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I put a hand up on the side of the building, supporting myself, tethering myself to Paris, but my dreams are crumbled around me, in tatters.
I promised my mum I’d travel. I promised her I’d do this. But it was never my dream. Not really. It was her therapy, her hope.
‘I’m asking you to accept that maybe this isn’t your dream. Maybe you want a new dream. Maybe that’s me. You and me.’
I close my eyes and he’s there, so real, so clear, that I breathe in and swear I feel him, taste him. But when I open my eyes there’s only Paris. The city of my dreams.
Except it’s not.
It’s really, really not.
* * *
I know he’s a top defence barrister, and I’ve seen him in a suit. But I’ve never seen Michael Brophy like this. In barrister’s robes and wig, so impossibly handsome, so familiar, so achingly, utterly familiar, as though he’s a part of me and I am of him.
I sit at the end of the corridor, watching him as he talks to another silk, his expression stern. He nods then reaches for the papers he’s holding and pulls something out. Hands it over.
It’s killing me to sit here watching him, not speaking, not calling his name.
I should have waited. I should have waited until tonight, gone to his apartment and sat on the step. I should have waited but I couldn’t.
When I realised I needed to be here, with him, to speak to him, to tell him how wrong I was, I didn’t stop to think about anything except getting here. I booked the first flight I could, first thing the next morning, and I came straight from the airport to his chambers. Where else would I go?
But now that I’m here, I’m conscious of two things.
How much time has passed, and how utterly and completely I rejected him.
What if he’s changed his mind? What if he’s done what I said and moved on, slept with someone else? Many someone elses? What if I’m a distant memory in his heart and his bed?
He laughs, the sound barrelling down the corridor towards me, and I stand because I can’t not. My stomach is alive with butterflies, my knees are weak.
His secretary slants a curious gaze in my direction—the woman who’s been sitting here for two hours, not speaking, not moving.
‘I’ll call you next week,’ he says, nodding, and then turns towards me.
His eyes find me instantly and he stops walking, his expression shifting, his eyes sweeping over me then landing on my face, staying there accusingly, or curiously. And I stay where I am, still, watchful, waiting.
He starts to walk again almost immediately, closing the distance between us, and I hold my breath.
‘Millie.’ My name on his lips is guarded. A thousand questions pass from him to me. He asks none, but I hear them anyway.
‘Can we talk? Privately?’
His jaw is squared, his eyes like flint. He wants to say no. He wants to tell me to fuck off.
I wait, my nerves tumbling over themselves. ‘I just need a minute.’
His brow creases. ‘Are you okay?’
Emotions bubble through me. I shake my head and then he puts his hand on my back, propelling me forward, through the corridor, towards a pair of wood-panelled doors. The room is lined with books and the furniture is heavy oak. It feels historic and intimidating.
‘Thank you,’ I say as he shuts the door.
His head dips forward. He lifts the wig off, and then the robe. He’s Michael now—my Michael. My heart bursts.
‘What are you doing here?’ His voice is exactly as I remember, exactly as it’s been in my dreams every night.
‘I came to see you,’ I say simply.
