“Yeah,” she says, glancing around. “Where’s the bathroom?”
I point toward a narrow hallway near the back of the café. “Down there, second door on the left.”
While she’s gone, I take the tray back to the counter and settle the bill, my heart still thudding a little too fast. I’m smiling like an idiot, and the woman at the register notices, giving me a knowing little look I pretend not to see.
By the time Brooke returns, she’s tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and looks… lighter somehow, happier.
“Shall we?” she asks.
“Lead the way,” I reply.
We step back out into the street, and just like that, we’re walking again, side by side, our shoulders brushing now and then. Talking. Laughing. Smiling like no time has passed at all.
The afternoon stretches ahead of us, warm and lazy, and neither of us is in a rush to end it. We wander aimlessly through cobbled backstreets and sun-dappled boulevards, following whatever catches our eye, a tiny bookshop that smells like dust and ink, aflower stand bursting with lavender and peonies, a street artist painting portraits near the Seine.
At one point, Brooke stops in front of a patisserie window, pressing her palm to the glass. “We’re getting those,” she declares, pointing at a tray of perfect little fruit tarts.
“Research purposes?” I tease.
“Exactly,” she says, grinning as we step inside.
We eat the tarts on a park bench overlooking the river, talking about everything and nothing, old professors we hated, the places we still want to see, the people we used to be. The conversation flows easily, the way it always did, and every now and then, our knees bump or our hands brush and neither of us pulls away.
By the time the sky starts to turn gold and the city softens into twilight, we’ve circled half of Paris on foot. My feet ache and my cheeks hurt from smiling, but I don’t care.
Because somewhere between the quiet backstreets and the stolen glances, I realize I’m not just walking next to Brooke.
I’m falling for her all over again.
Chapter Four
Brooke
By the time we get back to the hotel, the sky has turned black and Paris is wrapped in that soft kind of nighttime glow, streetlamps spilling gold across the cobblestones, restaurant lights flickering behind fogged windows. And I am dead on my feet. My legs ache, my back aches, even my cheeks hurt from smiling so much.
All I want is to sink into a hot bath and then sleep until the shuttle drags me back to Charles de Gaulle for my flight to New York tomorrow.
“When do you go back?” I ask Matthew as we wait for the elevator, shifting my weight from one sore foot to the other.
“Next Monday,” he says, rolling his sleeves up a little. “I’ve got a few meetings here.” His eyes flick to mine.
“What about you?”
“Tomorrow,” I reply. “Direct to New York.”
There’s a beat of silence before he asks, “Can you stay?”
The question hits me harder than it should. For a second, I let myself think about it, what it would be like to stay. To spend a week in the city of love with Matthew, to walk more cobbled streets, to laugh over more meals, to maybe fall asleep next to him instead of a cold hotel pillow.
The elevator dings and opens before I can answer, and we step inside. I shake my head. “I can’t. I just came back from PTO, and we’re already short-staffed.”
He exhales through his nose, a quiet sigh, then reaches out and rests a hand gently on my waist. The touch is light, hesitant,but it makes my pulse stumble anyway. “I wish you could,” he murmurs.
I turn to face him, my back pressing softly against the wall of the elevator. The space feels suddenly smaller, the air thicker. His eyes find mine and hold them, and in that charged silence, I see every glance, every almost-touch, every unspoken word from the past few hours hanging between us.
He glances down at my lips, once, twice and then, slowly, like he’s giving me every chance to stop him, he leans in and brushes his mouth against mine.
The kiss is soft. Barely there. A question, not an answer.
