She turns away from the ornate balcony rail. Oliver grins and hands her a bubbling glass of champagne. A square pastel-pink box tied with a white ribbon sits on the wrought-iron table behind him.
Beatrix smirks at him. “Oliver Rhodes, are you trying to impress me?”
His eyes sparkle in the morning sun. “I’m trying to give you a birthday to remember.”
“You have.” She didn’t need a journey on theNight Ferryand champagne with a view of the Eiffel Tower for that. Today, she has him, and that is enough for her to remember this birthday forever.
He gestures to the box. “Open it.”
Beatrix pulls the ribbon away and slowly lifts the lid. A gasp escapes her. A small round cake frosted in white and edged with pastel roses sits inside,Happy Birthday Beapiped across the top in sunshine-yellow icing.
“I love it,” Beatrix says. “Thank you.”
“Cake for breakfast, or dessert after our dinner tonight?” Oliver asks.
Beatrix is tired of waiting. She wants to do everything with him, wants to do it all now. “Cake for breakfast.”
“Cake for breakfast it is.” He disappears inside their room and reappears on the balcony a moment later. “I thought nineteen boxes of candles might be excessive,” he says, tearing a single box open.
“You wouldn’t want to set the cake on fire,” Beatrix jokes. “Or the hotel.”
He pushes each candle into the frosting, pale pink and blue and yellow, twirled together with white. He lights them with a book of hotel matches.
“It’s perfect,” she says. Twenty-four flames dance and flicker in the imperceptible breeze. The year she’ll never reach.
Oliver stands behind her. He pulls her close and props his chin on her shoulder. “I apologize in advance.”
“For what?”
“For how I am about to absolutely butcher ‘Happy Birthday.’?”
But Beatrix doesn’t mind the off-key rendition he half sings in her ear. She loves it all. “Now that was unforgettable,” she teases.
“I think you mean unforgivable.” He kisses her on the cheek and loosens his grip on her waist. “Make a wish. If you blow out all your candles at once, it will come true.”
“Really?” Beatrix raises an eyebrow at him.
Oliver shrugs. “You never know.”
She made a wish that came true before. Maybe she can do it again. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
“Uh-oh, this is getting serious,” Oliver says.
Beatrix tries not to smile. She fails miserably. “Shush, you.”
The balcony falls quiet.
She can think of only one thing to wish for. One thing she wants more than she has ever wanted anything: a way to hold on to Oliver.
She could wish to stop time, wish to keep them together, frozen in this moment forever. She could wish for him to never leave her. Wish for him to have more time, too. But none of those feel right.
Beatrix has learned not to trifle with wishes—to be exacting with her phrasing, to choose her words carefully. If there is even a single grain of truth in what Oliver has said, a speck of old magic ignited in her candles, she will not take it for granted.
She breathes deep and wishes with her whole heart that she never loses him. She opens her eyes and blows out twenty-four golden flames, watches as their white smoke swirls away into the skies over Paris. She lets her heart hope.
Beatrix eyes Oliver skeptically as they walk past the welcoming shade of the trees at the paved plaza’s center, the afternoon sun warm on her back. “That cannot be true.”
He raises his right hand. “I swear. Time traveler’s honor.”
