All for You (Paris Nights #1)(44)
“You don’t affect me?” Joss said incredulously.
“I’m not talking about sex!” Célie shouted, and the romantic couple looked up, startled. Then both of them grinned.
Célie flushed hot.
“Neither was I,” Joss said, and her flush got even hotter. “Célie … I joined the Foreign Legion for you. That’s an effect.”
Célie gritted her teeth. “I swear to God, I will push you into the Seine.”
Joss was silent for a moment, and then he lifted her hand so that he could gaze at it in his hold. His thumb rubbed over her knuckles, and he sighed. “You can’t really do that, you know. I’m not that pushable.”
“Yeah,” Célie said darkly. “I noticed.”
“So we have to figure out some other way to communicate.”
“I’m talking to you!”
He nodded, his expression as unreadable as ever. Except for maybe the very slight frown between his eyebrows as he gazed ahead, the length of the Seine.
And a wave of forgiveness came back at her, rocked toward her by the Seine and the stupid Bateau-Mouche that passed playing “La Vie en Rose.” The forgiveness washed over the bitterness, which struggled to hold on. He’d barely been out of his teens. She’d still been in her teens. It was fair for him to make something larger of his life before being saddled with her.
Saddled. See how her bitterness tried to trick its way up through her brain again? A resilient thing, hurt. Hard to kill. It didn’t melt away like a sandcastle under a wave of forgiveness, just maybe got a little less sharp at the edges.
“You gave me this,” she said suddenly.
He glanced down at her and followed her gesture to indicate the whole glorious Seine, all its glow and darkness. “No, I didn’t. You got it for yourself.”
Well … that was true. It warmed her that he honored that and understood it. But … “I guess what I mean is … you were right. If I’d still been hanging all my hopes and dreams on you, I never would have come here and taken Paris.”
He smiled a little. “You shouldn’t underestimate yourself, Célie. You always shone as bright as a star.”
Oh. What an incredible sweetness came from that. But didn’t he understand that the truth of him, the strength of him had helped her shine that bright? That he … he kept the grime off her, back then. Just by existing.
It was as if, underneath the pride that drove him away from her, into the Legion, he hadn’t valued himself at all.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I don’t think I could even imagine being better than you, back then. But when you didn’t think that was good enough, when you left to become the best that you could be … I guess I decided I’d darn well be the best I could be, too.”
She certainly had been determined not to stay there, without him, and fade and fail under the weight of that place. Become “not good enough” herself.
And now Paris was hers. She was part of this city, part of its vitality and strength, absorbing its heart and energy and pouring her share of it into making the best chocolates in the world. She was part of what people flew here from all around the world to enjoy, part of what made people glad they lived here—her, her contributions to this city.
So the Seine was hers. The luminous bridges were hers, arching over the water one after the other, as far as they could see. The Louvre was hers, that long, glorious palace, lit with its soft, warm light. The Eiffel Tower was hers, sparkling at her as they crossed the Pont des Arts. She tightened her hand on Joss’s and pointed at it.
My world. Look! I’ll share it with you. You can have it, too.
He stood still to watch it. The nearest lamp cast those cheekbones into stubborn relief and shadowed his eyes with his own lashes. She could not read his expression, as he watched the sparkling Eiffel Tower.
Then he looked down at her. “I think you underestimate yourself, Célie. You were only eighteen, and you had so much energy and hope in you. I had to do something so that I could keep up with you.”
“Meaning we could have talked about it,” Célie said before she could stop herself. “If we both wanted to make something more out of ourselves. Maybe we could have encouraged each other. Become better together.”
The sparkles of the Eiffel Tower died back to its regular nighttime glow. He gazed at the quieter tower a moment and then turned that seriousness down on her. “What do you want me to do, Célie?”
“Not treat me like some princess in a tower. Not go off to become perfect for me when I’d far rather you were imperfect and here.”
His jaw set. “You are going to talk to me about trying to be perfect?” He reached into the messenger bag he’d taken for her and pulled out the box of chocolates. “The woman who makes these?”
“I already told you! If it’s not perfect, we still get good out of it. We don’t ship it to Pluto!”
“Corsica is not Pluto.”
“It might as well have been to me!”
He fell silent.
She sighed, wishing that bitterness hadn’t caught her again. And muttered, “I know damn well you guys get leave, Joss. Forty-five days a year. It’s on the Legion’s damn website. You could have kept in touch. You didn’t because I wasn’t real to you then. It’s … like the Playboy bunny. I was just an image you could focus on to help you reach your own goals.”