Chapter 20

“So, where are we headed?” I asked Hunter. “Don’t say ‘you’ll see,’ or I’ll punch you in the arm.”

His eyes twinkled. “You’ll . . . find out.”

I swung anyway, and he ducked as we walked. While dropping me off to change at the hotel room earlier, he’d warned me to wear good walking shoes, which was a given considering how sore my feet were from my heels last night.

I recalled Jillian’s knowing grin as I walked in. For all she knew, I’d been with Claude all night. Alexis only rolled over in bed with a soft snore. I’d simply told Jillian to spend the day doing whatever she wanted and to be careful on the metro. I wasn’t sure I could explain what happened last night even if I wanted to.

A handsome, rich Frenchman invited me to his apartment, but I ended up in Hunter’s bed instead. But it didn’t go further than his arms around me. Like they would believe me. I wasn’t sure I believed it myself.

“You know I hate surprises,” I told him.

He swung his gaze to me. “You love surprises. You just hate not being prepared for every little thing.”

Okay, probably true. “Stop being so smug and give me a hint, at least.”

“Nope. You’ll figure it out too fast.”

Exactly the plan. Besides the Louvre, which I had tickets for later this afternoon, I couldn’t for the life of me think of something we hadn’t done yet. A site only locals knew, perhaps? I hated thinking of Hunter as a local, but he knew far more about living in the city than I did.

Half a mile later, the crowds on the sidewalk thickened. Definitely a tourist site, then.

Not until we arrived at an intersection and I caught sight of a sprawling building in front of us did I gasp. Tan with gold accents and a rounded, greenish roof . . .

“The Paris Opera House,” I breathed. Or, in French, Palais Garnier. I’d completely forgotten.

Hunter grinned. “The inspiration for a certain one of your obsessions when we were twelve. Remember?”

Boy, did I. I’d seen the movie Phantom of the Opera and begged my mom for a trip to Broadway to see the musical. She’d finally relented when my class scheduled an art trip to New York. I’d saved for ten months. But the musical didn’t fill my hunger. It only compounded it.

“When you came home, you announced you’d be changing your name to Christine,” Hunter said, chuckling.

“And I tried to convince you to change yours to Erik,” I said, remembering. “I was pretty intense back then.”

“Back then?”

I elbowed him in the ribs. “This trip means so much to me, and being with my sisters . . . I’ve waited almost three decades to see this place.”

His smile faded into disappointment, though I wasn’t sure why. “I know. I want it to be special even more than you do.” I looked at him curiously, but he dodged my gaze as we crossed the street and started up the steps, carefully picking our way between sitting tourists .

A short line later, we entered a rotunda with a shorter ceiling than I expected, but I remembered the history of this room. The architect had intended for it to feel cave-like to make the rest of the building feel grander. But even this area felt special. If someone told me I was on a movie set, I wouldn’t have questioned it. Stone walls, tiled floors more ornate than anything I’d seen, and Hunter at my side.

“They say it only gets better from here,” Hunter said. “You ready?”

I gave him a strange look. “I thought you’d already been through it.”

“Not this. I didn’t want to experience it before you did. It didn’t seem right.”

My heart pounding at his thoughtfulness, I just swallowed and nodded.

Then we entered the room with the grand staircase . . . and my heart stopped altogether.

Opulent didn’t begin to describe it. This room, with its carved stone and beautiful, wide, curving staircases that spanned floors . . . and the ceiling! Painted in bright, bold colors an impossible distance above my head. The building seemed large from the outside, but the ceiling seemed to soar to the very heavens now. The huge candelabras made the lighting seem like candlelight. The color palette—gold, tan, dark brown, and black—gave the area a somber, mysterious air, a strong, substantial declaration to the world of wealth, status, and permanence. Even the balconies—of which there were many, each featuring a lounging tourist—stole my breath.

I imagined myself dressed as Christine in a grand ball gown, descending these very steps.

Heck, I could see myself as every princess ever .

I glanced over at Hunter and found him looking at me. Examining me. Experiencing every inch of this beautiful building through me and my reactions, almost as if he memorized this moment.

I shrugged, scraping together every ounce of strength to feign nonchalance. “It’ll do.”

He laughed.

As our tour continued, I found Hunter watching me through most of it. I sighed at the grand, tall pillars. I smiled at the art on the ceiling and walls, all displaying various musical stories and characters. I stopped to appreciate the architecture that made me feel as if we, not the actors, performed on a grand stage. I’d worn a cute blouse and wide-legged trousers today, but I felt vastly underdressed.

We walked outside onto a wraparound balcony far too large and ornate to comprehend its being exposed to the elements and looked down upon a street with lanes too confusing to understand for anyone but the French. The golden buildings and tour buses and tourists on the steps we’d first climbed added to the poignancy of this moment. Music blared from speakers with words I didn’t understand. It should have felt foreign and different.

I loved it. All of it.

A moment after going back inside, we found it—the theater.

A shock of red velvet greeted us as we entered. The sheer number of private boxes, all facing a stage that seemed too small for the room, and the chandelier—the chandelier, all seven tons of it—hit me at the same time as the realization that I knew this place. I’d imagined it while reading Leroux’s original 1910 novel. I’d seen it in every movie adaptation since the 1940s. I’d dreamed about it. And, now, here I was, with Hunter, experiencing it for myself.

“I heard they turned box five into a bedroom for a few lucky people to stay overnight,” Hunter said softly. “Can you imagine sleeping here? Falling asleep to the view of the stage in the arms of the person you love must be incredible.”

It did sound incredible. It sounded a whole lot like what I experienced last night . . . minus the love part, of course. Or maybe not. My confused and battered heart didn’t know what to make of any of this.

I turned to face him, and the tourists around us melted away. I could almost hear the ballad from the soundtrack playing in the background as I looked into my best friend’s eyes.

Here, in a dim room I’d waited my whole life to see and somehow felt I could never leave, I noticed something I’d refused to see all along.

“You broke up with Collette,” I said, barely allowing the words to leave my lips. As they did, I felt a lightness I hadn’t experienced in far too long.

He took my hands in his. “Not coming home when you asked was the worst mistake I ever made,” he said softly. “I want you to know I’ve regretted it every day since.”

“You were engaged. That wasn’t fair of me to ask, and I’m sorry.” I thought of the ring in his bathroom drawer and tamped down the hope in my heart. He had a dresser full of her clothes. Women didn’t simply leave entire wardrobes behind. Why wasn’t he answering the question about Collette?

“Remember how I told you to meet me in Paris when you changed your mind and I’d be waiting? I didn’t keep that promise. When I realized you really weren’t coming, I threw myself into the dating scene. Collette was coming off a bad relationship. I guess you could say we both needed a rebound.”

My heart squeezed. “You don’t have to explain.”

“I want you to understand.” Indeed, I could hear the pleading in his voice. “I tried everything I could to get you out of my head, and nothing worked. I thought if I married someone else, it would force my heart to heal. When we got engaged, I felt sick for days. I was living a lie. And then your text came.”

Which I remembered all too well. I simply nodded.

“I wanted to be there for you. Truly. But if I wrapped you in my arms and you pushed me away again, I knew there would be no recovering from that. I was a selfish coward, Kennedy, and you deserved better. I stayed, hoping beyond hope that you’d miraculously show up anyway.”

And then I did. Out of the blue, without notice—only to show him at every turn that he didn’t matter, that I wasn’t here to see him at all. That I would rather be with a mysterious stranger I barely knew.

I saw it all in my best friend’s eyes, shoved back and hidden from sight until this moment. This raw, shadowed moment.

“And Collette?” I finally managed.

He gave me a sour expression. “She broke it off when she saw the depths of my feelings for you, and I couldn’t have been more relieved. She wasn’t ready to settle down, and I was. She seems to be enjoying her job in New York, but if she ever does come back, I’ll move out. That’s the agreement.” He cursed under his breath. “I never should have accepted the internship. It took me away from you when you needed me most. ”

There was one question I’d been dying to know. “Why did you stay here so long?”

His eyes flicked back to mine. “If I couldn’t love you in person, I would grow to love the city of your heart. It would be the closest I could get to the real thing. Besides, I told you I’d be waiting here until you were ready. I just didn’t realize I had to do a little preparing of my own.”

We stared at one another like that, our eyes communicating what our words couldn’t, and I remembered when our lips had done a little communicating too, once upon a time in a faraway land that felt like the real dream.

“Kennedy, my heart was never Collette’s,” he whispered. “I pretended it was, but the fact is, you stole it long ago. I can’t even tell you when it happened because it’s always been that way.”

I sometimes wonder about my best friend, Mom had said. What would have happened if we had a second chance? If that magic was there all along, but I refused to see it because it felt familiar.

I knew exactly what magic felt like. It felt like Hunter Morrison.

“I missed you,” I whispered.

His voice grew husky with emotion. “You have no idea.”

Great. I’d be a blubbering mess in front of him yet again. My heart pounded painfully as it thawed from its frozen state. I’d locked it up in my vault for so long it now rebelled against being shut away in the shadows.

Time for it to see the light no matter what pain came with it.

I closed the distance between us. Sliding my hand up his shirt and around his neck, I pulled his head down so only inches separated us. I felt him tremble at my touch. What had I done to this poor man? Had he locked up his heart too?

“If this is our last day together,” I said softly, “I want to spend it with you. Really with you.” We had four years of lost happiness to seize, and I refused to waste another minute.

He must have felt the same because he released a desperate breath, and a second later, his lips practically devoured mine.

Here, in Hunter’s arms in this place of red-velveted history and shadows, I found where I belonged. Last night’s time with Claude had been a play, an act. I’d acted exactly as expected, and so had he. It felt nice and casual.

But this . . . was not that.

Every cell in my body exploded with pleasure at the feel of Hunter’s mouth on mine. The ebb and flow of our lips moving together like a dance on stage, the turn of his head at exactly the right time, his hands grasping my waist and pulling me closer, closer, tighter, tighter.

Jillian was wrong. The same river could be both steady and unpredictable, slow and full of winding, utterly thrilling rapids. Hunter made my experience with Claude feel like a puddle on the sidewalk.

Like the Paris Opera House, there was plenty of Hunter to explore, and every inch seemed a wonder.

I only pulled away when my lungs screamed for mercy. We stood there in one another’s arms, breathing hard and staring at each other in awe as the sparks threatened to overcome us altogether.

This felt both familiar and dangerous, like dancing at the edge of a cliff, feeling the firm ground beneath my feet but knowing an inch sideways would send me plummeting .

A smattering of applause sounded behind us.

I whirled to find a group of tourists standing near the entrance, smiling and clapping.

“Well done, mate,” a man with an Australian accent said.

There was only one thing to do. I curtsied. “Thanks for coming, everyone. We appreciate your support.”

The group laughed and scattered.

When I turned back to Hunter, he watched me in wonder. How had I missed the emotion in his eyes? It was clear as day.

“I only have one question,” he said with a smirk. “That year you insisted on calling me Erik? I thought Erik was the childhood friend-turned-rich-aristocrat who saved Christine in the play. It took me forever to figure out that Erik was really?—”

“The Phantom.” My turn to laugh, and it came more freely than in a long time. I threaded my fingers through his. “Let’s face it. The world has enough rich aristocrats. But mentally disturbed and murderous yet sympathetic dudes hiding in a candle-decorated cistern beneath an opera house? Way less boring.”

Thanks, Mom, for the lesson.

At the Louvre, Hunter and I walked through every room we could, admiring the art, statues, and all the other treasures the building offered. I knew the museum was big, but it felt especially big after having walked so much already. Even my supportive shoes didn’t feel quite supportive enough.

After fighting the crowds to see the Mona Lisa and checking out the art pieces I most wanted to see, my very favorite remained. Frowning, I scoured the trifold pamphlet that served as a map.

“What are you looking for?” he asked. We’d walked hand in hand this entire time, and it felt perfectly comfortable. Gloriously familiar yet completely magical.

“Monet is my favorite artist. He’s from here, right? Yet I haven’t seen a single work of his.” The water lilies with their idealistic and dreamlike colors and shapes never failed to make me feel at peace.

“They’re all at the Monet Museum,” Hunter said. “You didn’t know?”

Of course they were. I sighed. “Well, there’s no time to go there today.”

Hunter looked thoughtful. “I have an idea. Follow me.”

Minutes later, we stopped in front of a relatively small painting of a winter scape. Snow-covered and wind-bent trees leaned toward a road that led past a house in a snowdrift. In the distance, darker trees filled the background. I leaned forward to read the plaque and felt my eyebrows rise. “This is a Monet?”

“Yep.”

I examined the painting. “But it’s so realistic.”

“Not everything he painted was warm sunshine and lily pads. He captured cold winters, too. It’s why I like this painting.” He stared at it with a thoughtful expression. “There’s beauty even in a harsh winter scene.”

I pondered that for a long moment. Monet painted exactly the way I’d always seen Paris before coming here— with a soft, reverent eye that improved upon what actually existed. But now that I had experienced it, that image faded and a more realistic one took its place. Not any less beautiful but more like a beautiful winter scape—real, bold, and fearless in its depiction of truth. Not apologetic but proud of the way things really were.

Hunter, not Claude. Turns out my heart had gotten what it needed rather than what it wanted, and I was okay with that.

“What?” Hunter asked as I examined him.

“Who’s the geek now?” I asked.

He chuckled softly as I rose onto my toes and gave him a quick kiss. It soon turned into a longer kiss that turned into an even longer embrace, and then I forgot about art entirely.