Page 42 of Meet Me in Paris

I shrugged, scraping together every ounce of strength to feign nonchalance. “It’ll do.”

He laughed.

As our tour continued, I found Hunter watching me through most of it. I sighed at the grand, tall pillars. I smiled at the art on the ceiling and walls, all displaying various musical stories and characters. I stopped to appreciate the architecture that made me feel as if we, not the actors, performed on a grand stage. I’d worn a cute blouse and wide-legged trousers today, but I felt vastly underdressed.

We walked outside onto a wraparound balcony far too large and ornate to comprehend its being exposed to the elements and looked down upon a street with lanes too confusing to understand for anyone but the French. The golden buildings and tour buses and tourists on the steps we’d first climbed added to the poignancy of this moment. Music blared from speakers with words I didn’t understand. It should have felt foreign and different.

I loved it. All of it.

A moment after going back inside, we found it—the theater.

A shock of red velvet greeted us as we entered. The sheer number of private boxes, all facing a stage that seemed too small for the room, and the chandelier—the chandelier, all seven tons of it—hit me at the same time as the realization that I knew this place. I’d imagined it while reading Leroux’s original 1910 novel. I’d seen it in every movie adaptation since the 1940s. I’d dreamed about it.And, now, here I was, with Hunter, experiencing it for myself.

“I heard they turned box five into a bedroom for a few lucky people to stay overnight,” Hunter said softly. “Can you imagine sleeping here? Falling asleep to the view of the stage in the arms of the person you love must be incredible.”

It did sound incredible. It sounded a whole lot like what I experienced last night . . . minus the love part, of course. Or maybe not. My confused and battered heart didn’t know what to make of any of this.

I turned to face him, and the tourists around us melted away. I could almost hear the ballad from the soundtrack playing in the background as I looked into my best friend’s eyes.

Here, in a dim room I’d waited my whole life to see and somehow felt I could never leave, I noticed something I’d refused to see all along.

“You broke up with Collette,” I said, barely allowing the words to leave my lips. As they did, I felt a lightness I hadn’t experienced in far too long.

He took my hands in his. “Not coming home when you asked was the worst mistake I ever made,” he said softly. “I want you to know I’ve regretted it every day since.”

“You were engaged. That wasn’t fair of me to ask, and I’m sorry.” I thought of the ring in his bathroom drawer and tamped down the hope in my heart. He had a dresser full of her clothes. Women didn’t simply leave entire wardrobes behind. Why wasn’t he answering the question about Collette?

“Remember how I told you to meet me in Paris when you changed your mind and I’d be waiting? I didn’t keep that promise. When I realized you really weren’t coming, I threwmyself into the dating scene. Collette was coming off a bad relationship. I guess you could say we both needed a rebound.”

My heart squeezed. “You don’t have to explain.”

“I want you to understand.” Indeed, I could hear the pleading in his voice. “I tried everything I could to get you out of my head, and nothing worked. I thought if I married someone else, it would force my heart to heal. When we got engaged, I felt sick for days. I was living a lie. And then your text came.”

Which I remembered all too well. I simply nodded.

“I wanted to be there for you. Truly. But if I wrapped you in my arms and you pushed me away again, I knew there would be no recovering from that. I was a selfish coward, Kennedy, and you deserved better. I stayed, hoping beyond hope that you’d miraculously show up anyway.”

And then I did. Out of the blue, without notice—only to show him at every turn that he didn’t matter, that I wasn’t here to see him at all. That I would rather be with a mysterious stranger I barely knew.

I saw it all in my best friend’s eyes, shoved back and hidden from sight until this moment. This raw, shadowed moment.

“And Collette?” I finally managed.

He gave me a sour expression. “She broke it off when she saw the depths of my feelings for you, and I couldn’t have been more relieved. She wasn’t ready to settle down, and I was. She seems to be enjoying her job in New York, but if she ever does come back, I’ll move out. That’s the agreement.” He cursed under his breath. “I never should have accepted the internship. It took me away from you when you needed me most.”

There was one question I’d been dying to know. “Why did you stay here so long?”

His eyes flicked back to mine. “If I couldn’t love you in person, I would grow to love the city of your heart. It would be the closest I could get to the real thing. Besides, I told you I’d be waiting here until you were ready. I just didn’t realize I had to do a little preparing of my own.”

We stared at one another like that, our eyes communicating what our words couldn’t, and I remembered when our lips had done a little communicating too, once upon a time in a faraway land that felt like the real dream.

“Kennedy, my heart was never Collette’s,” he whispered. “I pretended it was, but the fact is, you stole it long ago. I can’t even tell you when it happened because it’s always been that way.”

I sometimes wonder about my best friend,Mom had said.What would have happened if we had a second chance? If that magic was there all along, but I refused to see it because it felt familiar.

I knew exactly what magic felt like. It felt like Hunter Morrison.

“I missed you,” I whispered.

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