Page 129

“Always,” he murmured, a moment before sealing his lips over mine.

It was getting late when the boat started to slow, and I noticed there were a few other boats now, although we kept a discreet distance from them.

“The Eiffel Tower sparkles for a few minutes at the top of each hour,” Jihoon said, leaning in closer to me. “I asked the captain to make sure we got here in time for it.”

It was horribly corny.

It was perfect.

When the lights burst out of the tower, I gasped. I had never seen this light show so close.

“Joon, it’s beautiful,” I said, awed as I watched the lights starbusting across the tower.

I looked at him, but he wasn’t looking at the tower. He was looking down at me. I saw the twinkling lights dancing across his eyes, and for a moment, I was mesmerised.

“You’re missing it,” I said weakly.

“No, I’m not.”

And when he kissed me, suddenly the light from the tower paled in comparison.

We were headed back to the quay when Joon pulled a box out of his jacket pocket. He fumbled it and it fell onto the blanket, which gave me a moment to compose my face, because I felt for certain the expression on it had been somewhere between alarm and shock. But then, as I watched him pick it up, I registered it was a far bigger box than one that might have been a cause for concern.

“I got this for you,” he said, holding the flat, white box out to me. “I hope you like it.”

“You didn’t need to get me anything,” I mumbled as heat crept up my neck. “Tonight was already a lot.”

“I wanted to. Open it.”

I took the box from him and gingerly flipped open the lid.

I inhaled sharply. “Holy hell.”

Sitting on a cushion of purple velvet was a bracelet that sparkled like the Eiffel Tower had. The bracelet was delicate, made from some bright-white metal. Small violet stones were clustered irregularly in the middle of the chain, separated by smaller, clear stones. Jihoon drew it out of the box and almost by muscle memory, I held up my wrist for him. Now that it was on, the stones looked like a constellation drawn across my skin. The closer I looked, the more detail I saw. The chain seemed almost too fine, the links so small they looked woven, not worked. The stones didn’t just catch the light, they refracted it, pulling in light and diffusing it in flashes of colour beyond their violet hue. And it looked expensive.

“Joon, this is too much,” I said, not able to disguise the awe in my voice.

He shrugged.

“I missed so much, Kaiya. We used to talk about the places we’d go. The things we would see, and we didn’t get to do any of it.”

His eyes drifted away, over the water to the silhouette of the city.

“And now we’re in Paris, and I can’t even take you to dinner. I can’t visit art galleries with you. Can’t go up the Eiffel Tower with you. But I can take you on a moonlit boat ride, we can see the tower from the river and I can give you this. Let me have this.”

His fingers tightened around mine, and I watched as his gaze dropped to the jewellery around my wrist.

“I wish we didn’t need to hide from the world every time we want to experience it,” he said roughly, shaking his head. “But at the same time, I wish we could hide ourselves away in a penthouse and not come out for days. But there is always something…”

His jaw clenched, and I raised my hand to run my fingertips over it, bringing his face back up to mine.

“This is your life. And it’s mine, too. No more hiding from it. No more pretending it isn’t what it is.”

“You know how I feel about hiding us,” he said quietly, holding my eyes so intensely that everything around him seemed to dim.

Because I did know. He’d spelled it out for me last year. He’d go public now, if I said yes.

“Let’s not talk about that now,” I replied gently.