Nobela ni Aleyah Lavelle

The second day in Paris was long in the best possible way.Enzo had his first meeting in the morning, a two hour affair in a glass building near the business district that I had absolutely no interest in attending. So while he sat in a boardroom being intimidatingly competent, I took myself on a solo tour of the city with a croissant in one hand and a badly folded map in the other, because I refused to be the kind of person who stared at their phone in Paris.I found a bookshop on a narrow street that seemed to exist outside of time entirely, the kind with books stacked floor to ceiling and a cat asleep on the counter and an elderly owner who spoke no English but somehow understood exactly what I was looking for anyway. I spent an hour there and left with ten books and zero regrets.I met Enzo for lunch at a café near the hotel. He arrived loosening his tie, looking devastating in his suit, and sat down across from me and said, "How was your morning?" like a completely normal person w

"Come to Paris with me."He said it on a Tuesday morning, completely casually, like he was asking me to pass the salt. We were at his kitchen island, me with my coffee, him scrolling through his phone with the focused expression he got when work was trying to consume him before 9AM.I looked up. "I'm sorry?""Paris." He set his phone down. "I have business there next week. Come with me."I stared at him. "Enzo, I have a job.""You have leave you've never taken.""That's not the point.""When's the last time you left Maplewood for more than a concert in New York?"I opened my mouth. Closed it.He raised an eyebrow, waiting with the patience of a man who already knew he'd won the argument and was just giving me time to catch up."That's not fair," I said."It's completely fair." He leaned across the island. "Come with me. Four days. I have two meetings and the rest of the time is ours. I want to show you things. I want to watch you fall in love with a city the way you fall in love with

I woke up to his fingers in my hair.Not deliberately, I didn't think. He was still half asleep beside me, one arm tucked under his head, the other resting against my shoulder, fingers moving slowly through the ends of my hair like it was something he did without thinking. Like muscle memory. Like something he'd done so many times it had become automatic even in sleep.I lay still and let him.Thirty days, I thought.The number arrived quietly.Thirty days since I'd sat on my couch with my heart hammering and said, “okay, one month.” Thirty days since I'd handed Enzo Wayne a window of time and told myself it was controlled, manageable, that I was the one holding the terms.I almost laughed at myself. Quietly, so I didn't wake him.There was nothing controlled about any of this."You're thinking loudly," he said.I turned my head. His eyes were open, watching me with that particular attention he reserved for moments like this."I thought you were asleep," I said."I was." He shifted sl

I woke up before him.That was new.Enzo had always been an early riser, up before the sun with coffee already brewing and emails already answered before I'd even opened my eyes. It used to annoy me. Back then, I'd reach across the bed and find it empty and feel the absence like something deliberately placed there to remind me I wasn't his priority.But this morning, his arm was still around me. Heavy and warm and completely real.I lay still for a moment, just existing in the unfamiliar comfort of it, listening to his breathing, slow and even against my hair. I tilted my head carefully to look at him.He was deeply asleep, face relaxed in a way I almost never got to see when he was awake. One arm thrown across me, lips parted, looking nothing like a billionaire and everything like the boy I married years ago.My chest did that weird stuff again.I'd spent so long being angry at this face. Arguing with it, avoiding it. And now here it was, completely defenceless in the early morning

We barely made it up the stairs.The kissing started at the door and didn't stop. He walked me backwards through the entrance, hands on my waist, my hands in his hair, neither of us particularly concerned with where we were going as long as we were going there together.My shoulder hit the wall at the bottom of the staircase.He pulled back just enough to check my face. "Okay?""Perfectly okay," I said, and pulled him back down.He kissed me slower this time, deeper, one hand braced against the wall beside my head and the other moving up my back, warm and steady through my shirt. I felt the tenderness of it, the way he was trying to take his time even though I could feel in the tension of his jaw, the slight unsteadiness of his breathing, that taking his time was costing him something.I pulled at his shirt, untucking it from his trousers.He exhaled against my mouth."Stairs," I said."Right," he agreed, not moving."Enzo.""Give me a second.""We are standing at the bottom of your s

The library was empty.It was supposed to be my safe place, and usually it was. But tonight, with the shelves casting shadows and my thoughts louder than they had any right to be, it just felt like a building full of books that weren't doing their job.I was reorganising the romance section. Again. The third time this week.Maya had called it a coping mechanism. I called it productivity. We were both right.I pulled a book from the wrong shelf, shoved it where it belonged and moved on to the next one. There was something satisfying about putting things in their correct place when everything else felt like it was slightly off-centre. Like the universe was tilted two degrees and nobody else could feel it but me.The thing was, Enzo and I were fine. We'd talked, we'd argued, he'd listened, I'd cried, we'd made promises. Fine.But fine and settled were two different things and my body hadn't gotten that memo yet. Every time I thought about him, something uncomfortable settled in my stomac