Page 196 of Boyfriend of the Hour

Nathan nodded. “It makes sense. Bodies are just bodies.”

Such a surgeon’s clear-eyed assessment.

“I did like yours, though.”

Another assessment. He wasn’t even looking at me when he said it, but I couldn’t help the way my stomach flipped anyway.

Until I remembered he had said “did.” In the past.

“Some girls are fine with it, maybe even like it, and that’s great for them,” I continued. “But I don’t like being looked at that way. If someone’s going to look at me dancing, I’d rather they see thedance. Not the shape of my ass or how well my tits shake in their face. I was only doing it for the money, but I decided I don’t need it that much. Not yet anyway.”

By the time I was done speaking, Nathan’s hands were clenched at his sides, fists opening and closing in that way that meant he was agitated. I took it as a sign to stop talking.

“How old were you?” he asked a few moments later. “In the video.”

My face flushed. “I don’t want to say.”

He stopped and turned. “How old?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Joni. How. Old?”

“Sixteen!” I blurted out. “Sixteen, all right? So, you can’t just say I was a child because, by that age, I definitely was not. And yes, the guy behind the camera is Shawn. He said it would be hot. Said it would only be for him, and that it was how I could show him I loved him. You don’t know how it is, thinking you’re in love with someone like that. Someone who twists your words around all the time, strings you along like a puppy some days, leaves you cold on others. I was desperate, I guess, and stupid, and…”

By this point, tears were streaking down my cheeks. All the emotion that had just been lost in a dead void for two months was rising to the surface, and I didn’t know what to do with it.

“I just wanted to be loved,” I whispered at the end, then turned to the river as I buried my face in my hands. “That’s all anyone really wants.”

Several cyclists rode past us, the whir of their bikes filling the silence while I fought and failed to get my emotions under control. As soon as they were gone, I found myself turned back around and wrapped in Nathan’s big arms. Wrapped in his warmth. His comfort.

Oh, God, it felt good. It felt like home, though I had no right to think of him that way.

“You are loved,” he said as he pressed me into his chest. “You are.”

I sniffed into the blue knit of his shirt. “I know I am. I have about a million people in my family who have a new opinion about my life every other second. I know in my heart that if they didn’t care, they wouldn’t say anything. But back then, I just wanted something different. I don’t know how to say it.”

“You wanted acceptance.”

I looked up, and my heart almost cracked in half as Nathan gently wiped another tear from my cheek and then tucked some of my hair behind one ear. But he didn’t speak.

I waited for my own voice to bubble up again, spill out the emotions I generally couldn’t keep locked up.

“You have it,” he finally said softly. “From me. Joni, I don’t care about the video. I don’t care if you want to take your shirt off or not while you serve people drinks. I don’t care if you want to dance or walk or sit around all day watching television until you figure out what’s next. I just want you to beyoubecause…I accept you. And I love you.”

I hiccupped back a sob. “What?”

Nathan smiled. Just a little. But it was enough to make my heart squeeze in my chest like a sponge wrung out at the sink.

“I love you,” he repeated clearly. “And I think you love me too.”

We stared at each other for a long time, close enough to take in each other’s scents and for the rest of Paris, the rest of the world, to blur around us like there was nothing else.

I waited for him to take it back. I waited for him to tell me that it was all a joke. Or to add an addendum to the whole thing. To tell me that even if he did feel that way, it wasn’t enough, because I’d never be the kind of person who would fit into his perfect, ordered life.

But he didn’t. Just stood there, as patient as ever, cupping my face and waiting, waiting, waiting for me.

My Nathan.MyNathan. Waiting for me to tell him just that.