At that, he looked suddenly…stricken.
Absolutelystricken.
“No!” she said, overloud, way too loud for being alone together. She took a step closer to him, and repeated it. “I was kidding. I only meant—”
He took off his hat. Turned and tossed it onto the dark green bench behind him, which she hadn’t even noticed until now.
He took her hand. No step-by-step, no careful braiding. His warm, damp palm pressed to hers, a clasp. He tugged her closer, still keeping some space between them.
“I can make you these promises,” he said firmly.
And then, he listed them. Like he’d been practicing and practicing. Like he’d had a hundred conversation partners since he left her.
I can promise that I’m learning to take better care of myself.
I can promise that I’ve accepted it’ll always hurt.
I can promise to admit when it does.
I can promise that I want to be here. That I want to have a life. That I deserve a life.
I can promise that I’ll want that even if you don’t want to share some of yours with me.
“But god,” he said, after that last one. “God, Layla, I hope you do.”
She would not risk that stricken face again.
She would not, even for a smile.
So she leaned in, and pressed her mouth to his. She said, “I really, really do.”
At that, he let go of her hand. He wrapped his arms around her,hugged her close, so close that she could feel his heart beating and burning in a new way, not at all broken.
They stood that way for a long time, holding each other along the banks of the Charles, both of them probably pretending that they could somehow be somewhere else together, too—a different river in a very different city.
She smiled against his chest, the smooth, soft, seamless shirt she would not miss her next opportunity to steal. She said, “I have a list, too.”
She looked up at him—his handsome, sculptural,perfectface,god. Her whole list flew out of her mind for a second, and she thought maybe she would have to do it later. When she did not want to kiss and kiss him, to remind herself what her mouth could do when it was pressed against his.
But Griffin had not forgotten. “What kind of list?”
“Not promises,” she said, scrutinizing him as she did, waiting to see if he was disappointed.
But he wasn’t. She could tell that even before he said, “I didn’t expect any. I think the thing about us is, it’s me who’ll need to make the promises at first. I think maybe you’ve had enough of making your own for a while.”
She lowered her head again, let him kiss the top of it. He rubbed his palm down her back as she let out a relieved breath.
“List,” he finally said. “Go.”
She couldn’t help her laugh. He still talked like Griffin—Paris Griffin, the man she’d met all those months ago, curt and commanding and impatient.
She was so glad for that.
So she did her list, too.
Every French word and phrase she’d learned over the last three and a half months that she’d longed to say to him. The placesthey’d gone together, the things they’d seen and done, the way she’dfelt. She said things likeflânerbut she also saidmanquer; she saidla souffrance,la joie,la tristesse,l’espoir. She said all the words she liked the sound of and the meaning of; she thought Sabine would probably hate it all, as a list, but also she thought her pronunciation was getting better and better.
There was one more thing, too—something she hadn’t dared to ask Sabine if she was grammatically correct about, something she’d checked and double-checked so many times online.
