“At our first meeting, he asked me if I knew how to read. And then he gave me some shit about how I needed to pull my own weight and he wasn’t going to carry me through the project. That was after ignoring me for twenty-eight minutes of our thirty-minute group meeting.” I was still pissed about it, and yesterday’s meeting hadn’t been much better. No one talked to me the way he did. Period.
“What did you say?” Maggie asked, a mix of fascination and horror covering her face.
It was kind of cute how expressive the American students were. They wore their emotions on their faces and in their eyes. Max was no exception. Whenever I caught him looking at me, I saw scorn, disapproval, and disdain. I had a reason to dislike him, but what the hell was his problem?
I could chalk it up to the fact that I’d broken up with his best friend, except it had started way before that. He’d mocked me relentlessly when George and I had dated, and before that, thanks to Max, the “Ice Queen” nickname he’d given me freshman year had been impossible to shake.
I didn’t normally care what people thought about me, but with Max it was different. He had a way of hitting where it hurt. His words weren’t just careless barbs he threw out as a passing insult. No, he clearly saw through me, past the pretty outside to the parts inside me that I feared where ugly beyond repair. I could hate him for that alone. Everything else was just icing on the cake. So when he hit, I hit back. Harder. Nastier.
“I told him chronic masturbation could turn him blind and that he should worry about himself and his own reading ability. And then for old times’ sake, I told him to fuck off.” I shrugged. “Not my best comeback, but I was pissed and tired. Everyone has an off day.”
They both just stared at me.
“What?”
Maggie spoke first, her tone cautious, as if I were a high-strung animal that needed coaxing. “Don’t you need to pass this class to graduate?”
I groaned.
Why were the things that were the best for you always a giant pain in the ass? It made it really hard to want to be good.
Maggie shrugged. “Fine. If you want to be a fifth-year senior, I’ll keep my mouth shut. I’m not saying I wouldn’t appreciate having another friend at school next year . . .”
Of all of us, Maggie was the youngest, a junior this year.
“I get your point. If it were anyone else—”
“But it’s not anyone else,” Maggie interrupted. “It’s Max. And you can’t fight with him and expect to pass. I’ve heard about Schrader. He failed Omar in one of his classes.”
“Everyone fails Omar.” Samir’s sidekick was in even more danger of becoming a fifth-year senior than I was.
“I’m just saying. Don’t screw around in his class, Fleur. You hating Max isn’t worth you not graduating.” She paused. “I’ve talked to him about school before. He has a ton of student-loan debt, and he’s trying to get a big banking job. He needs this. Make up with him. Be nice.”
“I hate playing nice.”
Mya grinned. “So that’s why you’re so horrible at it.”
They pretty much had this down. Maggie worried and clucked over me like a mother hen, and Mya gave me shit to kick my ass into gear when I needed it. It mostly worked. I’d known Mya the longest, back to our boarding school days in Switzerland, and she was one of the few people who got away with giving me a hard time.
“In my defense, he doesn’t make any effort, either,” I continued, ignoring her last statement.
Maggie made a face. “That’s really mature. Take the higher road. Show him you’re better than him. That’s right up your alley,” she teased.
“True. It is hard being this perfect,” I responded, completely deadpan, trying to laugh at the irony of how far off my words really were.
You couldn’t show weakness in a school like this. Especially not when you teetered precariously on a pedestal made of smoke and mirrors.
Mya rolled her eyes. “God, you’re obnoxious.”
I grinned, settling back into our routine. “You love it.”
“Well, Max doesn’t, so maybe tone down the man-eating and that French arrogance of yours, and play nice,” Mya suggested with a smirk. “Or else you’ll be sitting here next year eating this crap.” She poked at the orange-colored glob on her plate. “And your new roommate might not be as amazing as I am,” she replied, matching my tone and expression exactly. She shook her head. “You’re so rubbing off on me.”
“You should be so lucky.”
Maggie jerked her head, interrupting our banter. “Fleur, you want to make nice with Max? Here’s your chance. He’s sitting at dinner by himself. Trust me, you have better odds of success if George isn’t around.”
I turned and spied Max sitting alone at the table, his back to us. He wore a navy-blue T-shirt. His hair was damp at the ends as if he’d just taken a shower.
Do not think of water dripping down . . .
“Go,” Maggie urged. “And when he annoys you, just think of the phrase fifth-year senior before responding.”
The crazy thing about all of this, the thing I would never admit to anyone—especially not Maggie and Mya who would give me shit about it forever—was that Max made me . . . uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure if it was all the hard knocks I’d had lately, but he always took me down a peg or two. And given everything else, I wasn’t sure I had many pegs left before I’d fall.
I hesitated, weighing the odds of following their advice, actually envisioning myself sitting at this same table, another year older, while my friends were out in the world doing exciting things and having adventures. Sure, Maggie would still be here, but she was a year younger. She was supposed to be here. I was supposed to be a grown-up, and yet I felt anything but. At least Maggie had her shit together. I was the hot mess.
“Fine. I’ll play nice with Max.”
Maggie grinned. “Good.” She shooed me off. “I’ll see you later.”
I pushed back my chair and stood, brushing my palms against my Cavalli. I could do this. Maybe.
###
Max
I noticed her perfume before I saw her. It smelled of flowers, and money, and seduction in a scent I’d never smelled on anyone else. Likely never would. It figured she’d have a signature perfume or something like that. And then I saw her, and like always, it took a moment to adjust to her beauty.
She was almost too beautiful. Maybe that sounded stupid, but there wasn’t another way to describe it. It was like that moment when you first turned on a light, and it was so bright that it was nearly blinding—and not in a good way. Fleur wore her beauty like a weapon, slicing through mere mortals with a careless arc, leaving destruction in its wake.
She could do with some imperfections—her nose a bit bigger, her lips less full, her hair less shiny. Something, anything to make her look like a real person. Anything to make wanting her ache less, to ease the thrust of it that left me completely skewered.
I would have understood my attraction to her if I’d been one of those guys who got off on being with a hot girl. I mean, sure, I could appreciate a Maxim spread as much as the next guy, but looks had never been my primary motivating factor. Was it nice to have something pretty to look at? Absolutely. Did that get boring after a couple minutes? Yeah, it did.
If all of my past girlfriends had one common denominator, it was that they were all smart—a little nerdy, like me. I fit with the kind of girls who liked sci-fi movies and video games. Chill girls who didn’t spend an hour doing their hair and makeup or own more pairs of shoes than there were days in the month. And yet, as Fleur slid into the seat across from mine, apple in hand, my pulse picked up and everything else stood at attention.
“I’ve come to make peace.”
I blinked as the sentence rolled off her tongue and into the air surrounding us, her eyes dancing with amusement. Maybe it was the accent. It was hard to resist an accent, especially one that called to mind silk, lacy lingerie, and heat.
“Peace?” It seemed li
ke a foreign concept around Fleur.
She nodded, taking a bite out of the apple, her full, pink lips sliding across the cherry red. I stared at her mouth, mesmerized. It should be a sin to eat fruit like that.
She continued, wholly oblivious to my reaction. “Look, I need to pass this class. You need to pass this class. And we could do the whole, ‘I hate you, you hate me,’ thing for the rest of the year, but really, what’s the point?” Her lips curved. “I think we should hate other people.”
I was silent for a beat. “Are you hate breaking up with me?”
Her mouth spread into the kind of wide smile I’d seen her give her friends, but had never been lucky enough to have flashed my way. “I think I am. Look, it’s not you; it’s me. Hating you is nice and all, but it’s just not fulfilling me the way I need it to. I need more than you’re able to give me.” She flashed me a playful, pitying smile, leaning closer, too close, her tone dropping as if she were sharing a secret meant only for me. “Don’t take it personally. You did your best. It’s not easy to keep up with me. Many men have tried.”
“Maybe if we shook things up a bit?” I teased, struggling to keep a straight face. I’d never seen this side of Fleur before. Playful suited her even as it surprised me. It had always felt like she was laughing at me, never with me. Now I was on the other side of the velvet rope, and I liked it more than I should have. “Maybe if we kept the mystery alive. Things have been a little flat lately. We haven’t even explored the possibilities of pranking each other. I could pour Jell-O in your shoes—”
“And I could kill you.”
I laughed, unable to resist pushing her further. “But we haven’t even had hate-sex yet.”
God, she sparkled back at me. Her eyes lit up with a sort of wicked pleasure that told me she enjoyed screwing with me as much as I liked returning the favor.
“Do you want to have hate-sex with me?” she teased, her voice coming out with a purr that bathed me in heat. Her voice lowered in a tone that was distinctively her bedroom voice, something my body had never heard from her lips, yet recognized instantly. “Have you been dreaming about it, fantasizing about it? Do you wake up in the middle of the night wanting it?”
Desire slammed into me like a fucking Mack truck. Her words lingered between us, filling the air like the perfume that teased my nostrils, beckoning me closer, like the accent that wound its way through my body with promise. At some point in our exchange, we’d both started moving toward each other, until now we leaned over the table, less than a foot between us, her lips taunting me, tempting me, seducing me.
Had I dreamed of her, fantasized about her, woken up in the middle of the night hard, wanting her, even when she’d been with my best friend? Yes.
Other guys might have fantasized about porn stars or lingerie models. I fantasized about Fleur Marceaux.
And wasn’t it my luck that in this case, reality far outstripped the fantasy.
###
Fleur
I shouldn’t have said it. As soon as I did, I wished I could take it back, wished I could return to my table and my friends and put much needed space between Max and me.
I hadn’t been thinking. I’d treated him as if he were any other guy, as if I could fling flirtations and sex at him without any intention of following through, forgetting that he was Max, that he acted like I was a leper on a good day and that there was always an awkward tension between us that lingered like a bad smell on the Metro.
It was a joke, a stupid flirty joke. One most guys would have met with innuendo or an invitation. But Max just looked at me like he’d been burned.
“That was a joke.”
“Ha-ha,” he replied in a dry tone, an uncomfortable expression on his face. He looked as though he was in pain, and I wondered if I’d sunk to new lows. I was literally driving men away.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
I took another bite from my apple, struggling to think of some way to salvage the conversation. I blamed him for the awkwardness and myself for getting into this position in the first place. I’d never been cautious, always been the type of person to remember to put the brakes on after I was already going over the cliff.
Merde.
“We should probably set up some time to meet,” I offered lamely, backpedaling the shit out of my Manolos. Things had ended at our last meeting, and we hadn’t set an official time or decided on much of anything really. We were such an odd pairing—like plaid and polka dots—that is was hard to imagine us ever coming to an agreement. “For the project and all,” I added.
He nodded, thankfully not giving me a hard time about my obvious discomfort. “Are you free tomorrow?”
“I’m done with classes at two. Want to meet after that?”
“Yeah. We can meet in the library and come up with a topic,” he suggested.
“Sounds good to me.”
I hovered there, not sure if I should stay or go. He was still eating, and he was by himself, but my whole purpose for coming over had been to set things up for our project and to make some semblance of peace. Mission accomplished, but I still couldn’t bring myself to actually get up from the table. It was like when you accidentally attached yourself to something magnetic—I didn’t want to be there, and yet the pull held me in place. And somewhere in all of that tension was the flash of ego that said I wasn’t the type to tuck my tail between my legs and run.
The corners of Max’s mouth quirked up. “You can go.”
Did he just dismiss me? My eyes narrowed. How did this keep happening?
“Excuse me?”
He gestured to the room at large with a wave of his big hand. “I know you’re worried about your reputation. What will people think if they see you sitting here alone with me?” His voice dropped to a mock whisper. “The horror. Not a designer label in sight.”
“I don’t care about my reputation,” I snapped, unsettled by the way he was trying to handle me, by my inability to regain my footing. My words somehow straddled the truth and the lie. I did care, but not in the way he thought.
Did I care if people thought it was weird that I was sitting at dinner alone with Max? People could deal. But the rest? The secrets my blackmailer threatened to expose? Yeah, I cared. Even when I shouldn’t have.
We stared at each other for a moment, and I knew we both thought of the same thing, of the picture of my naked body that half the school had seen last year—Did he see it?—and the tatters of my reputation that were left behind afterward. You had to have a reputation in order to care about it, and I had a series of scandals, instead.
It had all started last year with an anonymous e-mail asking for money to keep from exposing my secrets. Or if I was really being honest, maybe it started earlier with my drug overdose at the end of sophomore year. Or the boyfriend who’d cheated on me and left me for my former friend. Or even earlier when I’d lost my baby just weeks into the pregnancy freshman year.
Last year, my friends had begun hearing whispers about Costa and the unnamed girl he’d allegedly gotten pregnant. No one knew it was me, but it was only a matter of time.
Then had come the naked photo plastered around the school—the one I’d let Costa take with his phone a million years ago when we were dating. I hadn’t paid a dime, and yet the e-mails kept coming, and I couldn’t help but think that none of this was about money at all.
Someone liked messing with me, and while I had no shortage of people who didn’t like me, my ex-boyfriend’s girlfriend dominated my shortlist. Costa might have left the International School in a cloud of disgrace after his parents learned he’d been screwing around, but his girlfriend Natasha—the girl he’d left me for—was still here, and she definitely wanted to take me down.
“Maybe I care about my reputation,” Max joked, pulling me out of my past and back into the present. “Can’t have people thinking I sold out and became one of the cool kids.”
I rolled my eyes, trying to push all the ugliness out of me so I could breathe again
. “Don’t get your boxers in a twist. I’ll leave you to your dinner—” I peered at the magazine sitting next to his food tray “—and the fascinating read on European bond markets.” I flashed him my most blinding smile, more to screw with him than anything else. “Au revoir.”
I felt his gaze on me as I walked away, a stare that left a flash of heat in its wake. And I told myself that if I did “the walk”—the one where I lengthened my stride, hips swaying, hair flipping, the one that said, Watch me, want me, wish you had me—it would’ve been out of habit and not because of the boy whose eyes were currently glued to my ass.
CHAPTER FOUR
Fleur
It took me three outfit changes before I was satisfied. An hour was spent trying out different hairstyles, perfecting my makeup, discarding clothes as if it were Fashion Week, not a study session in the library. But that was the problem. I knew how to dress for Fashion Week, for dates, for dancing on tables at nightclubs. I didn’t know how to dress for this. Didn’t know what to wear with Max.
If yesterday was any indication, today would be awkward. I needed the added support of a really good outfit and, at the same time, needed to look good without trying. It was a delicate balance I hoped I’d achieved.
I settled on a pair of black Dolce leggings. They hugged every inch of my lower body, making my already long legs look even longer. I threw on a low-cut white top that sort of screamed boobs and added a pair of black leather booties that laced up in a look that roughly translated to bondage on my feet. I wore my hair down, curling the ends. It was my bedhead look, and while nothing about my outfit said studying in the library, it gave me the confidence I needed to face Max. The slightly dazed expression on a pair of freshman eyes as I walked by helped.
But then I walked into the library and headed to the back, and when I saw him, the swagger in my stride disappeared like a deflating balloon.
Max sat at a small table surrounded by books. He stared at me as I approached, his lips pursed together, his eyes full of something I couldn’t read but that looked nothing like lust. Where the freshman boys had looked at me like I was a piece of cake they wanted to eat, Max looked at me like I was something he didn’t order and wanted to send back.
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