After the last fade-out, the crowd detonates. She stands for the ovation, eyes watering, and I do too, because it’s the only way to match her in this one small thing. For a moment, I want to capture this for her. Bottle it for later, for nights when the world feels sad or wants to devour her whole.
There are speeches, handshakes, and an endless parade of people I should remember from the credits. Emma smiles, signs cards, lets herself be photographed, but her gaze keeps returning to me as if to say, “Don’t let go, not even now.”
We escape through a side entrance, with the help of a startled intern who will probably be fired by midnight. Into the Paris air, ankle-deep in a puddle of starlight, sprinting with laughter down an empty side street. Our driver’s nowhere in sight.
“Fuck it,” she says, hitching up her dress. “Let’s walk.”
“You sure?”
She lifts her chin. “I’m not made of glass.”
“No,” I say, “but let me pretend you are, just until we get back to the hotel.”
“If you carried me,” she dares, “we’d be on the front page by breakfast.”
There’s a dare in those eyes I can’t ignore. So I scoop her up, wedding-night style, and she whoops, arms around my neck, as I barrel down the cobbles. By the time we hit the corner, both of us are panting with laughter and exhaustion.
She nuzzles my jaw as I set her down, then palms my chest like she’s testing to see if I’m real. “Tell me,” she says, “do you actually want any of this?”
She means the circus, the constant scrutiny, and the life where nothing is ever just ours.
I touch her cheek, careful. “I want you. I want us. The rest is just noise.”
She closes her eyes and rests her forehead against mine. “You mean it.”
“Every day.”
We climb the stairs to the suite. No crowd now, just the hush you only get in the hour between midnight and whatever comes after. She locks the door behind us, and instead of turning on the lights, she walks to the window and opens it wide. The city sighs below. For a while, she just stands there, silhouetted, arms folded over her chest—no audience, no script.
After a few minutes, she turns, a new look in her eyes. She strides over, grabs my lapel, and pulls me into her orbit.
She kisses me, hard, then says, “You know what I realized?”
I shake my head, dizzy from the contact.
“That this could have ended horribly,” she answers.
“But it didn’t,” I say, which is true, and terrifying.
She leans in, bites my lip, brushes her knuckles along my jaw. “I’m going to keep you, Dixon. Against all better judgment.”
I smile, drink her in. “That’s the plan, Rowan. Remember?”
She slides her hands under my shirt, up my ribs, like she’s testing the weak points. “Lie down,” she orders, and I oblige, stripping off the jacket, sprawling onto the bed.
She follows, straddling my hips, dress riding up to bare her thighs. Her skin is warm, alive, the pulse in her neck fluttering like a trapped bird. She pins my wrists to the mattress, knits her fingers through mine, and lowers her lips to my ear.
“Repeat after me,” she says. “I am the luckiest bastard alive.”
I grin and say it, louder than I mean to. “I am the luckiest bastard alive.”
She shifts, grinds her pelvis into mine, and the gasp that escapes me is completely undignified.
“You know what else?” she says, voice a trembling whisper.
“What?”
“Three days ago, Bressard told me the French audiences can be brutal. He cautioned me that Paris may chew me up and spit me out.”
