And all I can do is smile. And then try not to reel as the train slows and the man switches hands, offering up a fresh batch of re-odorant.

  My options are limited, but they aren’t non-existent. So I nestle my face into Madi’s hair and inhale. It’s bliss. I will write an ode to Madi’s shampoo. She can even throw it at my head like the first time we met.

  I can’t believe how much has happened since then. I can’t believe I’m holding Madi right now, even if it is just because a guy can’t figure out how to operate in modern society. To everyone else on the train, we probably just look like a young, in love couple. And suddenly I’m wishing that appearances were correct and that I didn’t have to fight myself to stop feeling more and more for Madi. I’m absolutely losing that fight.

  The contrast from the metro to outside for our walk home couldn’t be starker. It feels like relief for all of ten seconds, and then the sharp wind finds its way through every crevice and pore, making its way down to our bones and chilling the sweat we worked up in the train, pressed against each other and half of Paris.

  I fumble with the keys as I open the door from the street and then the one into the building, my hands already struggling to function again.

  “Almost there,” Madi says, her teeth chattering.

  Once inside, we both hesitate in front of the elevator. We look at each other, and I can tell that, for Madi too, the decision being made isn’t between the stairs and the elevator; it’s between repeating last night’s events and keeping our boundaries.

  In other words, it’s temptation at its finest.

  “We’d better take the stairs,” Madi says.

  “Agreed,” I say with a quick but longing glance at the elevator.

  The exercise required of us going up a few flights of narrow stairs gets our bodies a fair bit warmer. I guess that’s our reward for choosing to be rulekeepers.

  Yay.

  Madi juggles her camera bag as she takes off her coat while I unlock the door. “Home sweet home,” she says with unveiled relief. I love that she thinks of this place that we’ve been sharing as home.

  She steps inside, and I follow behind. She hasn’t taken more than five steps when she stops, shudders, drops her camera bag, and throws her coat back on.

  I haven’t taken my coat off yet, but by the way my skin prickles, I know Madi’s not just being dramatic. Far from being the cozy sanctuary we were hoping for, it’s frigid in here.

  I go over to the nearest radiator and put a hand to it. The metal is cold to the touch. I check the dial on the bottom, which is set to about the middle. I turn it all the way to the highest setting.

  I make my way to the one in my room, and Madi follows behind me. The radiator in here is ice cold too. In fact, it’s even colder than the one in the living room. I just don’t understand how, even if the radiators aren’t working, it could be THIS cold inside. It’s like they’ve gone rogue and transformed into air conditioners. Or icebergs.

  “Um, Rémy?”

  I glance up at Madi. She’s got her lips tucked in as she points above my head.

  Wow. My window is open. I must have forgotten to shut it properly after Madi retrieved her bra this morning.

  I swear in French and hurry to shut it. “On the coldest day of the year!”

  “In history,” Madi says, folding her arms tightly and hunching her shoulders. “I’m so sorry. It’s my fault for not shutting the window.”

  “I’m the one who opened it.”

  “And I’m the one whose bra started all this.” She shivers again. “I’m going to put more clothes on.”

  Ah, the seven words every guy loves to hear a woman say.

  While she’s upstairs, I compose and then delete a text to André. I don’t want to bother him with this stuff. It’s the last thing he needs right now. It’ll just stress him out.

  When Madi comes downstairs five minutes later, she’s still wearing her coat, but she looks like a sad puppy. “I did my laundry this morning. None of it’s dry yet.”

  I bust up laughing. I can’t help it. “I’m sorry. It’s just so ridiculous.”

  “Now do you believe your city hates me?”

  “No, and neither should you. Maybe you just have Paris Syndrome.”

  “Come again?”

  “Paris Syndrome. It’s when foreigners come here and are so overwhelmed by disappointment—the gap between expectation and reality—that it affects them physically.”

  Madi stares at me. “You’re joking.”

  “Nope. Look it up. People are hospitalized for it and everything.” I head to my dresser and open the top drawer. “You can wear some of my clothes. I don’t have many clean ones—most of my stuff is still at home—but you’re welcome to whatever strikes your fancy.”

  “A blazer and slacks?”

  “Sure. Slip on three blazers under that coat, and you’ll be set.”

  Madi opts for my gray sweats, though—the ones she wore the first night here—and it’s all I can do not to call out line when she comes down in them a few minutes later while I’m heating up water in the kettle.

  She chafes at her arms. “Isn’t heat supposed to rise?”

  “That’s assuming there’s any heat to rise. Also, that room is probably the worst insulated one in the entire building.”

  “It’s cute, though,” she says with that smile that gets me every time.

  “True. A fair trade.” I turn and lean against the counter, folding my arms and clenching my teeth. “So . . . I called the heating company, and—”

  She puts up a hand to stop me, then tucks it right back into its spot under her arm. “Good news first.”

  I hesitate, looking at her for clarification. “Good news?”

  “You look like you’ve got bad news, but bad news should always be prefaced with good news.”

  “Right . . . um, okay. Good news, good news . . .” The kettle starts making a racket behind me. “We may not have hot water for the radiators, but we’ve got hot water in the kettle.”

  “Can’t we just pour it into the radiators?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Ugh. So this is still bad news. Do we at least have hot chocolate mix?”

  I nod, and she smiles. “Okay, I’m ready for the bad news now.”

  “Bad news is they say it’s probably the boiler, but they can’t get anyone out here until late tomorrow morning to look at it. Apparently, we are not the only ones dealing with this issue tonight. Old pipes love to crack in the cold.”

  She sighs, and the end of it turns into a teeth chatter.

  “All right,” I say. “Let’s get some hot chocolate in you, mademoiselle. I’ll mix it for you while you go snuggle up on the couch under that new blanket we bought.”

  “Rémy Scott. You are the best.” She starts moving toward the couch. “Make it with a lot of chocolate, okay?”

  “I know how to make a hot chocolate, Madi.”

  “Okay,” she says doubtfully as she disappears from view, “but if I take a sip and it tastes like the hot chocolate version of LaCroix”—she says it with an overdramatized French accent—“I’m not gonna be happy.”

  “You know LaCroix isn’t a French company, right?”

  Silence.

  “Right, Madi?”

  She still doesn’t bother answering, but when I peek my head around the corner of the kitchen, she’s smiling like a sly little fox who loves pushing my buttons.

  Once I’ve made two cups of hot cocoa, I find Madi cocooned in the blanket. She has no arms, no legs. She’s a mound of blanket with a hooded head sticking out.

  She looks at me with brows raised. “What? You think you’re getting some blanket too?”

  I set the mugs and a couple of napkins down. “No, no, it’s fine. Take all the clothes and all the blankets.” I put a hand to the bottom hem of my hooded sweatshirt. “Did you want this too?”

  She glances at my stomach and hesitates before responding. “Yes. I mean no. I mean—line.”

  I laugh and take a seat next to her as she unwraps herself from her blanket fortress.

  She shivers and shakes her head. “The things I do for you . . .”

  I accept the end of the blanket she offers me. It reaches about two-thirds of the way across me.

  She stares at me like she’s waiting. “You’re gonna have to scoot closer than that.”

  “I’ll be fine with this much.” Any closer and I’ll be in trouble.

  “I’m not worried about you. You’ve compromised the integrity of the heating system.” She points to three gaps where the blanket is letting cold air through.

  I scoot closer, muttering in French under my breath like I’m mad about it.

  “What was that?” she asks.

  “Nothing,” I say with false innocence as she helps drape the blanket over me. “Nothing at all.”

  She gives me the evil eye as she scoots closer. “You know, one day I’m going to speak fluent French, and you won’t be able to pull moves like that.” Our bodies touch, and her eyes widen a bit.

  “What?”

  “Who are you? Jacob Black?” She puts a hand to my arm, which is covered by my sweatshirt, then moves it to my hand, like she needs to check my skin temperature. After a day of avoiding contact with her, the touch trips up my heart.

  “How are you possibly that warm, Rémy?”

  “I may seem warm, but I don’t feel warm. Who’s Jacob Black?”

  She shuts her eyes, as though pleading with the heavens to grant her serenity. “That’s it.” She reaches for the remote on the coffee table. “We are drinking our hot chocolate while we watch Twilight. And if you want to know who Jacob Black is, we have to watch the first and second movies, so get comfortable.”

  I protest, but Madi will hear none of it, and since I’m only doing it because I feel like it’s my duty as a man to pretend I’m not interested in watching, my protests are half-hearted. I’m preoccupied with how close we are, despite the rules we set in place this morning. The way my body is feeling, I won’t be needing this blanket for long, and yet, I can feel Madi’s body tremble every ten or fifteen seconds, so I grit my teeth.

  Her phone vibrates next to her, and she extracts an arm to pick it up. Her brow furrows then rises. “I got another request for a session! Through my website!”

  How does it surprise her that people want her to take photos of them? I put up my hand and give her an all-American high-five. “When is it for?”

  Her eyes scan her phone screen. “Oof. Christmas Day.” She reads on. “Sounds like it’s an important anniversary for”—she glances at the end of the email—“Ashleigh Jo Wrutton and her boyfriend.”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  She considers it for a minute. “I don’t see why not. I need the money, and it’s not like I won’t be enjoying myself.” She taps to respond to the email, and I keep quiet. I hadn’t really considered what Christmas will be like for Madi here, but I’m pretty sure there’s a hard line right next to “inviting a girl to spend Christmas with you and your mom.”

  When Madi spills hot chocolate during the opening credits, she goes quiet for a few seconds, sighs, then starts pressing a napkin to the wet spot on our laps. “On the new blanket.”

  “That’s why we went with black. It’ll come out in the wash.”

  “Still. Today is not our day.”

  “No. But I had a really good time.”

  She looks at me for a second, her smile softening and her eyes searching mine. “Same here.”

  Warning bells are going off in my brain. What I’m feeling right now is too close to what I felt last night, and this time, there’s no jolting elevator to stop me. “Who knew being miserable could be so much fun?” It’s my weak attempt at shifting the trajectory we’re on, and I can see by the change in Madi’s eyes that she understands that.

  She gives me a smile and picks up the remote again. “The perfect segue for Twilight.”

  Her shivering seems to calm as she drinks the hot chocolate. It warms me up, too, but it’s only temporary. The air in the room isn’t much warmer than the air outside, and it’s not long before I feel her tremble again.

  “Want more hot cocoa?”

  She groans. “My body says yes—you make a fine hot chocolate, by the way—but my stomach says absolutely not. Is there a way to give it to me intravenously?”

  “I think the prevailing medical wisdom says not to inject boiling liquid into human veins. And the last thing we need is to add a hospital to the day we’ve had.”

  She straightens suddenly, her hand grabbing mine. “Rémy, you’re a genius. The hospital. It’s just what we need. They’d have heating there for sure. You could take me there and pretend I fainted from that Paris Syndrome thing!”

  I laugh because Madi is so ridiculous—and so ridiculously lovable. And also, her icy hand is still holding my hand. “So you don’t want to watch Twilight . . . .”

  The movie has been going during our conversation, which she had clearly forgotten about until I mentioned it. She releases my hand and settles back into place, fixing the blanket so that it’s pulled all the way up to her neck. She extracts one arm to handle the remote, rewinding a couple of minutes. “This plot moves lightning fast, so we better go back to make sure you can keep up. American young adult cinema is notoriously high-brow.” Her nose is pink from the cold, and was that her breath I just saw?

  I can’t handle it anymore. “Come here.” I lift my arm, inviting her to snuggle up next to me.

  She looks at the space I’m offering, and I can see the longing there like she’s wearing heat vision goggles and I’m glowing red and orange. Her gaze travels back up to me. “What about the lines?”

  I take in a breath and let it out slowly. “We’re going to have to blur them a bit in the interest of fending off hypothermia. Besides, I don’t think the lines are doing as much for me as I hoped they would.”

  She doesn’t answer for a second, like she’s considering what I just said. “I don’t want to make things more difficult for you.”

  “I’ll be fine.” I probably won’t. But I wrap my arm around her and pull her toward me, trying to convince myself it doesn’t feel like locking two puzzle pieces together to have her there. “I promise to keep inside all the other lines.”

  “Me too.”

  So I watch Edward Cullen sparkle (gosh, it’s painful) with Madi snuggled up next to me, no longer shivering. It’s not long before she’s warm enough to fall asleep, and it’s even less long before I’m struggling to pay any attention to the movie. My body isn’t crossing lines, but my brain and my heart have sprinted past so far, they can’t even see the lines anymore.

  I don’t even care about kissing her right now. Okay, that’s a stretch. I would absolutely love to kiss her right now—if she weren’t unconscious. But what I’m feeling as I hold her against me and try to shift so that her head doesn’t roll off my shoulder? It goes so far beyond mere physical attraction.

  It’s crazy to care this much about Madi after how short a time she’s been here—I get that—but knowing that doesn’t change how I feel.

  When my dad would leave on business trips when I was a kid, it didn’t matter that I knew I’d see him again in a few days. It was hard every. single. time. And I won’t be seeing Madi again. Maybe if she left tomorrow, I would be okay. Maybe? I don’t know. But she’s here for almost two more weeks. If I feel this way about her right now, how will I feel then?

  I take another look at her—or as much of her as I can see from this angle—trying to gauge whether it’s possible for me to keep doing this, to compartmentalize. They do it on TV shows, right? If a covert agent can kill druglords at midnight and kiss his kindergartener at school drop-off the next morning, can’t I manage to separate being Madi’s host for the holidays from my desire to spend every second of every day as close to her as possible?

  I sigh and let my head drop onto the back of the couch. Pretending we can just be friends isn’t working for me. Not at all. Not even after one measly day. And I have a suspicion it’s not working for Madi, either, which means things are bound to turn sour for both of us—just like André feared.

  But even though there’s no doubt in my mind that spending a frigid night without radiators is a solid 1-star Airbnb experience, this isn’t even about the 5-star rating. It’s about doing the responsible thing. It’s about not hurting Madi when she’s already experienced major career and relationship disappointments this week.

  And yes, it’s about protecting myself, too, because I can’t pretend I don’t see the oncoming train wreck. I can’t sit and do nothing to stop it, no matter how fun playing on the tracks is.

  THIRTY-SIX

  MADI

  I force my eyelids to open, but all they’ll do is flutter like a fledgling bird. I’m covered by a layer of blankets, while Rémy’s body makes my left side cozy and warm. It takes me a second to realize that I’m slumped over onto him with my head on his lap. He’s shifting under my weight, probably trying to get more comfortable.

  I push myself up sleepily. “Sorry.” My voice comes out weak and crackly. “Here, there’s space for you.” I lie down, inviting him into the place directly in front of me. “I’ll be the big spoon.” My eyes are already closing again.

  He moves so that he’s sitting on the very edge of the couch. “I think I’m just gonna go to my room.”

  My eyes open a bit more. “Oh.” I can’t tell what’s in his voice, but it’s something. He sounds more serious than usual. He’s probably been super uncomfortable for the past—I check the TV screen and see the rolling credits—hour and a half.

  “I’ll bring you the blanket from your bed to make sure you stay warm,” he says.

  It’s really generous of him, and yet the thought of swapping out Rémy for a blanket—however new and cute that blanket is—is depressing. Depressing but smart. We promised to keep inside the other lines, and I think spooning all night falls squarely on the wrong side. I’m going to chalk the suggestion up to fatigue.