Chapter 17 Chanel #3
The tears are falling faster than I can wipe them away. “Fuck, now my makeup’s ruined,” I say on a shaky breath, half laughing
at myself.
“You still look pretty,” Ares says matter-of-factly. “You always do.”
My heart stumbles over itself like a drunken fool trying to find the exit, but there’s no escaping this feeling. And so when the air shifts between us, when his eyes flicker down to my lips, I lean in.
In the past, kissing was a pleasant pastime at best, a chore more often than not, and a disgusting, deeply regrettable ordeal
at worst. There have been occasions where I’d kiss a boy simply because we’d run out of things to talk about, and we were
both already sitting there, so might as well. I had perfect control over myself. It was like I could disconnect my body from
my mind; I could calmly plan out my breakfast or outfit for the next day inside my head while I drew them closer to me.
But something in me fractures when his lips graze mine.
My mouth parts on its own accord and I shift forward, letting my knees spread until I’m straddling his torso on the couch,
every possible inch of skin pressed together, and still, it isn’t nearly close enough. My nails sink into the muscles in his
shoulders as I kiss him, wild and breathless and stunned by the intensity of my body’s response to him.
Is this how it’s supposed to feel? Like hunger? Like the world’s on fire? Like I might be losing my mind?
He grips my leg with the kind of sureness that only comes from experience, and violence blazes through me at the thought of him touching any other girl this way, even if it was before we ever met.
I run my nails down his back like I can keep him there, just keep him, make him mine.
A breathless sound escapes my lips, and for once I’m not faking it.
If anything, I’m holding back, clenching my teeth to stifle a gasp when his hands slide to my upper thigh.
My head is spinning, or the room is. I only stop when I taste the rust of blood on his lips and I remember, dimly, too late,
that he’s injured, but his fingers find the nape of my neck and he pulls me down to him again.
“Keep going,” he says hoarsely.
“But . . . you’re bleeding—”
“Doesn’t matter.” His voice is rough, the rasp of flint.
He kisses me harder, and I think I’ve done it, I’ve figured out a way to keep the future at bay, because time seems to halt.
There’s only the two of us, his heart thudding against my chest. I bite gently down on his lower lip and he makes a sound
deep in the back of his throat, the most vulnerable and unraveled I’ve ever heard him, and his hands are everywhere but still
not enough—
It almost hurts to break away from him.
Not because I want to, but because I need to leave him wanting more. It’s the most basic of rules when it comes to attraction:
Never give him everything at once, or else there’ll be nothing for him to fantasize about, no point for him to keep chasing
after you. It’s just as well. If I were to keep going any longer, let him hold me tighter, run his hands even farther down
my body, all those rules might just dissolve from my mind.
He opens his eyes slowly. There’s the briefest moment where his features are relaxed and his guard is down, where I glimpse what he might be like when nobody else is around.
Then his expression smooths out, and he releases his grip on my hair with just enough reluctance to make me consider kissing him again.
Silence passes between us like a truce. This is new. Uncharted territory.
“Do you want to watch something?” he asks after a beat, nodding at the TV.
The casualness of the question surprises me. As if it’s just any ordinary evening, as if we’ve long fallen into the habit
of making out on his couch, and he hadn’t narrowly escaped being beaten to death mere hours ago. As if he isn’t still bleeding
right now.
“Okay,” I say, matching his tone.
He leans forward to grab the remote, barely wincing when the movement pulls against his wounds, and settles back down next
to me, his arm draped around my shoulders. He starts to flip through the five-second previews, but my eyes land on a familiar
logo in his Continue Watching history.
“Wait. I was on that variety show,” I say, pointing at it. “You were watching me?”
He pauses, his hand still on the remote, and appears on the brink of denying it, then relents. “It came up on my recommended
list the other day and I was . . . curious,” he admits. “I only saw one scene.”
A thrill races through my blood. He was curious about me.
I’d thought that my chances of winning Ares over had pretty much evaporated after I’d accused him of leaking the divorce story, but after tonight, maybe my chances aren’t so bad after all.
But it feels like more than just a victory, more than relief that my plan to save my own future is working.
It feels almost like a type of pressure building inside my chest, a complicated heat and weight, like his body on mine minutes before.
“Let’s keep watching it, then,” I say.
He raises his brows. “Really? You want to watch yourself?”
“What, do you think that’s incredibly narcissistic of me?” I ask, grinning.
The corner of his mouth rises, like he can’t help himself. The closest to a smile I’ve seen on him. “I already knew about
your narcissism, though your shamelessness is refreshing.” But he clicks into the show anyway.
As the opening theme plays, I lie there with my head nestled against his shoulder, the blue glow of the TV screen flickering
in my peripheral vision, too comfortable to move. It’s so easy to pretend the rest of the world away like this, everything
blurry and secretive and vaguely intimate. I can smell the perfume in my own hair, mixed in with the lingering notes of blood,
hear the loud thudding of his heartbeat.
“You flew to Paris just for your birthday?” Ares asks as a scene of me strolling down the Champs-élysées flickers to life
on the screen.
“Yeah. It looks nice, right?” I say. The cameras continue to follow me throughout the weekend: stopping to take photos in cobbled alleyways, sun on my shoulders, floral sundress billowing around my ankles, smiling through perfume-making classes and private cathedral tours.
Then the actual birthday party at a luxurious restaurant with a panoramic view of the city, me showing up with my hair done, in a custom-made dress, holding a brand-new Chanel purse I’d been eyeing for months, while a group of girls—all gorgeous, all my age—gathered around me.
“But like, I barely knew any of those people.”
Ares frowns at the screen, where one of the girls is loudly gushing over my dress. “Those aren’t your friends?”
“Nope. It was just for the show,” I say, shrugging. “All those girls are the daughters of CEOs and fashion designers and entertainment
company founders. The director of the variety show and my mom created the guest list. I didn’t even know who was coming.”
Ares doesn’t say anything to that, but he grabs the blanket from the other end of the couch and covers my bare legs with it
and holds me tighter.
The shot cuts to a lychee cream birthday cake from Holiland, my name written out in chocolate and pink swirls in the center.
And though I’m used to seeing myself on screen by now, it’s still strange to be presented with the edited version, cropped
by the camera, and remember how it had felt to live inside the frame.
I’m grinning like I’m competing to be the happiest girl in the universe, blowing out the candles, and then cutting through
the cake with a shiny gold knife. “That’s the part I was looking forward to the most, you know,” I tell Ares. “The birthday
cake. It’d been ages since I’d had cake or any kind of dessert.”
“And? Was it good?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t get to taste it.
Right before we all went to sit down, my mom reminded me that we were still filming for the next few days, and if I had any sugar, I’d end up looking bloated.
So I did the trick where I was like, playing with the icing using the fork—see what I’m doing there?
—but when the camera moved away, I’d simply put the fork down.
What?” I can sense Ares staring at me, and I tilt my head toward him.
It’s difficult to read his expression, but something glimmers in the depths of his eyes.
“You should have had some,” he says, his voice quiet. “You deserve birthday cake.”
I blink in surprise, the pressure inside my chest expanding until it nearly resembles pain. It’s so unexpectedly sweet, so
sincere, that I don’t know what to say, except . . . “Thank you.”
We finish the episode in silence, but I’m barely watching anymore. Instead, I run my fingers absently through his hair, over
the hot shell of his ear, the cool, metallic edge of his piercings, and I let myself pretend for just a little while that
the boy lying beside me isn’t fated to ruin my life.