She bites her lip, and when she releases it, I have to tamp down the urge to reach across the table and touch the marks her teeth left behind. When she smiles at me, everything feels right with the world. “You’ve always known the right thing to say.”

Shay

Paris doesn’t sleep at night. Or if she does, it’s not until long after I’ve fallen asleep. It’s eleven, and customers loiter at tables in front of brasseries, drinking wine, smoking, and talking. Cars roll by, and the moon creeps higher in the sky, bringing me closer to the moment when I’ll have to say good night. I dread that moment with everything inside me. I’d keep walking forever with aching feet and my exhaustion-fuzzy brain if it meant I didn’t have to let go of Easton’s hand.

Dinner was amazing. Not the meal—I have no recollections of what the food tasted like—but the experience. I’ve been with him for four hours and I’m right back to the lovesick girl I was the last time I saw him. Maybe worse. My chest already aches when I think of saying goodbye tomorrow night. I still can’t believe Easton came to Paris when he can only stay one night. He has to get back for a PR obligation—some black-tie event where he’s promised to appear—so he’ll leave only twenty-four hours after he landed. Insane.

“When do you have to be back to your room?” he asks, stopping to look at his phone.

“I’m a big girl now.” I bite back a grimace at my word choice. Big girl, indeed. “No curfew.”

“When do you want to go back to your room?”

I shake my head. I’m in no rush to return to Heather and the sounds of her sneaking Steve into our room after lights out, them making out in her bed. And yet that’s all secondary to how much I don’t want my time with Easton to end. “I wouldn’t go back at all tonight if it was up to me.”

He smiles, and it’s a smile I haven’t seen on Easton many times. It’s big and wide and makes his eyes shine. “Do you . . . Would you want to stay with me? I have a room.”

“So we wouldn’t be sleeping in the streets?”

He pinches my side. “You’re such a pest.”

I squirm, trying to avoid his tickling hands, but he’s stronger and bigger and spins me around. Then I’m in his arms, his body pressed to mine, his gaze on my mouth.

I lift a hand and tentatively touch his cheek. “Where’s your room?”

“No idea.” I feel his laugh more than hear it, and he nods up the block. “But my driver is right up there.”

His driver. “You’re so fancy these days.”