At the far end of the table, Damien’s hand stills around his wineglass. I do not look. I continue talking to Guillaume for the next course and the one after that because the conversation is professional, useful, and safe enough to let me breathe. It is also not lost on me that Damien is watching the whole thing with the restrained stillness of a man who understands public composure and hates needing it.
By the time dessert arrives, the room has loosened under wine and low light. Guillaume says something dry about a winemaker who treats oak like a personality disorder, and I laugh because it is accurate. When I glance across the table again, Damien is looking at me with an expression that should not affect my pulse from fourteen covers away.
The dinner breaks apart slowly, with chairs sliding back, napkins folding over plates, and people lingering in small clusters to finish conversations that have already served their purpose. I thank the négociant, say good night to Guillaume, and make it halfway to the door before Damien appears beside me with the quiet inevitability of a man who has been timing the room for an hour.
“You’re leaving?” he says.
“I usually do when dinner ends,” I say.
His gaze moves over my face, then toward the stairs.
“Alone?”
“That is typically how walking works when no one is beside you.”
“Not always,” he says.
I should not smile, so I do not. I step out into the warm Paris night, and he follows. The street is narrow and softly lit, the pavement glowing under old lamps, the air carrying wine, tobacco, and rain that still has not fallen. For a while, neither of us says anything. He falls into step beside me, and we walk four blocks in a silence that is not empty enough to be called silence. I stop near a corner where the light from a closed bakery spills pale gold over the sidewalk.
“What?”
He looks at me. “Nothing.”
“Damien.”
He looks away, then back at me with the expression of a man annoyed by his own honesty.
“I don’t share well. I’m aware that’s not a particularly evolved quality.”
For one second, I only stare at him. Then I laugh, short and surprised, because the confession is so blunt and so perfectly him that I cannot help it. He looks mildly offended.
“I’m glad my emotional development entertains you.”
“It’s not your emotional development,” I say.
“It’s the fact that you delivered that like a technical flaw in a sauce.”
“It’s a technical flaw.”
“It’s absolutely not evolved,” I say, still smiling.
“I already said that.”
“Yes,” I say. “You did.”
I start walking again, and he falls back into step beside me. The silence changes after that. It is warmer, stranger, and dangerously easy. He does not reach for my hand. He does not ask about Guillaume. He does not say anything else that would force me to admit how much I liked hearing him say it.
When we reach my street, I slow near the hotel entrance. The window boxes sit dark above the brass handle, and the lobby glows faintly through the glass.
“You did not have to walk me back,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “I wanted to see you get here safely.”
The answer is simple enough that it catches under my ribs.
“Good night, Damien,” I say.
“Good night, Serena,” he says.
