From Pemberley to Manhattan [COMPLETED]

Chapter 64

             SEVEN DAYS IN PARIS

Nat

We were still maintaining our status quo as friends. Without benefits.

Why? I couldn't recall.

How? I had absolutely no idea.

We were also still busy touring around Paris, and there were so many places I wished to visit, but I began to wonder how much longer we'd have to "hide" in one of the most elegant, most sought-after places in the world.

There was also the huge elephant in the room (besides the sexual tension, of course): would Travis be able to make the time travel machine work again? I didn't know which would be more painful; the possibility of never seeing my brother again or having to say goodbye to Darcy. Actually, I knew: family was family. Of course it would be far worse to lose Ethan. On the other hand, Darcy was quite a part of the family now, in a weird, almost-psychotic way.

I could go around and around in this looping all day long, and that was exactly why Darcy and I never discussed this subject.

Maybe that was also why we hadn't taken the next step in our relationship. Like, the real reason. I kept telling myself I couldn't be involved with someone I didn't trust, but the frightening truth was that I'd already forgiven Darcy and I was already involved with him up to my head, at least emotionally. And I wasn't buying his attitude either, like he wasn't getting too close because he was such a gentleman and he wanted to give me my space.

Yeah, right. The guy who held me naked and couldn't stop staring at my lady parts as if he'd just found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was anything but a gentleman.

Truth be told, neither of us had the emotional intelligence to be romantically involved with the knowledge we might have to be separated forever any day now. It was the prospect of falling in love and breaking our hearts that kept us apart at night. It was obvious, however, that we were already there. In love.

I know, you guys are probably thinking, "Oh, and you just figured this one out? We've known it for about fifty pages..." Well, I guess this was one of those realities of life nobody wanted to see. We were already in the middle, but too stupid and arrogant to admit it had even begun.

After spending an interesting morning visiting the Louvre (the Egyptian, Roman and Greek Antiques, more specifically, for we'd already visited other parts of the museum right in the beginning of our journey), Darcy suggested we promenaded (his word, not mine) in the Luxembourg Garden. The lovely and colorful space had become one of my favorite places in the city right from the first days, only losing to Champ des Mars, with its magnificent view of the Eiffel Tower.

For those who had never had the pleasure of visiting Paris, allow me to make you even more jealous than you already are. Luxembourg Garden was the biggest park in Paris, where everything was magical: from the flowerbeds to the fountains, from the statues to the monuments, from the smells to the views, everything in it pulsing with a magnetism that made its visitor feel like they'd just walked into fairy land.

Nevertheless, it was not just a gorgeous, romantic, public park. For, attached to the gardens (or would it be otherwise?), there was this beautiful, almost Cinderella-like, seventeenth century palace. And I was visiting it with a very handsome aristocrat from the nineteenth century who knew all about it. I know, you guys hate me a lot.

"Wanna read something?", I asked him, right after we found a comfortable spot under a tree probably older than Darcy himself. It had this marking on it, where an E and a G were drawn inside a heart. Those markings always made me think if the lovers ended up together, that one particularly moving me for some obscure reason.