“You want to get that?” I nod to his pocket.
“Nah, just let me silence it.” He pulls it out, shaking his head.
“Everything okay?”
“Everything’s great, actually.” He smiles slightly, but the way his lips curve, it’s unfamiliar, peaceful and relaxed, almost. “What’s that?” Liam points his chin across the river at a palace running perpendicular to Pont du Carrousel, a three-arched bridge connecting the north and south bank.
“The Louvre. That’s not a bad place to cross and walk to Palais-Royal if you want to explore the gardens.”
“We can just do that?”
“Yeah, you can drive through it, too, actually.”
“Huh,” he muses to himself. “Wild.” He shakes his head and laughs. And for an American, it is wild. Because places like Paris are bursting with so many former lives that they needed to find a way to merge the former ones with the present.
Living in history is natural here.
It’s a big reason I’ve needed Paris these past few years. Because when the present is a dumpster fire and the future feels an awful lot like a land of broken dreams, being surrounded by a world gone by is like being wrapped tight in a reminder that life is relentless in its existence and hardship, but people are remarkably resilient.
We cross under the archways of Pavillon de la Trémoille, and the beige brick with ornate moldings and black lampposts all melded into one expansive backdrop gives me pause.
“Hold on,” I order as a motorbike careens by on our right. “This would be a really great photo.” I fumble to find my phone in my purse. Glancing up, I catch a fleck of Nutella on Liam’s chin. “Oh, you’ve got—let me get that first—” I reach up, wiping it off with my finger. Without conscious thought, I keep my eyes trained on Liam’s and lick it off, blushing with surprise when I catch up with my actions. Where did I find the audacity to flirt? I clear my throat. “We should—we should be practicing, right?”
He nods, and his pupils darken. “How am I supposed to react when you do something like that? Coach me through it.”
A dozen filthy suggestions rifle through my brain. Probably best to keep those to myself.
“What would you want to do?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing you’d be okay with.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure.” I take a step back and hit the stone wall of the Pavillon behind me.
“But you bring up a good point. We should probably discuss boundaries and expectations so nobody gets caught off guard,” I say.
Heat tinges my cheeks as I recall Liam’s rigid figure when I all but took his lips hostage with mine, but I continue.“Paris is a big city. But Harmony lives in the Latin Quarter, too, and we run in similar circles, so we might be on the same street or Métro car, and with your height and my hair, it’s highly likely that Harmony could see us and not the other way around. Which will be a lot like Tallow, given our history people will be staring.” I puff out my cheeks. “Okay, I’m getting sidetracked, but I’m not keen on risking Harmony finding out this is fake. She’s patronizing, and I’ve embarrassed myself enough in front of her as is. So if you wanted, I thought maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to just go all in now—give you full permission to dowhateveryou’d do if we were really datingwhenever. . . for authenticity, and so we don’t get caught here.”
My eyes cast down.Nailed it.
Two fingers trail my chin and pick up my gaze. “Are you sure? That’s a dangerous thing to grant me.”
“I trust you.” I swallow, drowning in his scent, lungs tight, unable to draw a single life-giving breath. Maybe that’s the idea, and this is an elaborate death-by-suffocation murder plot.
He cocks his head, resting his forearm near my head on the wall. “That would be a first.”
His eyes flicker to my lips.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” I whisper. And Iamdesperate. “And I mean, it wasn’tawfulon Friday.”
“Not awful.” He snorts. “The highest form of praise coming from you. But just to ensure I understand this right: We’re dating, no breaking—that’s what you want from here on out. Kissing, touching, the whole thing.”
I nod.
“What about in our apartments?”
“If it works for you, I think it’ll be more convincing if we maintain it everywhere, really smooth out the rough edges so we don’t get caught back home.”
“Even kissing?”
