Chapter Twenty-Two #2
"It’s not bad," he says, and then hands it back.
We keep walking.
I want to remember this day forever. The image of Everett Kauffman, the Tin Man, the CEO, the man behind the glass, standing on a cobblestone street in the French Riviera with a dusting of powdered sugar, robbed of gelato by a seagull, and sharing my ice cream cone like a normal person on a normal day.
If only Everly and his brothers could see this. They wouldn’t believe me. Or… maybe they would. Maybe this is the part of him that they all know he has deep down. The reason they push and prod him.
By late afternoon, we've walked nearly every street in the village.
And I've been looking.
At every balcony with blue shutters and climbing roses. At every apartment that might have been hers. Then Everett stops dead in his tracks and looks up.
"Up here," he says at one point, touching my elbow and steering me up a side street I would have walked past.
We climb. The road narrows into a path, then a staircase, then a landing that opens onto a small terrace between two buildings.
And there it is.
A balcony apartment. With blue shutters, faded by decades of sun. The climbing roses are pink and white, cascading over the iron railing just like she told me. A view of the harbor below that looks like it was made just for me at this moment.
I stop breathing.
It might not be hers—Probably isn't. But it could be.
It's close enough. Close enough to the stories. Close enough to the paintings she made of this exact view. The harbor, the boats, the colored buildings reflected in the water.
Close enough to make my eyes sting.
"Aria," Everett says quietly behind me.
I shake my head once because I can't talk yet.
He doesn't push. He just stands there. Close enough to reach for if I need him, and yet far enough to let me have this alone.
I stand on that terrace for a long time.
Looking at the balcony and the roses that she’s painted.
At the view my mother saw every morning before she met my father and left this place for a man with terrible French and too many peaches and a love story that ended in a car on the way home from her daughter's first gallery opening.
And that's when it hits me.
Like a wave breaking over my head and pulling me under before I take a breath.
I'm falling in love.
I'm falling in love with a man in the exact place my mother fell in love with my father. In the exact place she always told me I would find it—Here.
In the exact village. Under the same light, the same roses, the same view of the same harbor where she looked up from her easel and saw a man she’d marry.
And I'm the only one falling.
I'm falling in love with a man who told me not to want more. Who said this is a marriage on paper, Aria.
I thought I could pretend it away. I could distract myself with painting or art, or something else to fill my time and keep me thinking of the man that seems to know what I need before I ask for it.
The panic comes fast.
My chest locks. My throat closes. My vision blurs at the edges and suddenly I can't be here. I can't stand on this terrace with climbing roses and a harbor view and a man who is everything I want and nothing I'm allowed to keep.
"I can’t be here," I blurt out.
I turn.
"Aria—"
I walk past him.
Then faster.
Then I'm running.
Down the stairs, through the narrow streets, until I’m past the painted buildings and the iron balconies and the shutters in faded green and blue. My sandals slap against cobblestones. The evening air rushes past my face, warm and salty but sweet.
I hear him behind me.
His footsteps. Faster than mine. His longer strides taking up the space.
"Aria. Stop."
I don't stop.
I can't.
Because if I stop I'll have to look at him and if I look at him he'll see it. He'll see everything. And then he'll say something to soften the blow. He’ll remind me that this is all a contract and that he warned me not to fall in love with him. He’ll tell me about how we agreed this was temporary, and I won’t come back from it.
His hand catches my arm. It’s not rough but it’s firm.
He pulls me sideways, off the main street and into a narrow alley between two buildings. Stone walls on either side. A single lamp above casting warm light down onto us. Hidden from the street and the village and everyone except the two of us.
"Aria." His voice is low. Controlled. But only barely. "Look at me."
I shake my head.
My back hits the wall behind me. I didn't realize I was retreating until the stone stopped me.
"Hey." He steps closer. Both hands on my shoulders now. Ducking his head to find my eyes. "Hey. Talk to me."
The tears come before I can stop them.
Not quiet, dignified tears. The ugly kind. The kind that take your whole face and your whole breath and leave you gasping.
"I'm scared," I say, and the words come out broken. "I'm so scared that I'll never find what they had."
His hands tighten on my shoulders.
"My parents fell in love here," I say, and I'm crying openly now, not even trying to hide it.
"In this village. In this light. Under these same roses.
And it was real. It was the most real thing I've ever known about another person.
And she's gone. And his mind is going. And I'm standing here in the same place and I'm terrified that—"
My voice cracks.
"That what?" he says quietly.
"That maybe I'll never let myself have it." I look up at him through blurred eyes. "That I've been so afraid of losing people that I won't ever let someone in far enough for it to matter. That I'll spend my whole life protecting myself from the thing that would make me most alive."
The words hang in the narrow alley between us.
His expression doesn't shut down.
Doesn't go careful or distant or controlled.
He just looks at me with something raw and open in his face that I've never seen before. Something that looks like it costs him.
He steps closer.
My back presses harder against the stone.
His hand comes up to my face. Thumb brushing tears from my cheek. Gentle in a way that makes me cry harder because tenderness from this man has always been my undoing.
"You are going to find it," he says. Low.
Certain. "You are going to let someone in.
You are going to have everything your parents had.
Because you're—" He stops. His jaw tightens.
His thumb stills on my cheek. "You're extraordinary, Aria.
You deserve someone who sees that every single day and never lets you forget it. "
My chest cracks open.
Because he's talking about someone else. Someone who isn't him.
And I can see in his eyes that it's killing him to say it.
"Everett—"
"Fuck… Aria… I want that man to be me."
"You do?" I ask, hope blooming.
"I’m just terrified I’m going to kill your spark. I can’t live with you losing yourself in the man I am. I’m not easy to deal with, I’m demanding, my job is…"
"I know… I know all of that."
"You’re finally painting. What if being with me killed that?"
"If being with you kills my spark? Are you serious?" I ask as if he hasn’t been paying attention. "Everett, I haven’t painted in over three years since my mom died. I only started now… because you gave me a safe place to do it. You gave my spark back to me."
And then he kisses me. Desperately.
There's no softness or carefulness in his kiss. I match him need for need—his hands on all of me, my hands gripping wildly at his shoulders, his neck, his hair... anything I can use to pull him closer.
His mouth is warm and tastes like pistachio and I almost laugh into the kiss because ten minutes ago we were sharing gelato and now his hands are sliding down my ribs and gripping my waist and pressing me harder into the stone wall behind me.
"Say it again," I whisper against his lips.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide, and there's nothing controlled about his face right now. Nothing careful. Nothing measured.
"I want that man to be me," he says. Quieter this time. Rougher. Like the words are costing him something he's been hoarding for months.
I pull his mouth back to mine.
His hands drop to my thighs. He lifts me like it's nothing—like I weigh nothing—and my legs wrap around his waist and my back scrapes against stone and I don't care. I don't care about anything except the heat of him pressed against me and the way his breathing has gone ragged against my neck.
My sundress is bunched between us. His hips press forward and I can feel how hard he is through his trousers and I roll against him deliberately, slowly, just to hear the sound he makes.
He groans into my throat. Low and rough and completely undone.
"Here?" I breathe.
His hand slides up the inside of my thigh. His fingers find the edge of my underwear and trace along it, just touching me through the thin fabric until my hips jerk forward on their own.
"Here," he says.
His fingers push my underwear aside and I gasp when he touches me, his thumb finding exactly the right spot like he's memorized me the way he memorizes everything else. Two fingers slide inside me and I arch off the wall, my head falling back against the stone.
"You're so wet for your fake husband, aren’t you Aria?" he murmurs against my collarbone, and the way he says it makes my whole body tighten around his hand.
He works me with his fingers until I'm shaking, until my thighs are clenching around his waist and I'm making sounds I can't control. Then he pulls his hand away and I almost cry from the loss of it.
The clink of his belt. The rasp of his zipper. His hand gripping himself, lining up his tip to my center, and then he pushes in side of me. So slow I feel every inch of him filling me up, stretching me, and my mouth falls open to a whimper.
He stops as soon as he’s buried to the hilt. His forehead pressing against mine. Both of us breathing hard.
"Look at me," he says.
I open my eyes.