***

The next few days in Paris were wonderful. We took a long walk down our street, Avenue George V, with its iconic cafes, exclusive boutiques and stunning cars parked along the curb. I even suffered through a few hours of her shopping on the Champs-Élysées, but since Emilia wasn’t a big shopper, I didn’t have to suffer long.

We spent most of one day in the Louvre, where she got to study the Venus de Milo up close and in person. I’d been to the museum several times before but what I found most enjoyable about this trip was that I got to watch her react to the priceless, famous works of art hanging on the walls before her. Emilia looked at the canvases, spending time getting perspective, sometimes taking steps back to look at them from another angle. And I spent that time watching her.

They say that a person should visit Paris three times in their life—once when they are young, once when they have the money to truly enjoy it, and once when they are in love. I’d already checked the first two off my list. This time, it was like a whole new city to me, because I was seeing it through her eyes, and through the eyes of love.

A sappy, sentimental thought so uncharacteristic of me. But one thing I’d learned in the previous few months of utter tribulation that we had gone through…happiness and love were fragile things. And we should be thankful for what we have when we have it.

And to say I was grateful for having her in my life was an understatement.

We spent one afternoon on a park bench in the Tuileries gardens, sharing a baguette and some cheese between us.

“So, we have two more days here,” she said munching the last of the baguette and murmuring regrets that it was gone.

“Yep. We’ve ticked off your bucket list items. Anything else you can think of?”

“Mmm. No. Not really. I’m just enjoying soaking up the ambiance of this place. I can see why they call it the City of Love. I still can’t get over how you ninja’d this trip on me. That was amazing.”

“Well, Jordan helped.”

She shot me a puzzled look. “Jordan? Really?”

“He’d been planning the trip for a while. When he heard about you getting so sick from the reaction to those meds, he insisted I take over his plane and hotel reservations.”

Her faint brows rose. “So we are on Jordan’s trip?”

“Well, kind of. I did a lot of tweaking to his plans but, yeah, more or less.”

She expelled a long breath and looked out over the park. “I always thought he hated me.”

“I think he more hated the idea that I wasn’t going to be his wingman anymore.”

“He sure tried to rope you back again…when we were broken up…”

I shrugged. “I think he feels worse about that than I do, if that’s possible.”

She turned to me, frowning. “Why do you feel bad about it? We were broken up. You went out on a date with someone else. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

I shifted, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. I wanted to change the subject and opened my mouth to do just that when I realized that this was something we should talk about. We couldn’t avoid the subject of that dark time in our relationship forever.

“It felt wrong,” I said.

She watched me and I focused on the water basins, where laughing children were launching toy sailboats. “We both made a lot of mistakes,” came her soft reply.

I took a deep breath, forcing myself to continue on when I just wanted to shut this down. “I was angry. I went out on that date because I was just so pissed off at you. So clearly, for the wrong reasons.”

“I did stupid things because I was angry, too. I shouldn’t have broken up with you. I just—” She sucked in a breath suddenly, and I could tell she was getting emotional but I didn’t stop it. This needed to come out and I had no idea how I knew that. Instinct, maybe? “I felt like you were being so demanding and unyielding and it made me want to do the same thing. That if I gave in…At the time it seemed all-important. Now, looking back, after everything, it was trivial bullshit that we could have worked out if we’d kept level heads and just talked.”

I reached for her hand, closed it inside my own. “We’re talking now.”

“Yeah, I guess we aren’t complete idiots if we can actually learn from our mistakes, right?”

I raised her hand to my mouth and kissed it. “What’s important is that we can learn from them and also move past them.”

She looked away and I saw her visibly swallow. Her hand tightened around mine. “So you don’t think it’s too late?”