I don't drop her hand and sign whatever he pushes towards me.
A receipt? A brochure from the resort?… something like that.
I do it quickly with my free hand, never dropping Natalia's hand. Then I nod and move on before anyone else can slide in with a request, pulling Natalia with me as if she’s an extension of my own body.
She doesn't comment on it. She just walks closer, her other arm wrapping around my arm as if using me to block the wind, but I know it’s more than that.
"Are you cold?"
"Not anymore," she says, looking up at me with a smile and a sparkle in her eyes.
A smile that I’m tempted to keep for myself. To hide her away in her hotel room, keeping all her smiles for me, wrapped up in her sheets together, but this is important.
I don’t know where all this is going, but I do know that I’ve come too far not to see where this all leads. I need her to see that I’m not running. That I'm not hiding her.
The café is tucked just off the main path. Wooden beams, warm amber light, a chalkboard menu in German that she tilts her head at, squinting.
We get seated by a window with views of tourists walking by us.
I order when the waitress comes by. Natalia’s still staring at me when the server walks away.
"What?"
"English, Russian, French…now German? How many languages do you speak?" she asks with a raised eyebrow, her arms folded one over the other on the table casually.
"Six. My father insisted that his protégé son knew how to manipulate whoever I needed to in more than one language. Three tutors, a handful of nannies, and boarding school. My father probably spent more on my education than they do on the future king of England’s."
I'm kidding obviously but she makes a sound that’s almost a laugh anyway.
The coffee and the bread come out first. I watch her more than I eat. She wraps both hands around her mug and looks out at the snow that just started up again, deep in thought.
She catches me watching.
"You're deep in thought," I say.
"I'm not."
"You are. Care to share?"
She sighs, setting down the mug.
"You're not what I expected."
I lean back, curious to know what that means, "And what did you expect?"
"A spoiled athlete with impulse control issues and an allergy to accountability."
My mouth twitches. "Well, you were right about the last one. I’m deathly allergic to it. I break out in hives, EpiPen to the thigh… the whole thing."
She rolls her eyes playfully. "Can you ever be serious?"
"That’s interesting since most people think that being serious is all I can be," I say, arching a brow. "So then, if I’m not all the things you thought I was… what am I? Before I give you free rein to take a swipe at me, let me remind you that I haven’t paid for breakfast yet."
She chuckles. "I was going to say you’re… guarded. Like you don’t make a move without thinking three steps ahead."
"That doesn’t sound flattering."
"It is," she insists. "You’re deliberate. You don’t move unless you mean to. You’re calculating every cost."
