Chapter 10
10
Max
I took her to a gourmet burger restaurant off Kensington High Street. It wasn’t fancy, but I figured it was nice enough for Fleur. And I hadn’t been kidding earlier. Thanks to the shopping and working out, I was starving.
As we walked down the street, I grabbed her hand, linking her fingers with mine. She didn’t pull away. And the entire time, our kiss ran through my mind on a never-ending loop.
We sat down and ordered.
“This place seems nice,” she commented.
“I wasn’t sure you’d like it.” I didn’t want to admit to how nervous I’d been that she wouldn’t like it. I figured her dinners were spent at restaurants I couldn’t afford.
“Why?”
“It’s not fancy. Typically, high-maintenance means high-maintenance in all areas,” I teased.
She shrugged in a classically French way that somehow managed to be both sexy and adorable. “I’m selectively high-maintenance.”
I laughed. “Now that’s not surprising.”
Her eyes narrowed playfully. “Are you really going to give me a hard time after I spent all day helping you shop for a suit?”
“Maybe I’m not saying that being high-maintenance is always a bad thing,” I countered. “At least the way you do it.”
She gaped at me. “You must be joking. After everything, you’re now telling me that you like my attitude?”
I had a feeling we were venturing into stronger territory than liked , but I figured I’d save that bombshell for another day.
I matched her shrug. At least I tried to.
“I can admit that I was wrong. You can be high-maintenance. But if that were all you were, then you wouldn’t have helped me out today. And you did help me—a lot. Let’s be honest. Without you, we both know I’d be interviewing in a suit that made me look like a used-car salesman compared to everyone else. So yeah. I owe you. And I was wrong.”
She blinked, her brown eyes getting bigger, staring at me like she was just now seeing me for the first time, and I was some rare brand of species she’d never encountered. Maybe I was. I didn’t come from her world, didn’t screw around like the guys she knew.
“I messed up. I messed up with you. I was wrong about the Ice Queen thing. I was wrong about a lot. I’m not afraid to admit it.”
I took a breath to steady myself as I put it all on the line.
“I make mistakes. Plenty. But if you were mine, I wouldn’t be the kind of guy who would screw around on you.”
She paled.
“I know you know it, but Costa was an asshole. You didn’t deserve how he treated you. No one deserves something like that.” I took a sip of my drink. “And there’s no contest between you and that Natasha girl. Not even close. He’s an asshole, and he’s an idiot.”
She didn’t speak. She just stared at me, her eyes becoming impossibly wider with each word that left my lips. I’d somehow stunned her into silence.
After that kiss in the dressing room, I wasn’t playing around. I figured she was a hell of a lot more experienced than I was, but she wanted me. And while making out in a dressing room wasn’t the strongest foundation, it was something. I’d be a fool to not try to leverage that to more.
“What is this?” she asked, confusion filling her voice.
I didn’t know what it was, but something in her uncertainty gave me the confidence to push on, despite the mad pounding in my chest and the white noise in my ears.
“I like you. A lot.”
There, I’d said it. The ball was in her court now.
Her lips parted and then closed. And then opened again. Her lashes fluttered, and my heart clenched.
“Have you told George that we’re hanging out? That we kissed?”
Of all the responses I’d expected, I hadn’t anticipated George’s name falling from her lips.
“Yeah, I did. I couldn’t lie to him. We’ve been friends since freshman year, and he would have found out. I owed it to him to hear it from me.”
She winced. “Was he upset?”
The concern in her voice surprised me again. Like everyone, I’d assumed she’d dumped George without a second thought. But the guilt in her eyes suggested something else entirely.
Once again, I revised my opinion of her. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately. At some point I probably just needed to start from scratch, considering everything I thought I knew seemed to be wrong.
“I don’t think so. He needed a minute. I mean, it wasn’t something he was expecting, but he was cool about it. I don’t know that he’s going to feel comfortable hanging around us, but I don’t blame him. I think he understands.” I read the expression on her face. “You’re surprised by that.”
“I am.” She swallowed, her voice tight. “I hurt him.”
I hesitated, asking myself if I was really going to go there. On one hand, I wanted to understand; on the other, I didn’t know how much I could handle hearing. And George was my best friend. But somehow, I figured her explanation would explain more about her than her and George.
“What happened with you guys?”
She sighed. “Are we really going to do this? Talk about our pasts?”
My eyebrow rose. “I hate to break it to you, but my past is boring. I’m happy to tell you anything you want to know.”
The look she gave me made her seem years older. “You know mine is more complicated than that.”
I did know. I knew a bit, at least. I knew she’d dated Costa, possibly the biggest asshole I’d ever met. I knew he’d cheated on her and left her for Natasha. I knew Fleur had been so upset that she’d left school for a while freshman year. And even though I’d been in China at the time, I’d heard about her drug overdose at the end of sophomore year, only to be shocked to find out that the Fleur who came back junior year had a thing for George.
“What have you heard about me and George?” she asked.
“Not much. George and I didn’t exactly talk about it.”
It would have been a knife in my chest if I’d had to hear about them. I would have listened because he was my friend, but it would have hurt like hell.
“He was upset?”
“Yeah. Like I said, we didn’t talk about it, but as a guy who’s into you, I can safely say he was upset.”
Fleur sighed, and I was once again surprised by the remorse in her eyes and voice. There were layers to this girl, and I was beginning to realize I’d only scratched the surface.
“I never should have dated him.”
“Why did you?”
She groaned. “Just so you know, I hate talking about this stuff. I especially hate talking about Costa. This is a one-time thing. I don’t want to spend all our time together focused on the past.”
That was fine with me. I had even less of a desire to talk about her and Costa than I did about her and George.
The waiter came to the table with our burgers, setting them both down on the place mats in front of us. When he left, I waited for Fleur to continue.
She stared down at her plate, no longer meeting my gaze. “The breakup with Costa was bad. I’ve put it behind me, and he’s the last person I want to think of anymore.”
I remembered the naked picture of Fleur that had made its way around the school last year, and because of that alone, I couldn’t blame her.
“Okay.”
She took a bite out of her burger, and her eyes closed, and I was distracted by the look of pleasure on her face. When she’d finished chewing, she continued talking.
“You weren’t around sophomore year, but I’m sure you heard about my overdose.” Her voice tightened, and the next thing I knew, I’d reached out and taken hold of her free hand and laced her fingers with mine. I squeezed.
“Yeah.”
“I was a mess last year. I knew I couldn’t stay on the same path I’d been on. I needed to change my life. Get my shit together. George brought me flowers in the hospital. He was friends with Maggie, and he seemed like a nice guy.”
“He is.”
“And Maggie said he’d had a really big crush on me for a while.”
He wasn’t the only one.
“So I went for it. I wanted to like him. I really did. But from the beginning it just... Something was missing. We didn’t spark. Do you know what I mean?”
Yeah, I did. I felt it every time I was with her. I nodded, afraid that if I spoke, I’d say too much.
“Maybe I should have said something sooner, let him off easy,” she continued. “But the longer we were together, the worse I felt about the whole thing, and then finally it just seemed easier to pretend.”
She looked down at her plate again.
“I knew he wanted things to go further with us, and I just couldn’t. We had nothing in common. He didn’t even really know me, and I’m pretty sure that if he had gotten to know me, he wouldn’t have liked me anymore. He’s just so nice, and I’m so...not,” she finished as she looked up, her gaze locking on to mine.
“Nice guys don’t like girls like me. At least they shouldn’t.”
I didn’t know what it was about those words, but something clenched around my heart as soon as they left her mouth.
She was like a beautiful vase that had broken and been glued back together—technically she was whole, still stunning, but no matter where you looked, the cracks were impossible to miss. And even more, it was hard to ignore that they would always be there, always a part of her. And then I realized I hadn’t been paying attention all along.
I’d been so wrong about her.
George had treated Fleur like she was untouchable, perfect. Like she’d been the girl we’d fantasized about since freshman year. Even when I’d given her a hard time, I’d always had this idea of her in my head. We’d thought she was immune to the insecurities the rest of us dealt with.
It was stupid, of course, but that was the thing with crushes.
They were more about you than the object of your affection.
The girl sitting across from me at the table wasn’t the same girl who’d walked around the International School like she owned it. The confidence was still there, the arrogance as natural to her as breathing. But there were cracks, scars and chinks in her armor that had changed her. They were faint, but they were just as much a part of her as the glossy, shiny, magazine-like image.
They made her more interesting, and as much as it shouldn’t have been possible, even more beautiful. She was real, and she was a survivor.
I’d never admired her before.
Now I did.
She wasn’t the girl she had been, and whoever this girl was, I wanted to get to know her better.
I leaned back in my chair, studying her across the table. Away from the International School and everyone else, now that it was just the two of us, she seemed different. More down-to-earth, more normal. Like she’d stripped the armor away, and now I got to see the real Fleur.
She blew the fantasy out of the water.
“Let’s try something,” I suggested. “Let’s try getting to know each other. I know what people say about you, what I thought and had wrong, but I don’t really know you. Give me a chance to know you. Give me a chance for you to know me.”
“What do you want to know?”
Anything. Everything.
I started off easy. “Where’s home for you? Paris?”
“Basically. I haven’t lived there full-time in years. I was at boarding school in Switzerland before I came to the International School.”
“When did you go to boarding school?”
“When I was ten.”
She’d been on her own for twelve years. It explained a lot. Compared to most people at the International School, there was something about Fleur that made her seem older. It wasn’t just the fact that she’d clearly seen the world; it was the way she didn’t really lean on anyone. She was close with Maggie, Mya and Samir, but there seemed to be a barrier that kept Fleur apart from her friends. She wasn’t the type to ask for help or advice; she was fiercely independent.
“That’s young.”
She shrugged. “It was fine.”
Normally, when people said they were fine it meant they were anything but. Fleur, on the other hand, really seemed over it.
“My parents weren’t around a lot when I was younger, and my nannies pretty much hated me.” A grin tugged at her mouth. “Justifiably so.”
“You’ve always been a handful,” I teased.
She laughed. “Pretty much.” She took a sip of her drink, and then those brown eyes focused on me. “How about you?”
“I’m from Chicago. It’s okay. I like to go back and visit my friends. I’m not super-close with my family.”
“Why aren’t you close to your family?”
Trust Fleur to be blunt.
“Let’s just say we want very different things. They didn’t understand why I wanted to leave Chicago or come to the International School.” The old hurt was there, but she’d trusted me, so I did the same. “When I told my father I wanted to work in finance, he laughed and said I was dreaming.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s ridiculous. Everyone knows you’re the smartest guy in our class. Of course you’re going to get a job in finance.”
The anger in her voice surprised me, and the fact that she defended me meant everything.
So many layers to this girl.
“So obviously your dad’s a dick.”
I laughed at the way she’d dispatched years of family drama with one word. She got to the heart of things.
“Now I get why you left Chicago. But why London?”
“I wanted something different,” I admitted. “I had good grades and test scores, and I applied to a bunch of schools. The International School offered me an amazing scholarship package, and I liked their job stats for grads. For finance, London and New York are two major players. A degree from the International School will give me a foot in the door with a lot of banks here and will probably mean more than it would in New York.” I just had to survive the interview gauntlet. “How about you?”
“I followed Samir here.” Her eyes shuttered. “And my ex.”
I waited for her to continue, feeling like I was getting a little more of her history.
“They used to be friends—Samir and Costa. All three of us used to be close.”
I could see that. On the surface, Samir and Costa seemed similar—flashy watches, VIP tables and attitude.
“What happened?”
She shrugged again. “Samir didn’t like the way Costa was treating me, and they had a big fight.”
Samir rose a few notches in my estimation.
A bitter laugh escaped her lips. “He tried to tell me I should dump Costa, but I was stupid and proud, and I didn’t listen.”
Her face puckered like she’d swallowed something sour. “Do we have to do this thing where we unload our sad stories on each other? Mainly, my sad story. Can we just figure it out as we go along?”
I was pretty sure I’d say yes to anything she suggested. I wanted to get to know her better, wanted to know all of her, and the promise of her was there, dangling in front of me. I’d take it any way I could get it. Take her any way I could get her.
“I want to date you.” The words flew out of my mouth before I could rein them in.
She blinked.
“I think we should take things slowly,” I continued. “Get to know each other. No pressure.”
It seemed optimistic to suggest taking things slowly when the second I touched her I seemed to lose my mind, but it also felt too important to rush things with her. Whatever she said about not wanting to talk about her past, it was obvious that it still weighed on her. I’d rather give her time to sort things out, time to decide what she felt about me, than take things too far too fast and ruin whatever real shot I had in the process.
I could do slow. It just might kill me first.
“We’re going on dates ?” She said the word like it was a foreign concept.
I grinned. “That’s the plan. We can shake things up and study together occasionally, too. Work on project finance. It’ll be fun. Promise.”
Her lips curved, her smile blinding. “Okay.”
And just like that, I was dating Fleur Marceaux.