Page 47 of Cowgirls Love French Kisses
His eyes won’t meet mine. Why? What’s going on in that precious French mind of his? It can’t be that he wants to leave all this behind. I can’t believe that for a second. But then again, how can I ever make an assumption like that?
Ugh, Daddy’s voice is ringing in my ears.When you assume, you make an?—
Not now, Daddy.
“Is this it?” Those are the first words that find my tongue. I look for a few more. “Were we only ever destined to befor now?”
His eyes stay firmly on the table, and all I want is a glimpse, a sense of what’s going on in?—
He looks at me. Heaven above, I have never seen anything so raw.
“Annie, this is the most real thing I’ve felt… possibly ever.” I can’t break his gaze. I see right into his heart. “But feelings are only that.”
Only that? Only what?
He goes on. “I know what I want…”
“What do you want, Mathieu?”
There's a hedge to his words now, a carefulness that sure wasn't there when he tackled me away from that oncoming bus. He’s holding back a tide, and all I've got is a teacup to catch the overflow.
I want to hear it all. I’m ready, I’m here for it. This is what I’ve needed.
I wait for more, for the floodgates to open, for him to tell me he sees the same future I do—one with him and me, not separated by an ocean but joined by a shared path. But the silence stretches out, and in his eyes, I see a war waging—but I don’t know who or what is winning.
He points. “Our food is here.”
The waiter arrives with our dishes, but the question hangs there, suspended in the space between us like the delicate strings of a spider's web, glittering and fragile.
Mathieu's hands fold and unfold atop the table, a silent dance of nerves as he seems to search for the right words.
“Annie,” he begins, his voice a low rumble, “I've stood on this edge before, believing in a forever that turned out to be just a mirage.” He pauses, swallowing hard. “What I feel for you… it's big, truer than anything I've known. But I know more now. I know how easy it is to mistake the intensity ofnowfor a promise ofalways.”
His words hang heavy between us, mingling with the scents of garlic and herbs that waft from our untouched dinner plates.
“You could very well get home to Sage and realize that this dream you’ve been living in Paris was only that. A dream. And then you go back to your regular life, a life where there’s no place for me in it.” He adjusts in his seat. “I have to be ready for that possibility. That I’m just a chapter in the wondrous book of Annie’s life.”
“And what if you’re not a chapter?” My voice is smaller than I’m used to hearing, but it’s all I got. “What if you’re the story?”
He reaches out, his fingers brushing mine with a tenderness that's almost painful in its sincerity. “I'm afraid of writing another ending like the last one.”
We freeze like this, his fingers on mine, feeling the load of his past pressing against the bubble of our present.
Now what is a girl to do with a situation like this? My heart knows its own mind—Mathieu has become as much a part of my life as the air I breathe. If he said jump, I’d already be half-way in the air.
But love, the kind that lasts, needs two hearts beating in sync, not one willing to jump and the other too afraid of the fall.
He has feelings for me, there’s no question on that part. But if Mathieu can't trust his feelings, where does that leave us? A flicker of fear licks at the edges of my resolve—am I willing to gamble my heart on his insecurity?
If Mathieu isn’t ready for something more between us, then I don’t see how I can fix that.
And my heart is going to have a whole lotta trouble making sense of it.
CHAPTER19
Mathieu
“Goodnight, Annie.”
