Chapter 27
Malena
Staring into those deep blue eyes made everything very real, and all the bravery I’d mustered last night loosened.
I always figured that one day Good Malena, real phone–Malena, the Malena my parents wanted, would take over and I’d figure out how to bridge the divide.
“We don’t have to go.” Conrad watched as I internally debated. His hands gently gripped either side of my waist. “Let’s head back to campus.”
The problem was that Good Malena never existed in the first place. She was a lie, a series of them, all constructed for someone else’s comfort at the expense of my own.
If I wanted something, I had to take it.
I shook my head. “We’re there till Wednesday, right?”
My parents worked during the week, so the only chance of a surprise visit was on weekends. We’d be back by then.
An unsteady smile pushed against his cheeks—boyish and completely adorable. “Yeah.”
That day in the mausoleum when I told Conrad I’d finish the article without figuring out what was going on with the paintings, I did have what I needed. For the feature. For the Keller Award submission.
But I wanted more. Of everything.
I sucked in a deep breath and nodded again, more assured this time. “Let’s go.”
My hands found his shirt and I pulled him close again for a kiss. The feeling of calm he always seemed to inject me with spiraled together with the newfound thrill of being completely enveloped in him.
He groaned, kissing me a little deeper. Fireworks went off in my stomach like I’d swallowed Pop Rocks.
“I should probably tell you that Sabrina called.” He pulled away. “And threatened me.”
“She’s serious,” I warned. “Precious cargo.”
“Don’t I know it.” He threw an arm around my shoulder and notched his head to the left, down the path where a few feet away, his friends—the ones who’d all been an unfamiliar and unexpected type of kind to me—were waiting.
It was nice. Like playing house. And right now, I didn’t want to think about anything past the playing part.
We joined them by the lineup of cars where Lucy began detailing the plans. The jets we’d take, the house along the Seine that we were staying in—the McMaster family property. The nights out and the dinners, everything.
“And, as a reminder, this year’s excursion is on me, so don’t you boys try to be gentlemen about it again,” Ishani added after Lucy finished, pinning James with a warning look before her eyes softened and moved to Conrad.
Her lips pressed into a straight line but wavered at the corners.
“Well, except that little surprise Conrad planned—”
“Got it, Isha,” Conrad interrupted.
I turned a raised brow to Conrad and tried to get a handle on whatever I was feeling. Excitement, anxiety, dread. But more than anything, freedom.
“I’m not giving you any spoilers.” He pressed a kiss on my head, sweet and familiar like he’d been doing it for years. My stomach did somersaults.
He and James left us to get showered and organized, and we’d all reconvene at the private hangar. I was left marginally dumbfounded and more than a little dizzy.
So, I texted the people who always managed to ground me.
Me: I’m going to Paris
Me: Do either of you know what these surprises are?
Cora: Maybe.
Sabrina: It’s above your security clearance, sorry.
Cora: Burner with you? Calls and text forwarded?
I smiled.
Me: Check and check. Real phone is at the condo charging.
Cora: Look at that, Sabrina, our little girl is growing up.
Sabrina: I’m so proud, I could cry.
A few hours later, we boarded a flight.
On the plush leather seat, next to Conrad, I dozed in and out of sleep, waking to find him either reading or listening to whatever played through his headphones.
I shuffled and stretched my legs under the blanket he must’ve thrown over our laps.
“What are you listening to?” I asked through a yawn. Sitting up, I glanced at the screen at the front of the cabin—we were almost there.
“I just got through a great scene.” He clicked the side of his headphones and took them off. “You should listen to it.”
“Oh, what book is it?” I asked.
“You’ll see.” He lifted them off and placed them over my ears.
He hit play and my face warmed.
It was the book I’d been reading. The F1 romance novel, the one he saw in my bag that day in town.
Specifically, he was at the scene in the pit when they were alone and…
Conrad leaned in and moved one of the headphones off my ear. “I’m gonna need to see where those sticky bookmark tabs of yours ended up.”
His breath lit tiny sparks that danced down my neck. Beneath the blanket, he ran his fingers along my side, pebbling my skin with goose bumps.
I laid my hand over his and pushed the headphone back over my ear. “Probably better I show you.”
He let the audiobook play, his eyes occasionally moving from mine to my lips or along my collar.
A hard swallow shifted the tense column of his throat.
A plane full of people that had no idea what I was listening to, except for him, who watched me with the uninterrupted focus of a lion surveilling prey.
The tension that stretched between us became impossibly thin.
“What in the hell are you doing?” Isha’s voice cut through the noise-canceling headphones, and Conrad startled, turning and sitting forward in his seat. “Sharing?” Her lips curled into a teasing smirk.
“What do you want, Isha?” Conrad’s voice twisted in frustration.
“We’re landing soon,” she announced, her eyes moving between us. “Seat belts, if you can manage it.”
She spun on her heels and went back to her seat next to Lucy with all the polite efficiency of a flight attendant.