Chapter 8
8
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.
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.
“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 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 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. “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 bad way to start a new relationship.”
“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.
“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.” An 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 up planets on our game.
Fleur
I stared at my inbox, heart pounding, anger spiking at the email in front of me.
I saw you.
Three words from an anonymous email address. The same email address that had sent me the blackmail letter before and the email 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 made me angry 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 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 email 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 occasionally.
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.
I jogged over to the gym, blood pumping, a thin layer of sweat on my body, my mind already clearer. After the overdose sophomore year, my parents had sent me to a “wellness spa” to “solve my problems,” as my father had put it. I hadn’t been big on sitting in a circle and talking about my feelings, but I had discovered exercise as my own brand of therapy. Yoga centered me, kickboxing let me kick some ass and running allowed me to escape.
I bounded up the stairs, heading for the weight room. My gym in Paris was one of the fanciest and most exclusive gyms in the world—the kind of place where you would find yourself on a treadmill next to a movie star. This place was the total opposite. It wasn’t crappy, but it was nondescript. The school had worked out a deal for students to use the gym since the International School didn’t have its own facilities.
I started off on the leg machines first, working through a circuit that had my muscles screaming. I was just finishing up my last set of reps when I saw him.
Max was on the other side of the room lifting weights while a burly guy spotted him.
I’d seen him at the gym before, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I always had this reaction to him. I was pretty sure all the women felt the same way about the sight of Max’s body lifting weights, his muscles exposed, sweat dripping...
My type might have been Gucci loafers and Rolexes, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate what was right in front of me.
I appreciated it a lot. For at least a minute. Maybe two.
He wore a gray T-shirt with the sleeves cut off and a pair of black shorts that hit him at the knee. His biceps were big and sculpted, his legs muscular. His dark hair fell forward over his brow as he lifted the weight again, and I watched in fascination as his body braced to support itself. Sweat dripped down his face, and his eyes blazed with determination. He completed the rep and set the weight down. I froze as his head turned and he caught sight of me.
A smile spread across his lips and a familiar ache settled low in my belly.
The smile grew, his eyes on me as he said something to the guy who had been spotting him, exchanging a complicated handshake.
I waited to see if he’d come over and speak to me, trying to string together a coherent sentence, when suddenly he moved over to a black gym bag against the wall. He grabbed a towel from his bag, wiping his face and grabbing a fresh shirt, this one white. He rose, lifting his shirt up over his head and throwing it into the gym bag, and all hope of coherent fled.
Abs. Abs everywhere. Work-of-fucking-art abs.
Max walked toward me, tugging the fresh white T-shirt over his head, the fabric a curtain coming down on the best show I’d ever seen.
He stopped a couple feet away.
“Hi.”
I forced my gaze up until our eyes met. “Hi.”
He grinned. “Good workout?”
Way better now.
“Yes.”
His lips twitched. “Are you okay?”
I froze. “What?”
“Are you okay?” he repeated. “You’re flushed. Hard workout?”
He totally knew. “Something like that.”
His grin deepened, and a dimple popped out. Hello.
Max shifted back and forth, rocking on his heels, studying me the whole time. I struggled for inscrutable as I stared back at him, even if it was hard to keep my lips from mirroring his in the face of that dimple.
Who knew a dent in your face could be so lethal?
“What are you doing the rest of the weekend?” he asked, his voice distracting me from his smile.
“Probably just studying.”
“No hot parties?” he teased.
“No. You?”
“Definitely no hot parties.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean. Any plans for the weekend?”
“I’m going shopping.”
“Excuse me?” I didn’t know a lot about Max, but it was clear that he didn’t care about fashion at all. The few times George had brought him out with us last year he’d made little to no effort.
“I have the first round of job interviews next week,” he explained. “I need a nice suit.”
“You have job interviews next week and you waited until now to get a suit?”
“Yeah. Why?”
I gaped at him. “Because a suit must be tailored. You can’t just buy a suit. It needs to fit perfectly. You’re cutting it close. What day are your job interviews?”
I may have procrastinated with things like studying, but I did not mess around when it came to fashion.
He laughed. “Why do I feel like I just committed a crime? I’m just going to go to the high street to get a suit. It’s not like I’m going to Armani.”
Some part of me died a bit when he strung together the words high street and suit .
“Where are your interviews?”
He rattled off a list of investment banks that were so impressive even I’d heard of them. Every place where he was interviewing catered to a wealthy and exclusive clientele. There were expectations.
“You can’t wear a suit from the high street.”
His gaze darkened, and I knew I’d struck a nerve. “Fleur—”
“You can’t.” I hesitated, reaching for tact, which had never really been a strength of mine. “I get the money thing, but trust me. You’re entering my world now. I know the type of guy who works at one of these banks. They’re going to judge everything about you. Not just the finance stuff but also how you look. They want someone who is going to fit their brand. They’ll want flashy.”
The rest— and you aren’t flashy —might have hung unspoken between us, but we both knew it was there.
“I can’t afford a suit from fucking Armani.”
I stilled. I’d always assumed Max thought he was above us—the clothes, the money, the clubs. I’d figured he didn’t care and thought it was frivolous—thought I was frivolous—but now, hearing the frustration in his voice, I knew I was wrong.
He did care.
And it hit me then that it must be hard to be at a school like the International School, where guys were peacocks who flaunted their money and their families’ power like brightly colored feathers designed to draw females in.
And it worked. Constantly.
For Max, it was all a game for which he didn’t have the tools, and he had no hope of getting them. No wonder he sat out.
“It doesn’t have to be Armani,” I responded, my tone softer.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” he warned.
“I don’t.” I flashed him a killer smile. “I’m the Ice Queen, remember?” I whispered playfully. “I don’t feel normal human emotion.”
He shook his head, the smile returning to his lips, some of the tension easing from his brow. I liked that I could do that.
“You’re a handful, aren’t you?”
“Are you just now figuring that out?” I teased.
This time he gifted me with another flash of his dimple. “No, I’ve been paying attention for a while.”
Something warm wound its way through me.
I could play the whole “Ohmigod, he likes me, he really likes me” game, but that wasn’t my style.
I’d modeled, even done that stupid music video—which, while it had seemed like a fabulous idea at the time and had succeeded in irritating my parents, wasn’t something I was super proud of—so I got it. I was hot. Guys liked hot. Whatever. But right now, with the look in his eyes and the words coming out of his mouth, there seemed to be more. And that was new.
“I’ll go shopping with you.” The words escaped my mouth before I even realized it.
Max was quiet for a beat. “Why?”
“Because it sounds like you need help, and believe it or not, if there’s one thing I’m excellent at it’s shopping.”
He laughed. “True.”
“And you need me.”
“Really?” he drawled.
“Absolutely.”
He sighed. “I’m going to warn you... I hate shopping.”
I grinned. “Somehow I already knew that.”
“And I hate trying on clothes.”
It was too much to resist. Something sparked inside me, and I let it flame.
“I’m sure I can help with that,” I teased.
His eyes widened, and his voice turned husky. “Could be fun.”
The spark turned into a full-on blaze.
“Oh, it will be,” I promised.