And for once, she didn’t fade.
Her attention held steady, like she was anchoring herself to the sound of my voice.
I realized then how carefully I’d been loving her all these years. How much of myself I’d learned to withhold in order to keep the connection intact. How being her daughter had trained me to be observant, adaptive, emotionally fluent—but also to accept absence as normal.
Paris had loosened that habit.
Connor had shattered it.
For the first time, I found myself wanting to stay on the line. Wanting to take up space in the conversation. Wanting more than fragments.
And when we finally said goodbye, it wasn’t because the moment had gone thin or fragile—but because it had reached a natural end.
That felt new.
And quietly miraculous.
But I didn’t want to be here alone.
I wanted Connor to come back to me.
Not just physically—though, God, that, too—but in the way that mattered more now. I wanted to tell him what it had felt like to stand there watching the police take him. How the street had seemed to hollow out around his absence. How something in me had panicked not because I was afraid of danger, but because I hadn’t finished saying what I needed to say.
I wanted to tell him details about how I’d felt in my apartment. About the way seeing my torn photographs had hurt in a place that wasn’t logical. About how violating it felt to realize someone had touched the private evidence of my becoming. I wanted to tell him about my mother, about the married professor in college, about the way distance and absence had shaped me long before Paris ever did. About how loving carefully had once felt like survival.
Most of all, I wanted to tell him what last night had done to me.
How being with him had felt like stepping fully into myself instead of skirting the edges. How his attention hadn’t just awakened desire—it had demanded honesty. How I could feel something in me stretching toward him now, urgent and unafraid in a way I wasn’t used to.
The urge to open up pressed against my ribs, insistent and unfamiliar. I wasn’t used to wanting to be known this much. Wanting to hand someone the raw material instead of a polished version I could control.
I didn’t know if I was brave enough to say all of it yet.
But I knew this: when Connor came back, I didn’t want to retreat into silence or gratitude or careful distance. I wanted to meet him where I was—changed, shaken, wanting.
Wanting him.
23
CONNOR
The French cops didn't put me in a cell.
They put me in a questioning room instead—a tiny box with white walls, fluorescent lights that hummed like dying insects, and a metal table bolted to the floor. The kind of room designed to make you uncomfortable without technically mistreating you.
I'd been in worse.
One of the officers offered me coffee. I declined politely. The last thing I needed was more caffeine in my system. I was already wound tight enough to snap.
Through the small window in the door, I watched cops walk past. Some glanced in—curious, assessing. A few lingered for a second, probably trying to figure out what the story was with the American who'd been picked up carrying a weapon.
I didn't give them anything to work with. Just sat there, hands folded on the table, face blank.
Waiting.
The minutes crawled. I counted ceiling tiles. Traced cracks in the paint. Ran through scenarios in my head—how Merrick hadpulled this off, what his next move would be, how long it would take Micah to get me out.
Less than an hour, as it turned out.
