Chapter 10
MILA
Ileft the café at a run.
Not a cute jog. Not a Parisian glide like the women who looked born to cobblestones. An actual run—bag bouncing against my hip, camera strap biting my collarbone, breath snagging in my throat like I’d been chased.
Maybe I had.
Not by Connor. Not literally.
By the feeling of him.
By the way my body had taken that kiss and decided it belonged to me now, like a new language I couldn’t stop practicing in my head. By the way his fingers had closed around my wrist when I’d panicked about time—firm enough to stop me, gentle enough to remind me I was allowed to leave.
I kept hearing his voice: I’ll pay. For coffee. And dinner.
Like it was already decided.
Like he could say things like that and the world would shift to accommodate them.
I told myself it was nothing. Dinner wasn’t a marriage proposal. Paying for coffee was barely a gesture.
Still—my pulse had refused to come down since I’d walked away.
I made the turn onto the street where the shoot was happening and forced myself to slow before I reached the building. I couldn’t show up looking like I’d sprinted straight from a mistake. I inhaled, smoothed my hair with trembling fingers, and pushed through the glass door.
Inside, the air smelled like fabric dye and perfume and coffee that had been reheated once too many times. A boutique studio—white walls, a rack of linen dresses in soft neutral tones, a small backdrop set near a window that poured in late-afternoon light.
A woman with a sleek ponytail looked up from her phone. “Mila?”
“Yes.” I managed a smile that didn’t show teeth. “Sorry. The metro—”
“Paris,” she said, shrugging as if that explained everything. “You’re good. We’re just doing a few looks.”
It wasn’t my usual kind of work. Fashion photography felt louder, more about control than discovery. But élodie had encouraged me to try it, anyway, in that maddeningly calm way of hers. You don’t lose your eye just because the frame changes, she’d said. You might find something sharper.
I’d trusted her. I was learning that part of growth was letting myself be bad at something new long enough to find my footing.
The model turned from the mirror. She was tall and glowy in that effortless way that made me think she probably woke up like that and then felt genuinely confused when people complimented her. She offered a hand.
“Léonie,” she said.
“Mila.”
The stylist—Julianne, according to the clipboard—clapped her hands. “Okay. Linen in the window first. We’re selling ‘sun-drenched simplicity,’” she said, making air quotes. “Like she’s just wandered in from a romantic afternoon and isn’t thinking about anything.”
My stomach gave an unhelpful flip.
I lifted the camera. Checked settings. Framed the shot.
Through the lens, it was easier.
Light turned into a problem I could solve. Angles became choices. Léonie’s face softened the moment she stopped performing for the room and started performing for the idea—eyes distant, mouth relaxed, shoulders loose.
Click.
I moved slightly, catching the way the fabric fell at her hip.
Click.
The way her fingers toyed with the edge of a sleeve like she was distracted by an internal thought.
Click.
I’d always been drawn to the almosts. The moments right before expression became an action. The half-second when someone’s defenses dropped and their real life flickered across their face like a confession.
Except now, my brain kept trying to overlay Connor on everything.
The restraint in his kiss.
The heat in his gaze.
The way he’d looked at me in that room—fully clothed among naked strangers—and made me feel like I was the most exposed thing there.
I pressed the shutter harder than necessary.
The camera clicked.
“Beautiful,” Julianne murmured. “Yes. Like that. Chin slightly down. Perfect.”
Léonie held the pose, then relaxed. Her eyes slid to me, friendly. “You’re American?”
“Yeah,” I said, adjusting my lens. “Trying to be Parisian.”
She laughed lightly. “Good luck. It’s genetic.”
“Apparently.” I smiled, then caught myself smiling and felt a ridiculous jolt of satisfaction, like I’d succeeded at something I hadn’t realized I’d been failing.
We moved through outfits. Linen became silk. Neutral became a deep wine color that made Léonie look like an expensive secret. I captured her in the light, in the shadow, against the wall, near the window where Paris looked almost gentle.
Halfway through, Julianne stepped behind me and glanced at my screen. “These are … intimate.”
I startled at the word.
“Not in a sexual way,” she added quickly, as if she’d read my mind. “Just … close. Like you’re photographing a person, not a product.”
I swallowed. “I can pull back.”
“No.” Julianne pointed at one shot—the moment Léonie had looked away, her mouth parting slightly like she’d been interrupted mid-thought. “This is what sells.”
I stared at it.
It wasn’t staged. It was a micro-second of vulnerability.
And it hit something in me that had been awake since the orgy, since Connor’s hand on my waist, since I’d realized watching could be a kind of intimacy.
“This one,” I said softly. “We keep that.”
Julianne nodded. “We keep that.”
The shoot ended with a wrap-up rush—thank yous, quick notes, exchanging files. I promised a turnaround time. Accepted compliments that floated around me like confetti I didn’t know what to do with. Packed my gear.
When I stepped outside again, Paris had shifted into that early evening mood—sky pale but thickening, streetlights thinking about coming on, the city bracing for night.
I should’ve felt relief.
Instead, anticipation crawled up my spine.
Dinner.
Connor wasn’t a fantasy anymore. Not a blur in a shop window. Not a name spoken in candlelight.
He was real. He had bought me coffee. He had looked at me like he wanted something and still stopped.
And the simple fact that he’d stopped—willingly, deliberately—made my body react with a kind of heat that embarrassed me.
I walked home slower than I meant to, letting myself drift past storefronts and cafés, letting the city press against me in its constant, physical way. I practiced French in my head. I counted my steps. I tried to pretend I wasn’t rehearsing what I’d say to him at dinner.
Hi, nice to see you, thank you for—
No. Too polite. Too American.
What do you do for work?
Absolutely not. I wasn’t a recruiter.
How did you find me?
Also no.
By the time I reached my building, my mind had tied itself in a knot. I climbed the stairs with that familiar burn in my thighs, the private reminder that my body was here whether my mind wanted to cooperate or not.
Inside, I dropped my bag, set my camera on the desk, and stared at the room.
This apartment had been a respite when I first arrived in Paris. Pale and imperfect and quiet. A place where no one knew my name.
Now it felt like a stage.
My phone buzzed.
Amaya: Tu es vivante?
I snorted and typed back: Yes. Alive. Also, you sent me into an orgy.
The reply came fast.
Amaya: I sent you into a room. You stayed.
My fingers hovered.
Because that was true.
I hadn’t stayed because I was reckless. I’d stayed because it had felt … educational. Like watching bodies move with ease had unlocked something in me I’d kept caged for years.
Back home, sex had always come with a script. A before and after. A posture you held so you didn’t look too hungry or too willing or too much.
In that room, hunger was allowed.
Not demanded. Not manipulated.
Allowed.
And then Connor had shown up and turned allowance into a question.
I typed: I saw Connor.
Three dots appeared instantly.
Amaya: Of course, you did.
Me: We kissed.
The dots stopped. Then resumed.
Amaya: Where are you?
I hesitated, then typed my address. Before I could second-guess, another message came through.
Amaya: I’m coming. Do not spiral alone.
Amaya showed up twenty minutes later with a bottle of wine and the expression of a woman ready to perform emergency surgery on my emotional state.
She stepped into my apartment, took one look at me standing too still in the middle of the room, and shook her head.
“Ah,” she said. “You are vibrating.”
“I am not.”
She lifted her eyebrows.
I exhaled. “Fine. Maybe a little.”
She kicked her shoes off, moved like she belonged here, and opened the wine without asking. That was Amaya—direct, intimate, unbothered by the boundaries Americans pretended made them safe.
She handed me a glass. “Tell me.”
So, I did.
I told her about the orgy—how daylight had made me brave, how the absence of shame had felt like stepping into a world where my body wasn’t something to manage.
I told her about Connor appearing like a pressure change, about the way he’d checked if I was okay like my comfort mattered more than his curiosity.
I told her about the kiss.
Amaya listened without interrupting, her eyes sharp, her posture relaxed. When I finished, she took a slow sip of wine and said, “You liked that he stopped.”
My throat tightened. “Yes.”
She nodded as if she’d expected it. “You’re not responding to aggression. You’re responding to control.”
“I don’t want to be controlled,” I said quickly, defensive.
Amaya leaned forward. “I didn’t say controlled. I said control.”
She held my gaze until my defensiveness softened into confusion.
“There is power over you,” she said, “and there is power someone has and chooses not to use.”
The words landed so cleanly it made my chest ache.
Connor’s hand at my waist. Not gripping. Not pulling. Just there. An anchor.
My eyes stung unexpectedly. I blinked fast.
Amaya’s voice gentled slightly. “Who taught you to want quietly?”
The question slid under my ribs like a blade.
I stared into my wine, watching the surface tremble.
“It was a long time ago,” I said.
“Mm.” Amaya waited. She could wait forever. She had the patience of someone who’d already decided she could handle whatever truth came next.
I swallowed. “I was twenty.”
Her eyes didn’t change.