Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 98226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
As sweet as it was, I laughed, arching a brow at Theo. “You really are a smooth talker.”
“I mean it,” he said earnestly. “I watched you at dinner that night, the way you listened to everyone else speak, the way you observed every behavior unfolding around you. I’d never been around someone like you before — someone not eager for the spotlight, someone who would rather disappear than have a moment of attention. It was… refreshing, I admit. But it also fueled me. Because for the first time, I saw someone deserving of the spotlight, and she wanted nothing to do with it.”
I chuckled. “I’m just me.”
“You’re the most talented photographer I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and I am friends with men who frequent the pages of The New York Times and Vogue magazine.”
“Theo…”
“I’m serious. You see the world in the most real, raw way. You don’t have a desire to filter it, or embellish it, to make it more or less than exactly what it is. Instead, you strive to capture the beauty in the everyday, the extraordinary in the mundane. And what’s more impressive, you achieve it.”
I was speechless, and Theo seemed to know the way he smirked down at me.
“More than all that, you are kind. And humble. You’re completely unaware of how powerful your presence is, how breathtakingly beautiful you are, and how you have this light about you that shines so bright you can only have one of two reactions from those around you. Either they want to bathe in your light, or they want to dim it so it doesn’t outshine their own.”
My lips parted, heart pounding in my chest from being so seen.
“I was drawn to you from the start, Aspen, but when we went to breakfast that morning in Nice? When you talked to me like you knew nothing about me, like you wanted nothing from me, like I was just a man you were intrigued by? It flipped my world upside down. It showed me something I hadn’t realized I’d been starving for.” He shrugged. “And dammit if I haven’t been able to let go of you since.”
I shook my head, resting my hands on his chest as I watched the soft lamp posts from above us twinkle in his eyes. “You are the voice I’ve always been afraid to have.”
Theo held me closer. “And you are the life I’ve been waiting to live.”
Emotion surged in my chest, and Theo pressed his lips to mine, inhaling a deep breath as he did so. It was as if he were breathing me in, the whole of who I had been up until that moment and everything I would be thereafter.
I pressed onto my tip toes, deepening the kiss, begging for more, when suddenly, music started playing.
It was soft at first, and Theo paused our kiss, both of us searching for the source of the sound.
“It sounds like a band,” I said.
Theo grabbed my hand, already starting to walk toward the music. “Let’s find out.”
We walked at first, but the more we weaved in and out of the alleyways and streets in search of the music, the quicker our steps became. Before long, we were running and laughing, dodging this way and that, finding ourselves in a maze of cobblestone and ivy until we stumbled into a square full of life.
Lights hung crisscrossed above us, their orange glow filtering down like star dust over the fountain in the middle of the square. Every side of it was protected by tall buildings, as if it was a secret oasis that we created ourselves. There was a band of three women by the fountain — one playing a guitar and singing, one playing a cajón, and the other tapping a tambourine against her palm. They looked like sisters, all dark blonde hair and olive skin and warm brown eyes. They smiled a little wider when we bounced into the square, giving each other a knowing look before the song they were playing slowly faded into a softer, more romantic tune.
“Are we in a fairy tale?” I asked, still catching my breath as I clung onto Theo’s arm. “There’s no one else here.”
Theo looked around at the empty square, his smile growing more and more as his eyes trailed the scene. “Perhaps the Roman gods carved out this little crumb of paradise just for us.”
I grinned, holding onto Theo’s arm as I lifted one foot and then the other, peeling off the straps of my high heels. “Then we better make the most of it.”
I pulled back from Theo’s grasp, watching the confusion on his face as I backed up more and more toward the fountain. An arch of my brow and a head nod toward the water was all he needed to understand, and he smirked, shaking his head before he started following me. I watched him pause each step long enough to take his own shoes off, and then I turned, sprinting the rest of the way.