Theo – Twenty-six
We stepped out into the street, the morning heat already building, clinging to my skin with a slow, sticky weight.
The town was just beginning to wake — shutters creaking open, the faint rattle of a cart somewhere behind us — but it felt like the world had shrunk to the space between her shoulder and mine.
Her dress swayed with every step, brushing against her bare legs, pale yellow cotton catching the light like water.
Loose, effortless, too damn pretty. She walked like someone who knew the effect she had — not in a showy way, just comfortable in her skin, comfortable around me now, and fuck if that didn’t make my head spin.
I couldn’t stop looking at her.
Not after everything we’d shared.
Not after hearing the sounds she made when I touched her — raw and breathless, like she was coming apart in my hands. Not after the way she’d whispered my name, like it was the only word she remembered, the only one that mattered.
And now she was beside me in the sunlight, that lazy, satisfied smile curling at her lips, like the world was hers to enjoy and I was part of the spoils .
“You’re staring,” she said, not even glancing over, just knowing.
“You wore that on purpose,” I replied, my voice rougher than I meant it to be.
She laughed — low and pleased — and that sound went straight to my chest. “And what if I did?”
“Then I’m the luckiest man in France.”
It was the truth. I’d never felt like this. Not even close. Not with anyone.
We turned down a narrow, cobbled lane, the kind that felt like a secret — stone walls on either side, soft light cutting through open windows above us.
The bakery was only a few minutes away now.
I wanted to get her there, feed her something sweet, maybe sneak a kiss in the shadows and taste it on her tongue.
But more than that, I just wanted this to last.
I wanted time to slow the hell down.
Because I was leaving tomorrow. And she was staying.
And no matter how much I trusted her — and God, I did — there was still that voice in the back of my head. The one that had shown up the second I fell asleep with her in my arms.
What if she meets someone else?
What if she slips through my fingers again — and this time it’s worse, because now I know.
Now I know what it feels like to have her reach for me in the dark. To see her fall asleep next to me. To feel her kiss me like I’m not just some fantasy — like I’m real. Like I’m hers .
She walked with ease, sunglasses on, her head tilted back toward the sun. She looked so damn happy. And for a second, I wanted to believe it would be simple. That I could trust in the way she looked at me last night, the way she’d said I want this without flinching.
But I’d spent years pretending I didn’t want anything. That nothing could touch me. Now she had — and I didn’t know how to switch that need off.
I watched the muscles in her legs as she moved, the dip of her waist, the stretch of her smile when she caught me looking again.
“You’re relentless,” she said.
“Have you seen yourself in that dress?”
She bumped my shoulder, light and teasing, her fingers brushing mine. “You’re impossible.”
“And yet,” I said, catching her hand and swinging it between us, “you’re still here.”
Celia glanced over at me, sunglasses hiding her eyes, but I could feel her watching. Her mouth tugged at the corners like she wanted to say something else. Like maybe she was thinking the same thing I was.
“For now.”
That did something to my chest — a sharp twist right under the ribs.
Because for now wasn’t enough.
I didn’t want just a taste of her. Not after last night. Not after the way she’d melted beneath me, trusted me, let me see every soft, vulnerable part of her. Not after the way I’d wanted to give her everything I had.
She’d said she wanted this .
But I didn’t know what this looked like tomorrow. I didn’t know how to walk away from her now. And I didn’t know how to hold onto her from a continent away.
Still, I gave her a grin I wasn’t sure reached my eyes. “Then I better make it count.”
The boulangerie was tucked into the corner of a quiet square, the awning faded and the sign cracked, but the smell — fuck, the smell — was enough to punch you in the chest.
She slowed as we approached, tilting her head back to take it all in. “Okay, I’m listening,” she said. “This place smells like sin.”
“Wait till you try the almond croissant.” I pulled open the door, letting the warm, buttery air rush out. “You’ll never settle for anything else again.”
She raised a brow. “That sounds like a threat.”
“It’s a promise.”
The woman behind the counter lit up when she saw us — I greeted her in French, and she beamed like I’d made her week. I pointed to two of the still-warm croissants behind the glass, then turned to Celia.
God, she was breathtaking.
We sat at one of the small tables outside, tucked into a shaded corner of the square. I handed her the croissant and watched as she tore off a piece — golden, flaky, the filling thick with sweet almond paste.
She took a bite, and her eyes closed instantly. A soft groan slipped from her lips.
I grinned. “Told you.”
“Holy shit,” she said, barely managing to speak around it. “Okay, you win. This is better than sex.”
I leaned in, voice low. “That’s because you haven’t had it with the croissant.”
She choked on a laugh, hand flying to her mouth. “You’re deranged.”
“And you’re intrigued.”
She licked a smear of almond from her thumb, and I nearly lost the plot right there in the middle of a public square.
“Stop looking at me like I’m dessert,” she said, nudging my foot under the table.
I shrugged. “You started it.”
She rolled her eyes, but her cheeks were flushed.
We finished the pastries slowly, talking about nothing and everything — music, travel, the worst coffee we’d ever had. She made fun of the way I pronounced pain au chocolat and I threatened to make her order the next one herself.
When we stood, I caught her hand again and tugged her gently down a side street instead of back toward the main road.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“You’ll see.”
“Theodore.”
“Cecilia.” I shot her a grin as I, too, used her full name. “Don’t you want the full tour?”
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re lucky I’m wearing good walking shoes.”
“You’re lucky I’m not taking you somewhere you’ll need to take that dress off again.”
She froze for half a second. Then she smirked. “That better be the next stop.”
Even though Celia’s hand had been proudly in mine for the better part of the morning, it was still surreal that we were together, in one of my favourite towns that I grew up in with her.
And not just with her in the sense that we were side by side, but that I could interlace her fingers with mine, brush my hand across her lower back and she’d make this small sigh of contentment before leaning back against it.
The whole morning had already been a dream of mine being played out for real in front of my very eyes and if she didn’t keep smiling up at me, I would start to think I had conjured the entire thing up.
I was taking her to this hidden shop that collected postcards, which in theory sounded ridiculous but it was a time capsule of sorts for travellers.
Everyone who entered the shop would purchase a postcard and then pin the postcard to the wall with their message.
People wrote all sorts of stuff; what they did that day, a naughty secret, the meal they’d just devoured and the best part of it all was that it wasn’t just postcards of Nice or even France – the postcards were from everywhere in the entire world.
You didn’t have to guess where the writer was from if they’d chosen their home country as a postcard, although some people did just choose a postcard because it was pretty or they wanted to visit too.
I knew the moment that Celia said she was thinking about doing travel writing or starting her blog about all her adventures, that I wanted to take her here. I knew after ten seconds in the shop she would fall in love with it, just as I had when I frequented the place as a kid.
Back then there was already a few hundred postcards dotting the walls and I hadn’t been back in years, so I suspect there were now thousands of them tacked together.
We took the last turn, my hand still clasped in hers and when I stopped in front of the shop, she eagerly looked up at the sign hanging lopsided across the top of the building.
Avec amour
“It translates to ‘with love’ in English,” I replied, translating the building name for her.
She beamed up at me and asked, “What is this place?”
“You’ll have to go in and find out,” I smiled back, my hand moving around to her waist and guiding her into the shop.
As we stepped inside the nostalgia immediately hit me, the same smell from all those years ago was still evident in the shop – that vintage smell that you only got from antiques and places that had long collected dust. But also the faint smell of tobacco and vanilla where a candle burned defiantly on the desk, attempting to mask the musky smell of twenty decades old postcards.
I watched Celia take in her surroundings and the soft curve of her smile as she made her way over to the wall, leaning forward to read the postcard nearest to her, before moving onto the next and the next. She continued like this for five minutes and then turned to me with a huge grin on her face .
“Are these all from tourists?” she asked.
“Some of them, some of them are from locals, somewhere in here I’ve written a few,” I admitted and her eyes somehow grew even bigger.
“Really?” she asked, sounding excited and looked around the room again as if she was going to spot my eight-year-old handwriting somewhere. “Where are yours?”
I laughed and gave her a shrug as I walked over to her and circled my arms around the front of her, bringing her back flush against my chest.