I shrug off my jacket and leave it on the bench in the middle, walking to the edge of it. I press my fingers against the thick glass in front of me as we move around slowly, eager to see everything. I do—I want it all. I want to see this gorgeous city spread before me in the night.
“We came to London right after we’d been to Paris,” Aaron says out of the blue. His words cut through the easy silence that descended between us in the wake of my excitement.
“Really?”
“Yes. Dad had an important meeting I couldn’t attend, so Mom asked me if I’d accompany her shopping. I agreed, and at the end of the day, after dinner, she brought me here. It was marginally lighter on our journey, but I hated every second of it.”
I turn to him. “Why? How could you hate this?”
He crosses the pod to me and brushes the backs of his fingers down my cheeks. “I spent the whole time thinking of you and how much you would have loved to have seen it. I spent the whole time wondering what it would be like to hold you in my arms and stare out at the city with you the way we did at the top of the Eiffel Tower.”
I take a step to the side, into his hold, and relax into the familiar way his arms wrap around my waist from behind. “Now you can find out.”
His lips brush my forehead. “Finally. I can finally take you to all the places I thought I saw you in and do everything I wanted to all those years ago. But most importantly, I can take you home at the end of every single day and know you’re not going anywhere.”
I can’t bring myself to respond to it. I don’t know if I’m ready for that, no matter how natural it feels. It doesn’t matter that we’ve barely spent a night apart the whole time we’ve been together—that’s a final thing I can’t commit to. Not until the past is fully behind us.
“This is beautiful,” I whisper, changing the direction of the conversation.
And it is. London, stretched out before me, completely uninterrupted. Lights upon lights in winding patterns of crazy interconnecting streets. I can see everywhere. There’s Camden and Soho and Piccadilly. The colorful lights of Piccadilly Circus are perhaps some of the brightest I can see despite how small they are from our place in the sky.
It’s beautiful. More beautiful than I imagined it would be, and far more beautiful than it would be had I seen all of this from the ground. The bird’s-eye view is breathtaking.
“I haven’t been on this since,” Aaron says softly into my ear, brushing his nose against my cheek.
“Really? How many times have you been here?”
“More than I care to count. I could never come back on here though. I was always too afraid it would make me think of you. It’s exactly why, whenever I went to Paris, all I really did was work. I haven’t been up the Tower since the day you left.”
I wet my lips. “Do you think we’ll ever go back?”
Aaron spins me in his arms and looks down at me, his eyes full of raw emotion that reaches out and takes hold of every part of my body. “I will take you anywhere you want to go, whenever you want to go. I can do that, and I will. All you have to do is ask me, Dayton. I’ll never say no to anything that will make you happy.”
“But Paris seems to be both a blessing and a curse to our relationship.” I run my thumb along his jaw, his stubble lightly scratching it. “Twice it’s made us and twice it’s broken us.”
Aaron brings his hands from my back to my face and tilts my head back so my eyes are on his. He looks at me with a scary kind of certainty, the hold of his gaze too strong to even consider looking away.
“Dayton, nothing can break us. It can crack us, but it can’t break us. What you feel—what I feel—is far too strong for anything to tear it apart. If it weren’t, neither of us would be here. We would have been able to walk away and forget everything we’ve shared. This isn’t two people clinging on to the past and what might have been. This is two people propelled into the here and now because of the past, and it’s them looking to what could be in the future. There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t think of my life with you. And every thought makes me more determined to have it.” He covers my mouth with his in a warm, honest kiss that sends tingles through my body to my toes. “The next time we go to Paris, I promise you, we’ll be leaving stronger than ever.”
I gaze at him with wide, wet eyes. “You promise?” My words are a whisper.
“I promise. There’s a reason they say the third time’s a charm.”
“Maybe we just needed a couple of tries before we got it right.”
Aaron smiles, one that lights up his whole face and brings a sparkle to his eyes. “And this time, it won’t go wrong, sweetheart. I won’t let it.”
I squeeze my eyes shut as he takes my mouth again and wish. I wish for him to be right. I wish and hope that this time it won’t, that this time it will be the kind of perfect we’ve been holding out for. The kind of perfect little girls dream of after watching too many Disney movies and, later, too many chick-flick movies where the guy always wins the girl.
But the threat nudges at the back of my mind, and I know that, if we have any chance of making it this time, it’s going to cost me.
Chapter Sixteen
I slip my hand into Aaron’s and curl my other around his arm, leaning into his side. He smiles down at me and kisses the top of my head, pulling me into the hustle and bustle of Camden market.
It’s not the kind of place I ever imagined him to go. With its endless stalls of vintage clothing, designers no one knows, and knickknacks, it doesn’t fit in with his M.O. Oxford Street? Yes. A thousand times, yes. Camden market? Never.
There are people everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I push myself right into Aaron to avoid being shoved from every direction. He shakes my hands off his arm and wraps it around my waist, curling me right into him.
It doesn’t make a bit of difference, but I definitely prefer it. The warmth from the sun beating down on us is nothing compared to the warmth that emanates from his body.
“You surprise me.”
Aaron leans down and speaks over the various levels of chatter around us. “Why?”
“I was expecting you to whisk me off to a ridiculously expensive store and force me into a fitting room like you did in Italy.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Hell no.” I laugh. “Nice try though, Mr. Stone.”
“Perhaps. Although we will be going somewhere later where I intend to spend a lot of money on you.”