Page 42 of Goalie and the Girl Next Door (Love in Maple Falls #5)

MARCY

I ’m hyperventilating into a paper bag like a Victorian maiden seeing her own ankle.

The elderly Frenchman beside me pats my shoulder with a hand that smells faintly of Camembert. “ Tranquille, mademoiselle, ” he says gently. “We have not even taken off yet.”

Easy for him to say. He’s not currently spiraling into a black hole of regret, heartbreak, and barely repressed romantic anxiety.

“I just…” I gasp. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I bought a last-minute ticket to Paris. I’m not ready. I’m still wearing my barn boots.”

He nods solemnly like that explains everything.

Then he points past me. “Ah, look. It’s nothing. C’est juste le dernier passager. ”

I don’t register the words at first. Not until I hear it.

My name.

“ Marcy Fontaine, where are you! ”

That voice .

That beautiful, unmistakably French, slightly breathless, absolutely perfect voice.

My head jerks toward the front of the plane.

It’s him.

“It’s him!” I shout and try to stand up, but I’m still buckled in—WHY DO THEY MAKE THESE SEATBELTS SO DIFFICULT—and I whirl to the man as if he somehow conjured this with a puff of cheese-scented wizardry. “IT’S HIM!”

The people around me stir as I scramble like a maniac.

I try to climb over the businesswoman to my right, but she’s still got her tray table down, elbow-deep in a PowerPoint like nothing world-changing is happening right now.

“They told you to put it away for takeoff!” I snap, half-apologetic, half-possessed.

She startles, then glares as I wedge my way past her tray and knees and dignity. The seat lurches with shifting weight as I stumble into the aisle just as Clément appears at the front, breathless, hair wild, shirt damp and wrinkled, cheeks flushed.

Somehow, he’s still the most incredible man I’ve ever seen.

Our eyes lock.

The entire cabin is suspended.

Then I’m moving, and he’s moving, and the distance between us closes in a blur. He reaches me just as I launch myself forward, and in one fluid, utterly cinematic motion, he lifts me in the air.

I wrap my arms around his neck, and he kisses me like it’s the only thing anchoring either of us to the planet.

The cabin erupts in gasps and “awwws,” as some clap and someone shouts, “ Aller, mon brave!”

All I hear is my heartbeat. All I feel is him .

When he sets me down, the rest of the plane disappears. It’s just him and me and two giant jet engines roaring to life.

“Don’t go,” I whisper.

“ Ma chérie ,” he tucks a lock of hair behind my ear, “we are on the plane. I think we are both going. You who hates to fly…”

“I had to see you.”

His eyes smile. “I know. And I was wrong.”

“Wrong?” This could refer to a million different things, but I need to know right now . “Wrong about us?”

“No!” He grabs my arms as if I were the one taking off on him. “About leaving Maple Falls. I want to stay.”

“You do?” I can hardly believe what I’m hearing.

He pulls me to his chest and whispers, “Yes.”

“ Excusez-moi ,” the stewardess taps me on the shoulder. “We’re about to take off with about six hundred people on board. I’ll need you to take a seat.”

I turn to laptop lady. “Ma’am, would you mind exchanging seats so that my—” what to call him? “—my boyfriend can sit beside me?”

“No way! I paid extra for an aisle seat.” She hugs her laptop and I really wish the stewardess would intervene. She was supposed to put that away.

“Don’t worry.” The stewardess nods her head toward the front of the plane. “I have a couple seats open in first class on the upper floor. I think it will be better suited for this moment.” She giggles. “I just love love.”

We settle into our new seats, the kind with real cushions and champagne poured into actual glass. I don’t know where the stewardess went, but I’m tempted to ask if she moonlights as a matchmaker.

Clément leans back, legs stretched out like he’s already forgotten the madness of the last twenty-four hours. His curls are still slightly damp, and one has dried into a perfect comma over his forehead.

He turns to me with that warm, mischievous expression—the one that starts somewhere behind his eyes and spreads like honey to his smile.

We both raise our glasses.

“To Maple Falls,” I say softly.

He clinks his flute against mine. “To the ranch goat that started it all.”

I laugh. “To Edgar.”

“To the Ice Queen who melted.”

“To first dates that end with the sunrise.”

He looks at me, deeply, and my breath catches the way it always does when he lets the world fall away and focuses only on me.

“To the accountant who stole my heart,” he murmurs.

I tilt my glass toward his, cheeks flushed and full of everything I feel but don’t need to say.

“To the Frenchman who didn’t ask for it back.”