It hit me that the thread that had run through my relationship with Costa—that nervous, edgy, keep-me-on-my-toes thread—hadn’t been about love, or passion, or want. It had been fear. The fear that he’d toss me aside for another girl because he was bored or because he never cared enough to hold on to me like I mattered in the first place.
With Max, I felt safe, and that was better than I ever could have imagined.
###
Max
I woke up starving.
I blamed my hunger on last night’s lack of sleep. After Fleur had left me in the library, after that kiss, I’d been too keyed up to go to bed. I went for a run this morning to clear my head, but that hadn’t helped much. She was still in there, impossible to ignore. And as much as it was driving me crazy, part of me didn’t want to ignore her. I liked her under my skin like this, in a way that was real. I liked being able to remember the taste and feel of her.
I showered and then made my way down to the cafeteria, hoping to catch the tail end of brunch and alternating between looking for Fleur and wanting to avoid her.
Part of me needed to know if she was as confused about this as I was, if that kiss had lodged itself in her brain, too, refusing to be pushed out. And part of me was afraid that she wasn’t, and it hadn’t, and all it would take was one look to slice me in two.
Who would I get this morning—the Ice Queen or the girl who had been burning up in my arms?
And then I walked into the cafeteria and I heard the sound of her laughter, and my whole body stilled.
Fleur stood by the drink fountain with Maggie, her head thrown back, long brown hair raining down. It was a mass of tumbles and waves that made my heart clench.
Sometimes she wore her hair perfectly straight, each strand gleaming. But other times, during exams, or early mornings, or when I caught her at the gym, her hair was messy in a sexy, just-got-out-of-bed look that took hot to a whole other level.
She wasn’t wearing makeup, and she’d dressed casually in tight black workout pants that fit perfectly across her ass, and a hot-pink workout tank that showed off her tanned skin and cleavage.
Her head turned to the side, and our gazes locked across the room. This was the moment. It was a moment that felt like an eternity, and then those lips that I’d kissed curved into a smile that hit me in the gut. Her eyes sparkled with something that looked like amusement. No, better than that. Like we had a secret no one else knew about. I couldn’t keep my lips from spreading as the answering smile took over my face. Her chin jerked in acknowledgment before ducking back down.
I looked away, walking toward an empty table, my heart hammering. I didn’t know how to play this one. Part of me wanted to go over and say hi. At the same time, it would definitely look weird considering our hate truce had only been a few days ago. And I hadn’t talked to George about any of this, and worse, I had no clue how to tell him I’d kissed his ex-girlfriend.
I ate my breakfast, focused less on the food than the girl in front of me. I wished Maggie would go away. I mean, I liked her, but I wanted a chance to say something to Fleur in private. I wanted to see where we stood after last night.
###
Fleur
“So what do you have planned for the rest of the weekend?”
I turned my attention away from Max’s table to focus on Maggie.
I shrugged. “Studying, I guess.”
She looked at me like I had three heads. Fair enough, weekends used to be reserved for partying. But this was the new me. Sort of.
“You’re really taking this whole getting good grades thing seriously, aren’t you?”
There was surprise in her tone, and while I knew she didn’t mean to make me feel bad, it stung just the same.
“I’m worried about not graduating.” I should have worried about it all along. Unfortunately, leaving things to the last minute was also pretty classically me.
“How are things going in your Project Finance class?” she asked. “Are you and Max getting along better?”
“You could say that.”
“Could say what?”
My head jerked up as our friend Michael slid into the seat across from me. Michael was one of the few other exceptions to my not being friends with Americans. It wasn’t that I made a point of not liking the American kids; we just typically didn’t have a lot in common. Except for Maggie. And Michael, who I’d basically inherited from Mya. And now, apparently, Max.
I was surrounded by Americans.
Maggie answered for me. “Fleur was just telling me that she’s getting along with Max.”
Michael grinned and wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Getting along or getting along?”
I rolled my eyes.
“I’m just saying. If I weren’t in a relationship, I’d do him. That boy is fucking hot.” Michael teased.
Tell me about it.
Maggie shook her head, a wry smile on her face. “Trust me. I don’t think he plays for your team.”
Michael winked. “I like a challenge, and he looks like he’d be worth it.”
Yeah, he totally did.
Maggie burst into laughter at the exact moment that Max turned his head and looked over at our table. Our gazes collided. God, I hoped with every fiber in my being that he didn’t know we were talking about how fuckable he was.
I felt my cheeks burning up.
The corner of his mouth curved, transforming his whole face.
Merde.
It was one thing to kiss Max at night when I was feeling reckless, another entirely to feel this fluttering in my stomach at the sight of his smile. I’d learned the hard way that flutters spelled trouble.
“Fleur!” Maggie waved her hand in the air. “Are you okay?”
I forced myself to look away from Max. “I was just distracted. What?”
She nodded toward Michael. “We’re going to head to Chelsea to do some shopping. Do you want to come?”
I shook my head. “Go ahead without me. I think I’m going to sit here a bit longer.” I hesitated, wracking my brain for a plausible excuse that would have me saying no to shopping. “Mya said she might swing by for brunch,” I lied. “We haven’t really had a chance to catch up since school started.”
I waited while they finished eating, my heart pounding. It felt like it took them a year to get up from the table, but when they finally did, I sat, trying to figure out what I was going to say to him. I sat there until I couldn’t sit anymore, until the weight of his stare was enough to have me pushing my chair away from the table and standing, my limbs full of nerves.
I didn’t do nervous, but somehow Max seemed to disprove everything I knew about myself. So apparently I did nervous, and he brought it out in me.
I crossed the distance between us, the tables and chairs separating us nothing compared to the invisible barrier created by the International School social hierarchy. This was the second time in two days I’d sought him out. Discreet was going out the window, and I didn’t care. I felt different around him; he took the gaping hole inside me and filled it was something as simple as stomach flutters. And as much as I was a little terrified of the flutters, I recognized what they meant. I didn’t feel dead inside anymore.
I felt.
###
Max
Her walk was like a dance you couldn’t help but watch. When I walked, I put one foot in front of the other, not giving a shit about anything other than getting where I needed to go. Fleur made the act of walking look like the getting there was more important than the destination.
She didn’t hesitate this time as she slid into the chair across from mine, a smile teasing her mouth.
“Hi.”
Christ.
Her hi whispered its way through my body.
“Hi,” I echoed like an idiot. Again.
Her smile deepened. “I saw you siting here by yourself and thought I’d stop by. Hate truce and all that.”
I swallowed and grinned. “Right.”
; For a moment, neither of us spoke, and then Fleur sighed.
“Let’s not make this awkward, okay?”
“Make what awkward?”
Her eyes narrowed, and her voice lowered as she leaned in closer to me. “The kiss.”
“Kiss might be a tame word for it.”
“We’re both adults, and it happened.” She was quiet for a beat. “I don’t want to make it difficult for us to work together on the project.”
“Are you having a hard time concentrating?” I teased, unable to resist the urge to screw with her a bit. She looked so cute like this, trying for her usual swagger but a little off her game. I’d never seen Fleur be cute before.
She fluttered her eyelashes at me in a move that was clearly practiced. “Please. You’re the one who couldn’t keep your eyes off me all brunch. You’ve been eye-fucking me for the past twenty minutes.”
Very few women could deliver a line like that. Fleur rocked it.
“Try longer than that.” I grinned. “So you noticed me noticing you . . .”
Her eyes widened, and her lips curved. “You wish.” Her words might have been designed to shoot me down, but her tone was all flirt and all Fleur. She was way too good at this, and she knew it.
“Maybe I do,” I teased, struggling to keep my tone light under the truth in my words. One kiss—well, one night of kissing—and she’d already sucked me in deep.
She leaned forward another inch, and I allowed my eyes to dip, taking in her cleavage. I wanted her again. Bad. Wanted her even as I realized this had the potential to be a spectacularly disastrous idea.
When she and George had first started dating, I hadn’t really gotten it. I mean, yeah, I got why he was into her, but I couldn’t understand why he would get involved with a girl he had to have known would eventually break his heart. But now I understood . . .
She made the ride so good you didn’t care.
“What are we doing here?” I asked, my voice low. It took effort to ask the question like it was a casual one, even more to keep myself from caring too much about her answer.
And then she said something that somehow seemed like both a promise and a challenge.
“Want to find out?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Max
I had to tell him.
I sat next to George on the couch in our room, playing our favorite video game. He was kicking my ass, mainly because I’d stopped paying attention somewhere along the way and, instead, spent most of my time going through all the ways to tell him I’d kissed his ex-girlfriend.
We weren’t a couple, it had only been one kiss, but there was a code. He’d been my best friend since I’d started at the International School and my roommate for two years. I owed him the truth, even if I wasn’t sure what the truth was exactly. All I had was, I kissed Fleur, and nothing beyond that.
“I need to tell you something,” I blurted out, throwing the controller on our coffee table as a drone took out my avatar.
George set his controller down. Game time was sacrosanct. You did not talk about important shit while playing a game. It was bro code. But you also didn’t kiss your bro’s girl . . . or ex-girl. Of course, Fleur wasn’t the kind of girl who belonged to anyone.
Still.
I sucked in a deep breath and let it all out.
“I kissed Fleur.”
He just stared at me, not speaking, and I wondered if he’d heard me. Nerves mixed with guilt as each second passed, and the tension inside me grew. And then he spoke.
“Fleur?”
That one word contained a lot—mainly six different variations of shock.
“Yeah.” I stared at my hands, not sure I was ready to look at him, afraid of what I’d see there.
He swallowed. “Shit.”
Shit.
“When?” he asked, his voice strained.
Fuck, talking about it was horrible. I almost wished he’d just punch me or something.
“Last night. It wasn’t planned. It just happened.” Which wasn’t an excuse at all.
It was hard; we were in a gray area. They hadn’t been together for a long time now, and thank fuck they’d never had sex, and still, I felt guilty. But when it came down to it, I didn’t feel guilty enough to not kiss her again.
George cut through all of the bullshit and got to the question that mattered most. “Are you going to keep doing it?”
“If she lets me, probably,” I answered honestly. This was the last conversation I wanted to be having with him, but I wasn’t going to be a pussy about it, either. “I don’t know what to say, man. I know she fucked you over—”
“She didn’t fuck me over,” George interrupted, his voice quiet.
I looked over at him now, unable to read the expression on his face. Something twisted in my gut.
“She broke up with you.”
“She did, but it wasn’t working. I knew it; she knew it. I’d hoped that things would change, that eventually she’d be as into me as I was with her. I’d hoped for that since the beginning. It’s a shit way to start a new relationship.”
There was still pain in his voice. It was dull, but there, and it reminded me, yet again, that Fleur left her hooks in you whether you wanted them there or not.
“I’m sorry. About all of it.”
George’s tone was wry, and this time he did look at me. “Sorry you kissed her?”
I sighed. “I’m not sorry I kissed her. I know that makes me a dick. I’m sorry because you’re my best friend, and I don’t want to ruin our friendship. Or hurt you.” I couldn’t lie. We all deserved better than that. “But if I had to do it all over again, I’d still kiss her.”
There it was.
“Because she’s Fleur.” He said it like her name was explanation enough, which it totally was.
“Yeah.”
I knew he got me on some level, but that didn’t make this any easier.
George sighed.
“You okay with all of this? I can give you space if you want.”
My question hung between us.
He shook his head. “It’s cool.” He hesitated for a beat, and something that might have been guilt flashed in his eyes. “I knew when I started dating Fleur . . . I knew how you felt about her.”
Jesus.
“How?”
“You noticed her. A lot. She’s hard to ignore, but it was different with you. I knew it, and I dated her anyway.” He shrugged. “It’s Fleur.”
There really wasn’t anything left to say.
“So are you dating now?” he asked, his voice stumbling over the words a bit, clearly still coming to terms with this change.
“No. It was just a kiss.” A pretty fucking amazing kiss. “I don’t know where her head is.”
He nodded, his expression hooded again. “But if she wanted to date, you would.”
The knot in my stomach grew. “Yeah.”
George picked up the controllers from the coffee table, handing one to me while he queued up the next game. His gaze didn’t meet mine as the next words left his mouth.
“Be careful, man.”
I nodded, and even though I could tell he wasn’t completely over it, I gave him the space he needed.
We spent the next hour blowing shit up.
###
Fleur
I stared at my inbox, heart pounding, anger spiking at the e-mail in front of me.
I saw you.
Three words from an anonymous e-mail address. The same e-mail address that had sent me the blackmail letter before and the e-mail a few nights ago. Three words that could have meant anything, and yet I knew . . . My blackmailer had seen me kissing Max.
I didn’t care, not in the embarrassed sense, but it pissed me off that someone thought they could screw with me like this. It wasn’t anyone’s business who I kissed.
I was just so tired. Tired of the game, the parties, of always having to look a certain way and say certain things. I was sick of everyone watching me, of living my life
on a pedestal and under a microscope.
It had been cool three years ago. I’d loved London, loved the parties and the fashion. I’d spent my nights getting drunk on champagne and then falling into Costa’s bed. Until I woke the fuck up and realized how bad he really was for me.
The thing about having everything on the surface was that you had everything on the surface. I’d never been accused of being particularly deep, but even I got tired of shallow and superficial. I’d wanted more from Costa. I’d wanted the family I’d never had, the promise that he’d be there for me no matter what. I’d wanted the fairy tale. But I’d failed to realize that while I’d wanted deep, he’d wanted easy, and in the end he’d won, leaving me with nothing.
Now I was somewhere stuck between the girl I’d been and the girl I wanted to be.
I closed my laptop, grabbing a pair of trainers from my closet. I had one of those metabolisms that could handle pretty much anything, so despite what everyone thought, I didn’t work out for vanity. I did it because it was one of the few ways I could clear my head, and it had the added benefit of not giving me a hangover like my other head-clearing activities. Working out kept me sane when the walls started closing in, and now after another e-mail and last night with Max, I needed to breathe. I needed the peace and quiet to sort my head out.
I needed to run.
###
I ran in Hyde Park before heading to my gym on Kensington High Street. I didn’t really have a preference between running on the treadmill or in the park; each had their benefits. The treadmill made me feel like I was fighting, the pounding of my feet on the belt its own form of release. The park made me feel full inside. There was something about all that green. I was a city girl through and through, but even I craved something else once in a while.
Today was one of those truly perfect London days. It was late September, that time when London hovered between summer and fall. It was warm enough that I was comfortable running in my tank top, but there was enough of a breeze in the air to hint at the changing season. The leaves were on the cusp of turning, the colors reminding me of one of my favorite Prada dresses. It was a beautiful day.
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