French Kissed

by Chanel Cleeton

  Maggie and Mya were the only friends I’d told about the blackmail e-mails, about the baby I’d lost, about all of it. Samir knew what had happened with the photo last year, and of course, my overdose, but that was it. I didn’t know what it was, but for some reason it was both easier and harder to tell him things. Maybe because we’d known each other for so long, or because we were family, or maybe I didn’t want to worry him when he had enough shit of his own to deal with. Whatever it was, I didn’t feel like I could tell him everything, and more than anything, I hoped Maggie would keep my secrets.

  “I’m fine.” I fixed a smile on my face, trying to look like I wanted to be here, as if my mind wasn’t racing and I wasn’t completely and utterly lost in this mess that had become my life. I’d thought the alcohol, the music, and the bodies would be enough to distract me. Apparently I’d been wrong.

  It had become a tradition—going out clubbing to celebrate the start of school. We came back to Babel because it was the place where we always celebrated our milestones. It was Samir’s favorite club in London, probably because it was where he’d first kissed Maggie. My badass player cousin had turned into someone sentimental and surprisingly sweet. Even though he’d been with Maggie for a while now, it was still an adjustment—a happy adjustment—after a lifetime of knowing the other Samir.

  “I thought you were supposed to be taking a break from all this clubbing stuff,” I commented. “Turning over a new leaf and all that.”

  Samir’s family had expected him to marry the daughter of one of his father’s political allies in Lebanon when he’d graduated last year. Instead, he’d broken things off with her for Maggie and, ultimately, had chosen to walk away from his expected role at his father’s political campaign in favor of a graduate degree in Middle Eastern politics.

  We both had trust funds from our maternal grandfather, but the bulk of Samir’s family money had been cut off when he chose Maggie. He barely spoke to his parents now, but he honestly seemed happier and freer than I’d ever seen him.

  He flashed me a grin that still had enough of his bad-boy charm to make me shake my head. Thank god Maggie could handle him; I wasn’t sure who else could. He was a handful, and I meant that in the best possible way. After all, we were pretty much cut from the same cloth.

  “Come on, I fell in love, I didn’t have a lobotomy. I can still enjoy a night out.” His tone softened, and his eyes lit up the way they always did when he talked about her. “And it’s Maggie’s junior year. I don’t want her to miss out on having a traditional university experience just because she’s dating someone older.”

  “I don’t think Maggie cares.” She wasn’t exactly what I would call a party girl.

  He shrugged. “Still, I want to make her happy. Give her as much as I can. These nights aren’t as frequent now that there’s less money, but I can at least make special occasions happen.”

  I felt so many emotions at once. A burst of pride and love. Samir wasn’t just family. He had been my best friend since we were kids, and I loved getting to see this side of him—especially since Maggie and I were so close. And yet, at the same time, his words were a knife twisting in my heart that I hated myself for feeling.

  What would it be like to have someone love me like that? What would it be like to have a guy give me romance?

  I’d thought I’d had that with Costa. Thought that all of the drama and passion, make-ups and breakups meant we loved each other. I’d thought that the intensity counted for something, but in the end, it hadn’t meant a fucking thing.

  “You guys are disgustingly cute,” I teased, my smile lessening the sting in my words as I tried to get a handle on my crazy.

  He shrugged, his expression sobering into an emotion most girls would give their right arm to have directed at them. “I love her. And I wouldn’t go back to the way things were before her for anything.”

  “I know. And it’s great. But I’m going to leave if you keep talking like that,” I warned with a grin.

  He laughed. “Please. Just wait until you find the right guy. You’ll be watching romantic movies and calling him ‘sweetie’ and ‘honey.’”

  I flipped him off. “I would die.”

  Even with Costa, who I’d been a complete idiot over, I hadn’t been into cutesy shit. I wasn’t that girl. I wore pink and walked around in four-inch heels, but that was where my girliness ended. I wasn’t sweet or sensitive, and I’d yet to find a guy who had the balls to handle me. I’d thought that had been Costa, but I’d too easily confused having balls with just being a dick.

  And still . . .

  I wanted a guy to look at me the way Samir looked at Maggie. I wanted a guy to care enough about me to make an effort, and buying something expensive because he could didn’t count. I wanted to matter to someone who loved me enough to give me more.

  “We’re going to find you a guy,” Samir vowed, his jaw set in determination.

  “Who, Omar?” I scoffed as my gaze trailed over to where Samir’s sidekick sat charming a group of girls. And I used the word charm loosely. Throwing money at them was probably far more appropriate. What Omar lacked in personality he made up with the size of his bank account. “No offense, but every guy you know is kind of an asshole.”

  “True,” Samir conceded. “Maybe just a one-night stand, then,” he teased.

  I rolled my eyes, not bothering to respond. Since the miscarriage, I’d only had sex a few times, all of them with Costa. All of them while he had a girlfriend, Natasha, the girl he’d cheated on me with and left me for. The girl he’d sworn to me over and over again that he was going to leave to come back to me. It hadn’t been a great experience, although to be fair, maybe that had been karma paying me back for hooking up with a guy with a girlfriend, even if she had taken him from me first.

  I’d thought that he, more than anyone, would have understood how hard it had been for me to have sex with him after the baby we’d lost, but he hadn’t. And I hadn’t been able to deal. The sex had been awkward as hell, and each time left me feeling sad and orgasmless. I couldn’t wrap my head around having sex with someone. Not after losing something I’d loved so much, gone in a pool of blood in the middle of the night.

  I was such a fucking mess.

  “What about that guy?” Samir asked, pointing to a suit-clad Brit standing against the wall, staring at me like he was definitely interested. I flashed the guy a smile out of reflex, with no real heat or interest behind it. Contrary to popular belief, I wasn’t interested in jumping anything with a penis. I needed someone who challenged me, someone who made me feel. Now that I’d seen what it looked like up close with Maggie and Samir, I wanted more.

  It was the ultimate irony that Max’s face pushed its way into my mind.

  “Not my type,” I answered, turning away from the Brit.

  “You’re too picky.”

  My eyebrow rose. “Really? I seem to remember you having impossible standards.”

  He groaned. “I was an ass then.”

  “Maybe I’m an ass now.”

  And if that means I’m selective about who I have sex with, I’m totally fine with it.

  “I don’t want you to mope after Costa for the next five years of your life,” Samir said, his tone sobering. “He’s not worth it. He never was. You just never wanted to see it. You’re worth more.”

  “You think I’m moping after Costa?”

  “Isn’t that what you were doing last year?” The unspoken, after your overdose, lingered between us. “You barely dated, and when you did it was that guy George, and we both know that was never going to happen. Were you ever even into him?”

  “I wanted to be,” I answered honestly.

  Samir made a small sound of disgust. “You shouldn’t have to convince yourself to like someone. It either happens or it doesn’t.”

  That was the problem. I’d lost the ability to feel the moment I’d lost my baby and my world had been torn away from me. The problem with feeling was that it was all or nothing
—and all meant too fucking much. It meant giving something or someone the power to leave you in shreds, and it wasn’t something that was easy to walk away from.

  I’d learned that lesson all too well.

  “It’s easy to give advice when you’re in the perfect relationship with the girl you love and have this big future ahead of you.” I knew I sounded bitchy but didn’t care enough to do something about it. I’d been running on attitude and empty for years. It was hard to let go.

  Samir winced. “I’m not trying to lecture you.”

  The ridiculousness of those words leaving Samir Khouri’s lips was enough to give me momentary pause and put things in perspective a bit. A couple years ago he would have been right by my side.

  Time to grow up.

  “Well, you kind of are. You all are. Do you think I don’t know I’m the group fuckup?” I tried to keep my voice even, tried to not let my temper shine through, but of course, I failed miserably. “You have Maggie and she has you, and Michael sort of does his own thing, and it always works out for him. And Mya doesn’t let much get to her. Don’t you think I want things to be easy? Don’t you think I want to be happy?”

  My voice rose with each word. It was every thought that had been plaguing me for months and I’d been too afraid to say. And really, Samir didn’t deserve to deal with all of my bullshit, but I’d always sucked at impulse control. Hence the overdose, and the partying, and the bad sex . . . I sighed, fighting to turn bitch mode off.

  “I’m sorry. I’m tired, and cranky, and stressed, and I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

  He shook his head. “After everything you’ve done for me, flying to Saint-Tropez to drag me back and convincing me I was screwing up my life by letting Maggie walk away? After you encouraged Maggie to give us a shot? I’m pretty sure I owe you everything.”

  I leaned forward to give him an air-kiss, struggling to get my feelings under control. I was numb, I had been for a while, but below the layers of ice, emotions swirled inside me, threatening to burst to the surface. I was terrified of what would happen when they finally did.

  “Well, I do have a personal shopper at Gucci, and she can help you out should you feel inclined,” I joked, knowing Samir didn’t buy it for a second. I pulled back, feeling like the walls and ceiling were closing in on me, the alcohol too strong, the beat of the music too loud, the people too overwhelming, my shoes pinching too tight, everything somehow wrong. “I’m tired. I’m going to go home.”

  “It’s your senior year.”

  I grinned ruefully, wrapping my arms around him for a quick hug. I didn’t like being fussed over; it wasn’t my style. I liked attention, sure, but never when people worried about me, never when the cracks showed. Samir knew that, and because he loved me, I knew he’d understand that I needed space.

  “It is. And maybe it’s time for me to spend my nights at the library and not at the nightclub.”

  Samir’s gaze ran over me with a mock-horrified expression. “If you went to the library dressed like that you would cause a riot.”

  I laughed and meant it for the first time all night, because the second he said the words, something new entered me, a spark that probably spelled trouble.

  “Now how can I resist an opportunity like that?”

  ###

  If I were really turning over a new leaf, I would have gone up to my room, changed into jeans and a sweater, grabbed some books, and headed to the library to study. That would have been the sensible thing to do.

  There was still enough of the old me, though, to head to the library dressed exactly as I was, because if I was really honest with myself, I’d admit I wasn’t going to the library to study.

  If I’d learned anything in the five months I’d dated George, it was that Max religiously spent Friday nights studying in the back of the library. And if I’d learned anything in the past week, it was that being around Max made me feel things that lit me up inside. After the restlessness and sadness that had hit me in the club, I needed that spark.

  So I caught a cab outside of Babel, headed back to school, and walked into the library like I was walking back into the nightclub.

  Because I could.

  I ignored the looks that were shot my way and the whispers that weren’t really whispers at all. The thing about being notorious was that people were going to talk about you whether you liked it or not. When over half the school had seen your naked body, your options became limited. I could have slunk into the shadows and prayed for obscurity, but I was pretty sure that was exactly what my blackmailer wanted. So fuck him—or more likely, her. If someone was going to make a spectacle of me then I was going to do it on my terms . . . and show everyone I didn’t care what they thought about me in the process.

  And then I saw her.

  Of all the gross things about the Natasha situation, one of the biggest ones was how similar we looked. Costa clearly had a type, and it was impossible to not feel like we were both just interchangeable brunettes with long legs and dark eyes. Once upon a time, Natasha and I had been close. At least I’d thought so.

  Our gazes locked across the library, hate flowing between us. She gave me an once-over, and then her lips curved into a smirk. I had to resist the urge to flip her off.

  Let her think what she wanted to. I wasn’t here for her.

  I kept walking and found Max in the back of the library, huddled at a table in front of some dusty bookshelves, not another soul in sight. He had headphones in, his attention completely absorbed in the book he was reading and music he was listening to.

  As usual, he was dressed in an outfit that would have made Tom Ford cry—a black hoodie, a mossy-green T-shirt, and a pair of jeans that definitely weren’t Diesel or anything remotely fashionable.

  And then his head jerked up and our gazes met. I watched as I saw myself reflected in his eyes while he pulled off his headphones.

  The look there staggered me.

  ###

  Max

  Fuck me.

  She was going to kill me, no question about it. I was going to die in the library of a heart attack at the ripe old age of twenty-two. If the sight of her yesterday had been mind-blowing, this was something else entirely.

  I’d seen her dressed to kill before—on the rare occasions George had dragged me out to a club or party, on the nights I’d had to watch them go out on dates. Those had been the nights I’d dreamed of her, of her body moving against mine, of my mouth on hers, my hands exploring all the places I’d imagined. Those had been the nights when I’d gone to bed hard and wanting, and woken up filled with ache and need, my body covered in sweat.

  I’d dream of her tonight.

  She wore a dress. Well, sort of. There wasn’t much to it, and while I knew nothing about fashion, I thanked whatever fashion gods had created it with everything I had. It was black and clung to every curve of her shape like a second skin. The fabric had a bit of sheen to it, beginning just over the curve of her breasts and ending just below her ass. She wore spike heels that flaunted her long legs, and called to mind fantasies of me between her thighs, her heels digging into my back, adding pain to pleasure.

  But wasn’t that the thing about her . . . everything about her was so much it hurt.

  Her hair hung down her shoulders, perfectly straight, her lips full and lush and bathed in some pinky color. Her eyes held a kind of trouble that I wanted more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.

  “Hi.”

  Her voice was smoky, low, and it was impossible to feel like this wasn’t some secret meeting. I’d seen her dressed like this before, and yet everything about this time felt different. This was the library, not a nightclub, and girls didn’t wear fuck-me heels and dresses like that in the library. It made the whole thing sexier, took the forbidden element up a notch, and I wanted her here, now, against the stacks, my hand under her dress, my mouth covering her moans.

  It was different this time because now I knew that she’d dressed for me when we’d stud
ied, and I couldn’t help but wonder why she was here. She wasn’t even holding a book, and the optimistic part of me, the hopeful, longing part of me, wondered if it were possible . . .

  Was she here for me?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Fleur

  “Hi.”

  Max echoed my greeting, the same dazed expression still on his face.

  My legs shook slightly as I crossed the distance between us, as I held his gaze, wondering how it would be possible to live up to the awe I saw in his eyes and if he’d always looked at me like this and I’d just never noticed.

  I gestured to his books, not bothering to sit. Standing gave me an advantage, and considering the crazy emotions ripping through me, I’d take every one I could get.

  “Studying?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s Friday night,” I teased, hoping I didn’t seem as nervous as I felt. “Don’t you ever take a break?”

  “I have job interviews coming up,” he answered, his expression still slightly dazed. “No clue what they’re going to ask me. Have to be prepared.”

  I took another step forward. I didn’t really know what I was doing anymore. My thought process was, as usual, a jumbled mix that, when dissected, ultimately came down to the fact that some part of me wanted Max, even though I wasn’t even sure I liked him. And I was terrible at denying myself the things I wanted. So here I was, playing with fire.

  “What are you doing in the library?” he asked. “I would have thought you’d be out at a club or something.”

  “I was. I went to Babel for a beginning of semester party with Mya, Maggie, Samir, and Omar.”

  Max made a face. “The A-team.”

  I shot him a quizzical look, and his lips curved into a heartbreaking smile.

  “It’s an American thing. Sorry. I forget sometimes. So why are you here?” he asked, his voice casual . . . too casual.

  I gave the safe lie rather than the dangerous truth. “I realized it’s my senior year and I need to make an effort to take school more seriously. Less nightclub, more library.”