She snorts. “And breed poodles?”
I nod, solemn. “Dozens. Possibly hundreds. The poodles will need an agent.”
For once, the silence after isn’t awkward. It’s hopeful. I could talk to her for hours about nothing at all and be happy. Maybe that’s the real secret: not the sex or the glamour, not even the little thrill of being seen together in public, but the simple, stupid comfort of watching her eat chocolate under a blanket, making the rest of the world look small and unimportant.
She stands, lets the duvet fall, and saunters back inside. “I’m freezing,” she says, reaching for the shower handle. I follow her, because how could I not, and I watch as she steps under the spray, water streaking down her bare spine. She glances over her shoulder, a dare in her eyes.
I step in, wrap my arms around her, and just hold her there, letting the steam close in. I rest my chin on her shoulder, breathing in the clean smell of her.
Eventually, she turns, palms braced on my chest. “You know,” she says, “we’re still on the clock. Bressard expects us at brunch tomorrow.”
I kiss the top of her head. “Let’s be late.”
She laughs, this time clear and bright. “They’ll all know why.”
I rest my forehead on hers. “Let them.”
She kisses me once, twice, just to make sure the message lands.
CHAPTER 13
ASHER
The next morningbegins gray and rain-soaked. I wake before Emma does, her fingers tangled in my t-shirt, one leg thrown over my knee. I watch her sleep, slow and regular, and try to freeze the moment in my head. In the real world, sleep is a commodity, rare and precious. Here, it’s just a byproduct of being with her.
I slip out of bed, pad to the window, and gaze down over the Paris rooftops. I think about last night, the urgency of it, the way we clung to each other like castaways. I think about what happens next—if you let yourself admit you want something, how quickly it can be taken away, and how, in this business, every good thing comes with an expiration date.
My phone is on the nightstand, lighting up every three minutes with notifications—press, PR, God knows who else. But I don’t check it. I just stand there, letting the city in, and try to make sense of how I feel.
I’m still there when she wakes up, sits on the edge of the bed, hair a wild tumble, shirt half unbuttoned. “You’re brooding,” she says, voice raspy with sleep.
“I am,” I concede. She walks over, stands next to me, and leans into my arm.
“Nervous?” she asks.
“Excited,” I tell her, because it’s true. If you scrape away all the layers—the acting, the PR, the endless effort to seem effortless—what’s left is a kind of thrill I haven’t felt since I was a kid at a county fair, sneaking into the ride you’re way too small for, holding tight and hoping you survive.
She looks at me, then really looks. “Last night… that wasn’t for the cameras, right? That was just us?”
I’ve rehearsed a dozen ways to answer, but in the end, I say it straight: “It’s never just the cameras. I’m not that good an actor.”
She laughs, tension breaking. “Good.”
And that’s it. We just stand there, holding on. It’s not dramatic, not cinematic. It’s the opposite of what the world will want from us. It’s real.
I let her go, wander to the shower, and by the time I’m out, she’s already got a pot of coffee going, wearing nothing but my t-shirt and hotel slippers. I have the idiotic impulse to take a picture, but I know it’s a memory that will stay burned behind my eyes for longer than any photo.
We share coffee, croissants, and an outrageous amount of hotel jam straight from the jar. She’s already halfway into her phone, scanning emails, texting with Jessie, confirming and canceling things in rapid succession. I take her foot in my lap and start massaging, just to see her squirm.
“I have to wear five-inch heels today,” she says, not looking up from her phone. “You are personally responsible for my inevitable orthopedic surgery.”
I squeeze her ankle. “I’ll carry you.”
“Do you promise?”
“Of course.” I mean it. I’d carry her through fire, through crowds of screaming fans, through the most absurd gauntlet of public scrutiny, just to get here again: her, me, a hotel suite littered with chocolate wrappers and silk and whatever else wemanaged to lose along the way. I can’t tell her, not yet, how much she’s starting to mean to me, but I’m getting closer to it every hour.
The suite is still icy with morning air, and the rain hasn’t let up. I pull her close and let her press her feet into my thighs to steal my heat. She keeps texting, but leans into my shoulder, as if the contact is as casual as breathing. I watch her, searching for a single sign that last night was just a fever dream, that I’ll wake up and be back to the version of my life that made sense. There isn’t one. Everything in her face says this is real.
