly might laugh
or chatter, audiences might come and go, but nothing checked the
rhetoric of Robespierre. His self-complacency was as intense as his
faith. He was the chosen minister of Virtue, to preach its gospel to
the regenerated world. That seems to have been his profound
conviction, and that was unquestionably the foundation of his
strength.
There is little doubt that in this respect the man was honest. His
weak sentiment was real. His love of order and of decency was
genuine. His incorruptibility was known and rare. His conceit was
phenomenal. His power of self-deception was unbounded. On the
whole, Robespierre was faithful to his theories. He was capable, as
he showed on more than one occasion, of attacking popular
proposals, if they seemed to him opposed to principle. He did not, it
is true, denounce the lawlessness and outrage which he naturally
detested; but his reticence was probably due, less to the calculations
of a subtle policy, than to his singular faculty of persuading himself,
whenever riots or massacres occurred, that it was only the people
executing justice, and that the justice of the people must be right.
Robespierre never took the lead at critical moments, when decisive
action was needed. He was constitutionally nervous and undecided.
He had none of the audacity which made Danton great. Fearless in
sophistry, he was timid in action. On certain occasions it is very
difficult to free him from the charge of cowardice, and yet it is
possible that his hesitation arose chiefly from the necessity, which he
always felt, of reconciling his action with his theory, before he could
act with a clear conscience. In disguising crime in the panoply of
virtue, so satisfactorily as to deceive himself, Robespierre had no
peer. The Jacobin theory set above the law the action of the
sovereign people. That action showed itself in riots. Those riots
involved terrorism and loss of life. If consequences of that kind
followed, they could not be prevented. Only the depravity of human
nature, which rendered them necessary, must be deplored. Thus
Robespierre, the high-priest of the doctrine, was always the readiest
to defend it, to throw over every lawless action the mask of verbal
sentiment and virtue. And thus he became the leader of his party.
His policy was ultimately the most deadly, because its desperate
logic was the outcome of a theory which could do no wrong. If
statesmanship be the compromise of theories with facts,
Robespierre was essentially no statesman, for to his fatal and
narrow idealism any compromise with the realities round him was
unknown.
The summer of 1791 is the critical period in the fortunes of the rival
parties. When the majority lost in Mirabeau their strongest leader,
Robespierre, the chief of the new party, came to the front. It is
difficult to resist the conclusion that at this time the future was still
undecided, and the Jacobin triumph by no means secured. Had the
party in power possessed a few men of practical vigour and wisdom,
it seems just possible that the Revolution might have paused, and
might have been guided into the path of ordered freedom. But they
had no organisation. They did not see their danger. They had no
experience to help them, and Mirabeau was dead. The King's
unfortunate flight to Varennes in June, and the manifesto in which he
set forth his grave complaints against the Revolution, played into the
hands of the advanced party. It greatly increased the difficulties of
the majority, who desired to keep Louis on the throne. It was
followed by an outbreak of Jacobin activity, which, however,
displayed many varieties of view. Danton and the Cordeliers, Brissot
and Desmoulins boldly demanded the establishment of a republic,
but their opinions were not shared by all their party. Marat proposed
the appointment of a Dictator to put all his enemies to death. The
partisans of the Duke of Orleans declared for Louis' deposition, with
the object of securing the throne for the Duke. But the declarations of
the Jacobin Club were curiously uncertain. They demanded Louis'
deposition, but they hesitated to propose the abolition of the throne.
On the 1st of July, at a session of the Club, Billaud-Varennes was not
allowed even to speak on behalf of a republic. Some days later, on
the evening of the 13th, influenced possibly by the reaction in the
Assembly, Robespierre came forward and declared that he
personally was not a republican, and that 'the word republic did not
signify any particular form of government'; while even Danton
avoided the question and confined himself to attacks upon the
inviolability of the king.
The majority in the Assembly took advantage of the divisions among
their opponents to assert their views. Barnave and the Lameths, and
the party which they directed, rallied to the support of the new
Constitution. In vain the Republicans protested. Deserted by the
Jacobin Club, ill-supported by their leaders, closely watched by
Lafayette, they attempted to keep alive the agitation by a
demonstration, on the 17th July, in the Champ de Mars. The object
was to secure signatures for a monster petition demanding the
dethronement of the king. It does not appear that the objects of the
gathering were sinister or dangerous; but the disorder of the time,
the furious language in which Marat, Desmoulins and other
advanced leaders incited the people to violence, and the difficulties
of their own position, naturally alarmed the Constitutional party. The
municipality, taking its cue from the Assembly, determined to put the
demonstration down; and, owing to blunders which cannot well be
explained, but which can easily be imagined, the result was a fierce
and sanguinary disturbance, ending in serious loss of life. How far
Lafayette and Bailly were to blame for their conduct, or whether it is
fair to impute blame to them at all, will always be matter for
discussion. But it is most instructive to notice the effects which the
'massacre of the Champ de Mars' produced. It was the one occasion
in the history of the Revolution when the party of order, rightly or
wrongly, decisively asserted themselves, and it shows convincingly
how strong they were, had they realised their strength and known
how to use it. For the moment their triumph was complete. The
Republican agitation collapsed. The leaders who inspired it, but who
had kept in the background, suddenly disappeared from politics.
Danton, under threats of prosecution, retired to the country.
Robespierre summarily changed his lodgings. Marat hid himself and
prepared to escape to England. Desmoulins suspended the issue of
his paper. The Constitutional party opened a new club called the
Feuillants, and many of the Jacobins joined it at once. Of the three
hundred deputies who were members of the Jacobin Club, all but
seven retired. And Louis was successfully re-established on the
throne. Had the majority possessed any vigour or cohesion, they
might conceivably have stamped out the Jacobin movement, and
have secured the freedom which they fancied they had won.
Instead of that, they threw away their victory. Barnave, Malouet and
a few other members of the majority did make an attempt to organise
their party, and some idea of an effectual revision of the Constitution
was entertained. But it ended in nothing. The fatal want of union and
of practical ability which characterised the party, their lack of
definiteness and insight, their fondness for glib talk and theory,
frustrated the idea. Slowly but steadily, Robespierre's influence
reasserted itself in the Assembly. The Jacobin leaders returned to
public life, and resumed their tactics unimpeded. The only
permanent results of the 17th July were to widen the breach
between the party in power and the party which was still excluded,
and to leave in the minds of those who had suffered, and in the great
mass of the poor who sympathised with them, abidingly bitter
memories of injustice calling for expiation and revenge.
The reviving influence of the Jacobins was clearly seen in
September and October, 1791. Helped by the blind fatuity of the