Limitless - Kate Hawthorne Page 0,6
pink wine in her hand and it sloshed over the rim as she muffled a shriek when the man opened a black velvet box. Cars and busses sped down the street and dozens of people filled the crosswalk beside where he stood.
He would never propose to someone at a place like that.
In a city like this.
When the stoplight turned red and the traffic piled up, the man with the ring box was back in his seat and the woman had set down her wine in favor of her phone and she snapped what had to have been a dozen pictures of the diamond on her finger in all different lights and angles. The man watched her, his smile wide, but his eyes…tired.
“I would say no,” the stranger said, again in that thick and broken cadence that came with not being a native English speaker.
“What if you loved him?”
“That’s for him and I. Her and him.”
“You wouldn’t want the entire city of Paris to know?”
The man’s lips twisted into the hint of a smile. “The city does not know. The arrondissement barely knows.”
“What is your name?” Andy asked, tearing his attention away from the cafe he knew he would not be patronizing.
“Leonidas.”
“Greek?” he asked, already knowing the answer. Leonidas’s skin was a dark, rich olive tone that spoke to summers in the Mediterranean, and now the accent, the earlier question…it all made sense.
“Hmmn,” Leonidas hummed, but it sounded in the affirmative.
Andy bit the tip of his tongue between his teeth. There was something about this man, about this stranger, that had Andy on full alert. He didn’t know why, but tendrils of—a feeling—tangled together in his gut, and he folded his arms across his chest to either protect himself, or stop himself from reaching for the man. He didn’t know which.
“Do you live in Paris?”
“For now.” Leonidas shrugged, and scratched an itch beneath the folded edge of his beanie.
“Traveling?”
Why did he care? He hated this city and he would be gone soon enough.
“Eventually,” Leonidas answered. He licked his lips and Andy’s breath caught. He watched the sun reflect off the wetness of Leonidas’s full lower lip, and then as fast as he saw it, it was gone. A cloud slipped in front of the sun and the sky darkened, finally matching the threat of rain that the moisture in the air hinted at. “What about you?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head and frowned. “I don’t have tickets, but I won’t be here long.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Is it?” He looked up at Leonidas, then quickly looked away, hoping the things he felt weren’t painted across his face.
“Are you leaving tonight?”
“No.”
“Are you staying close by?”
The woman with the diamond ring finally set her phone down and turned her attention to her future husband. She looked as if she was gushing and cooing over him, but her eyes never left the glittering diamond on her left hand. For his part, the weariness of the man’s expression from earlier had slightly waned and he drank up his fiancé’s attention like he was parched and lost in a desert.
“Yes,” he said.
“I’m across the river.” Leonidas tipped his chin toward the northeast.
“What are you doing all the way over here?”
“Looking for lost Americans.” Leonidas’s lips pulled into the smallest hint of a smile, and Andy was certain he’d just been given a gift.
“I’m not lost.”
“Aren’t you?”
Andy had been lost when he left Carrolwood to travel, and he was fairly certain that somewhere between Bali and Prague he’d figured it out, but standing here he wasn’t sure. He knew exactly where he was, though. He could tell you on a map he was less than a kilometer away from Luxembourg Palace and its famous gardens, he could walk northwest and reach the Eiffel Tower in under an hour if he didn’t make any stops along the way, and if he crossed the river Seine to the east, he would be wherever Leonidas was.
“I know where I am,” he corrected.
“And where is that?” Leonidas asked with a delicate laughter to his rich voice.
“Here with you.”
“Very true. Would you like to be somewhere else with me?”
The question was quiet, but he still heard it over the sounds of car engines and horns and laughter, and Andy didn’t know the answer.
That was a lie.
He definitely knew the answer, but he didn’t know the justification, and in this passing moment, he didn’t know if he really needed either.
“You don’t even know my name,” Andy answered.
“Tell me, then.”
This shouldn’t be a thing. Andy