Paris was supposed to fix her. Or at least make her forget. When she found out she was pregnant with Chuck Bass' child she couldn't handle it. So she took a private jet, and told Chuck she was going to Paris for business, but truth be told... she was running. Running away from Chuck and the expectations of the Upper East Side. So where did she go? The only place that ever gave her comfort. Paris.

Here, she could reinvent herself without the constant weight of being Blair Waldorf-Bass. Here, she could breathe. Maybe. If her pregnancy would let her. No one else knew besides her and Serena.

Her suite at the Hôtel de Lys was perfect, of course. White roses on the nightstand, silk curtains spilling sunlight across parquet floors, a balcony overlooking the Seine. It was every bit the kind of beauty she’d always surrounded herself with — curated, delicate, controlled. Yet somehow, it still felt hollow.

Paris didn’t bend to her rules. The streets were chaotic, the people blunt, the language sharp and melodic. The city had a pulse of its own — one Blair could neither master nor ignore. And then there was her — the woman who worked at the hotel.

She’d appeared the morning after Blair’s arrival, when Blair had been arguing with a concierge over the lack of rose-petal bath salts in her room. She had stepped in quietly, offered to handle it, and within minutes had everything arranged with a grace that somehow made Blair’s dramatics feel… small. When in actuality, it was her pregnancy hormones out of wack.

From that moment, Blair couldn’t stop noticing her. She had that effortless confidence Blair both envied and admired — hair always a little undone, smile teasing, eyes that seemed to see through every layer of performance. Every encounter between them left Blair slightly off-balance, irritated by how easily the woman could make her laugh, or how her gaze lingered just a little too long.

Over the weeks, the connection grew impossible to ignore. The woman would appear when Blair least expected her — at breakfast with her coffee just the way she liked it, at the hotel garden in the evenings, sometimes joining her under the soft hum of the city lights. Their conversations wandered from art to ambition to heartbreak, and though Blair never said it outright, she felt something shifting inside her. Something she didn’t have words for.

She told herself it was curiosity. Infatuation. The loneliness talking. But deep down, she knew better.

Now, as she stood on her balcony, the Paris sky turning gold and pink with the setting sun, Blair found herself waiting — for the familiar knock at her door, for the sound of that voice that had become both a comfort and a complication.

She brushed a curl from her face, exhaled slowly, and glanced at the city below.

She wasn’t sure what she wanted anymore — the safety of her old life or the danger of what this could become. But for the first time, she wasn’t afraid of not knowing.

Because Paris had done something no one else ever could: It made Blair Waldorf stop pretending.

And somewhere between the clinking of distant wine glasses and the soft hum of traffic, she heard it — the knock.

Blair turned, heart fluttering despite herself, and crossed the room.

“Come in,” she said, voice steady, though her pulse wasn’t.