Chapter 23 #2
“I’m not comforting you. I’m telling you the difficulty did not damage the piece. It clarified it.”
I close my eyes for one second.
Diana continues, “You did the work, Serena. You separated what needed separating. The review is rigorous. The praise is earned. The boundaries are clear. If anything, the piece is sharper because you knew exactly where the danger was.”
I swallow. “That matters.”
“Yes,” Diana says. “It does.”
There is a pause, and I can hear paper moving on her end, the familiar small chaos of her office. Then her voice changes slightly. Less editor, more woman who has known me long enough to hear the unsaid before I have fully decided whether to say it.
“You’re still in Paris,” Diana says.
“For one more week.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I look down at my hand on the counter. “I know.”
She waits. That’s how Diana works. She presses when the truth is evasive. She waits when the truth is already at the door.
“I’ve been thinking about something,” I say.
“Professionally or personally?”
“Professionally,” I reply.
“Interesting,” she says with concern.
“Do not use that tone,” I say.
“I have one tone,” Diana says. “Proceed.”
I breathe once and let the idea step into the room.
“The European coverage has been too thin for too long. Not only ours. Generally. Too many parachute reviews. Too many big names without context. There is a stronger column in staying longer, moving more deliberately, using Paris as a base and covering France, Spain, Italy, London when necessary. More depth. More continuity. Less spectacle.”
Diana says nothing. I keep going because stopping now would make it sound like I’m asking permission for something smaller than I am.
“I could build it as a rotating European dining column. Longer stays. Anonymous reservations. Same method. Same standards. I can still file the New York pieces when needed, but there is a real editorial argument for me being here more.”
Diana is quiet for a beat. “That was an extremely well organized pitch.”
“It is a professional proposal.”
“I heard the professional proposal,” she says.
“I also heard the part you didn’t say.”
I look toward the river. “Diana—”
“—I’m not judging you.”
“It is not only about him.”
“I didn’t say it was only about him,” she says.
“I’m saying it includes him, and you are allowed to build a life where the work is real and the love is real. Those things do not cancel each other out.”
Love.
The word lands too cleanly, but I don’t correct her. Maybe because I’m tired. Maybe because it’s true.
“The work is better here,” I say.
“Yes,” Diana says. “It is.”
“I would need a structure.”
“Six months,” she says without hesitation.
“Paris-based. European dining coverage. Same editorial oversight. Same aliases. Same fact-checking. Same brutal honesty. We frame it as an expansion of the column, not a relocation announcement. You keep your independence. You keep your standards. You do not become the chef’s girlfriend who writes pretty things about Paris. ”
The directness almost makes me laugh.
“Thank you for that terrifying phrasing.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I have not decided anything,” I reassure her, but also myself.
“I know,” Diana says.
“You’re proposing the door before admitting you want to walk through it.”
“That sounds like something I would do,” I say.
“It is exactly something you would do,” she replies.
I sit there with the phone to my ear and the Seine below the windows and the quiet knowledge that she is right.
I have made the professional argument. I have given it structure, ethics, method, and editorial value.
Every piece of it is real. So is Damien.
That’s the part I have not known how to hold without feeling as if one truth weakens the other.
“I’ll think about it,” Diana says.
“Ok,” I say.
“And Serena?”
“Yes?”
“If you do this, do it because the work is better and because you want the life. Not because a man has gorgeous blue eyes and a beautiful kitchen.”
Despite everything, I smile. “It’s a very beautiful kitchen.”
“I am sure it is. You’re still not moving continents for appliances.”
“No,” I say.
“Good,” she says.
“Then call me when you stop pretending this is hypothetical. Otherwise, I’ll see you back in New York.”
The call ends, and I sit with the phone in my hand for a long time. I won’t mention this idea to Damien—not yet. Not until I’ve thought about what the implications of such an endeavor would represent.
***
The following evening, Damien makes dinner on the terrace.
Nothing elaborate, he says, which means he has still thought about it for three hours.
Grilled fish, warm beans, tomatoes that taste like they have been waiting all summer for this exact purpose, bread, butter, wine cold enough to make the glass sweat in the late light.
The Seine runs gold below us, and the city shifts around the edges of evening with that careless Parisian confidence that makes beauty feel like a civic habit.
We eat without talking much at first. That has become one of the things I trust about him. Damien doesn’t fear silence. He lets it sit as if it belongs there. He only interrupts when there is something worth putting into it. I’m halfway through a second piece of bread when he says,
“What do you want to happen?”
My hand stills. Of course he asks it directly.
Damien is many difficult things, but he does not beat around the bushes.
I look at him across the terrace table. His sleeves are rolled.
His hair is silvered by the last light. He watches me with the kind of focus that has always made evasion feel embarrassing.
“That’s a large question for a Tuesday dinner,” I say.
“It’s not Tuesday.”
“Then that is a large question for whatever day this is.”
His mouth moves, but he does not let the smile become the point.
“Serena.”
The weight of my name in his voice quiets the easier answer.
I look toward the river because I understand suddenly that I can talk about columns, assignments, aliases, New York, Paris, deadlines, logistics, flights, and apartments for hours if I need to.
I can build a professional argument so sturdy that no one can accuse me of being reckless.
I can explain the work. What I can’t do is explain how this man has become part of the room in my life where truth goes before I have edited it.
“I don’t know yet,” I say.
The words are formal because they need to hold their shape. He doesn’t flinch.
“That’s an honest answer.”
“It’s not a satisfying one.”
“I didn’t ask for satisfying.”
“No,” I say. “You asked for impossible.”
He sits back, his gaze still on me.
“I asked what you want.”
“That is the impossible part,” I respond.
The honesty of that stays between us, and for a moment the terrace feels suspended over the city, held in the space between what I can admit and what I can decide.
I set my glass down. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yes,” he says.
“If I were not leaving in five days, would you still be asking?”
His expression changes so slightly that anyone else might miss it. I do not.
“Yes,” he says.
The answer is immediate. No performance. No strategy. No pause to make it sound less vulnerable. I hear my own breath shift as he stands and comes around to my side of the table. He doesn’t make a speech. He doesn’t try to turn the moment into something he can win. He only holds out his hand.
I look at it, then at him.
“Damien—”
“—Come inside,” he says.
“This isn’t an answer.”
“No,” he says. “It’s what I have before the answer.”
I take his hand. Inside, the penthouse is warm and quiet, the windows still filled with fading gold.
He leads me past the kitchen, past the island where my laptop lives, past the desk he installed without asking for thanks, and into the bedroom where the city opens beyond the glass.
When he turns to me, his face has changed. Not softer. More exposed.
He touches my cheek. “I want you here.”
The sentence is simple enough to hurt. I close my eyes for one second, then open them.
“I know,” I reply.
“I love you Serena.”
He says the words and I feel the earth tilt from under me. My breath catches and can feel my heart vibrate in my chest.
“I am not asking you to solve your life tonight,” he continues.
I smile as I think of a sassy comeback.
“That’s generous,” I say.
“I’m not always unreasonable,” he responds.
“You’re frequently unreasonable,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “But not about this.”
I give a nervous laugh as he steps closer. The air changes the way it always does when restraint begins to lose its authority. His hand slides to the side of my neck, thumb resting just beneath my jaw, and I lean into it before pride can offer an alternative.
“I love you too, Damien,” I say.
Something moves across his face at that moment: not victory—not relief exactly—something quieter and more dangerous because it looks like belief.
He kisses me, softly at first, but then a switch is flipped.
He turns me around, embracing me as his hands wrap around my body, meeting in the front, as he fondles my breasts.
I lay my head back against his chest, His large hands move to my waist as he presses his body flush against mine, his hard bulge pressed against my ass.
There are no words, no hesitations—just raw, unrelenting hunger.
He then turns me back around, and pulls me against the front of his body.
My fingers tug at his shirt, lifting it up and over his head then tossing it to the floor in a rush of frenzied need.
His hands are already on me, roaming over the fabric of my dress, squeezing my breasts with a ferocity that leaves me gasping.
My head falls back, exposing my neck to his mouth.
His lips latch onto my skin, hot and demanding, leaving a trail of fire as he works his way down.