Lila's P.O.V
The morning light filtered through the gauzy curtains of our suite at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée, painting soft gold across the parquet floor. Ethan was already awake, standing at the window in nothing but low-slung pajama bottoms, coffee cup in hand, watching Paris stir below us. His shoulders had broadened over the past year—hours spent on job sites, hauling models and materials, sketching until dawn—but it was the quiet confidence in his stance that struck me now. He wasn’t just my steady Ethan anymore. He was the architect the European press kept calling “the visionary behind Victor Laurent’s alpine masterpiece.” Articles praised his sustainable designs, his “athletic understanding of space and recovery.” Overnight, he’d become a minor celebrity in the overlapping worlds of
