Unbeknownst

“Oh no,” I repeated quietly to myself, because if there was one thing experience had taught me, it was that those two words were never wrong.They were never casual words. They were not words you said when things were fine. They were words reserved for moments when your carefully constructed emotional neutrality cracked just enough to let something inconvenient slip through. Like interest. Or curiosity. Or, worst of all, hope.Hope, after all, was a dangerous thing.It crept in quietly, as though it belonged there. It made itself comfortable, kicked its shoes off, and then ruined your life by demanding things. Like vulnerability. Or emotional availability. Or, God forbid, expectations. Hope never knocked. It just showed up and started rearranging your furniture.I shifted in my seat and pretended to be deeply invested in the in-flight safety card, which I had seen approximately a thousand times and still could not remember. Something about oxygen masks, put yours on first, even though

The first thing I noticed when the door closed behind us was the quiet.Not the ordinary kind of quiet that comes with a house settling at night or a street falling asleep after midnight, but a deeper stillness that felt almost deliberate, as though the house itself had grown used to holding its breath. Outside, the wind moved through the falling snow with a low, restless sound, not howling exactly, but persistent, like something that refused to be ignored. Somewhere far away, a car passed slowly along the street, its tires crunching softly against the frozen ground. But inside Julien's home there was warmth, light, and an odd calm that made the world outside feel very far away. As though the storm existed on the other side of more than just glass and walls.Lucas was the first to break the silence. The moment we stepped into the entryway, he kicked off his boots with the urgency of someone who had been waiting all evening to reach this exact moment."Hot chocolate," he declared with a

I woke slowly, the way people do when they are not entirely certain where they are.For a few seconds my mind drifted through the comfortable confusion of unfamiliar surroundings, reaching for context and finding only pieces of it. The ceiling above me was not the one I usually woke to. The light was wrong, coming from the wrong angle, falling across the room in long pale strips rather than the familiar grey wash of my own bedroom window. The air smelled of vanilla and clean linen and something faintly woody, like a fire that had burned down hours ago and left only its warmth behind.

The house received us the way warm houses always do after a long time in the cold.All at once.The heat hit my face the moment Julien pushed the door open and stepped aside to let me through. Behind me I could hear Lucas stomping his boots on the mat with a thoroughness that suggested he had been told to do this many times before. Snow fell from the treads in small clumps and melted almost immediately against the stone floor of the entry.I unwound my scarf and held it in both hands for a moment. My fingers had gone stiff without my realising it. My cheeks were flushed from the cold and I was suddenly aware of how I must look, windblown and pink-cheeked, standing in the middle of someone else's hallway.Julien reached past me to hang his coat on the hook near the door. Not close enough to touch. But close enough that I caught the scent of him, winter air and something warmer underneath it, something that had no business being as distracting as it was."Boots off," he said to Lucas.L

I woke up with a plan. It was not a complicated plan. It did not require equipment or significant preparation. It required only that I be a normal, functioning adult woman who was capable of making her interest in another person reasonably clear without embarrassing herself.I had done this before. I was sure I had done this before. At some point in my life, before France and before snowstorms and before men with composed faces and warm hands, I had successfully communicated romantic interest to another human being, and it had gone fine.I was confident. I came downstairs at eight o'clock wearing the nicest thing I had brought with me, which was a dark green jumper that did something good for my complexion and that two separate people had told me was flattering. I had also brushed my hair with actual intention, rather than the cursory gesture I had been giving it since arriving in France.Julien was at the kitchen table reading. He was wearing a plain grey shirt