Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 92368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
“I’ll say. And now you own the world.”
He laughs. “Not quite. Not yet. But at least I don’t have to worry about taking care of myself or my family.” His expression turns serious. “That was important to me.”
His drive is sexy. “And you’ve done it. So what will you conquer now? Streamer?”
“Well,” he says, a little sheepish, “the deal is a big one, don’t get me wrong. I wanted to expand. To make sure I’m secure, and my family’s secure.” He takes a pause, drinks some wine. “But honestly, I really just want to be a good father.”
My heart thumps. “That’s a perfect life goal. The best one, really.”
“Thanks,” he says, then drags a hand through his hair. “It’s hard. And it’s weird, starting at age seven. But I want to give him everything.”
Funny, how I don’t even know if I want children. And I’ve never been attracted to single dads before. But then, I haven’t been attracted to anyone in a long time, until Finn. Now, each detail I learn about him as a person and as a father makes me wish we could be together beyond Paris. “You are, Finn,” I assure him, meaning it.
He takes my hand, runs his thumb over the top of it. “It was nice seeing you talk so easily to him in the bookstore, and at the diner, and on the phone last night,” he says, and oh god. Oh hell.
This man is opening his heart to me here. I don’t know what to do with it after this trip. But right now, I say, “He’s great. I liked being invited.”
“Do you…” He stops, shakes his head as if admonishing himself. But I know he was about to ask if I want kids, and I don’t want the question to go unanswered. If he’s asking it, or trying to, it’s important to him.
“Do I want children?” I ask.
He rolls his eyes. “We don’t need to talk about it. It’s not…”
But he wants to know. And he listened to me discuss my hard thing. This is probably hard for him, given what he told me about his wife. “Maybe someday,” I say, before he can back out.
The corner of his lips twitches in a grin. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” It’s not a false promise like his ex made to him, but it’s not a lie either.
After dinner, Finn takes my hand as we walk through the moonlit streets. We reach an open iron gate, and he peers past it into a courtyard, teeming with flowers, lifting a brow in a partners-in-crime invitation. I say yes, and seconds later, he’s kissing me against a vine-covered brick wall under the Paris moon. If kisses were words, this one would say I’m falling for you.
The next night, I pick a hole-in-the-wall vegetarian café in the Latin Quarter, tucked into an alley where no one can find us. Finn doesn’t even grumble about ordering a spicy eggplant sandwich. When we sit to wait for our orders, I cross my legs, but he reaches for my ankle, runs his thumb over the star anklet, and says, “This was how I knew it was you. I saw it in your father’s office that day, but I didn’t make the link until I went to The Scene again.” He doesn’t linger on uncomfortable reminders of our connection. “You wear it all the time. It must be important to you.”
I fiddle with the stars on it, but I don’t feel sad thinking of Willa. I don’t always, or even often, feel sad when she comes up. I’ve had six years to adjust to life without my first best friend. Sometimes, I just want to talk about her. “My sister gave it to me for my eighteenth birthday. It was a thing we did. We used to give ankle bracelets to each other. Especially when we learned what they originally were used for.”
“I have no idea what they stand for so you’d better tell me.”
I picture Willa and me at sixteen and seventeen, curled up on my bed, overstuffed with pillows, a laptop on my knees as we searched out info on anklets. Then, we were rolling our eyes and giggling when we learned the ancient meanings behind them. “We read that sometimes women in olden days would wear them so men could hear them coming and not say naughty things in front of them. And then they were worn to show social status. So we’d give them to each other and say, Now I can hear you sneaking into my room to steal my shirt. Or, this means I’m the favorite daughter since I did the dishes.” I glance at Finn, and his smile says keep talking. “But in the end, we decided that to us, they meant fuck the patriarchy.”
A laugh bursts from him—a rich, vibrant sound that I’ll miss when our time here ends. “The patriarchy should be fucked, toppled, drawn, and quartered.”