Chapter 17: : Chapter 16

Shortly after takeoff, I sent Maman a heads-up of what was to come. Diplomatic it was not, but if she was looking for direct and honest, she certainly received it, and in spades.

Célian: Hopping on a plane to discuss Mathias with you, who, by the way, fucked my fiancée over a year ago. Consequently, I no longer have a fiancée. But I am bringing over a woman, so keep your claws tucked in.

P.S.

Brianna booked a conference call with the entire board later this afternoon, and that includes your philandering ex-husband. I sent you some recordings you need to listen to, so please do that in between auditioning new boy toys.

P.P.S.

I meant it about the claws. I am planning on keeping this one for a while.

After we landed, if Judith was surprised to find we were sharing a Mandarin Hotel suite, she didn’t let it show. She dove headfirst onto the huge bed, making a snow angel on the sheets. I didn’t know why that made me want to fuck her so hard I’d nail her to the mattress. I only knew that scraping her off of it was going to be a bitch, so I opted for jumping in the shower, seeing as I’d been working for thirty-six hours straight so we could take this trip and probably smelled like something had died inside of me, which wasn’t far off.

We still hadn’t discussed my engagement breakdown properly. I didn’t think it was worth mentioning. We were both available now. I could fuck Judith raw against James Townley’s green screen with zero consequences, other than having to replace the screen, which was something we were already planning on.

Everyone at work was already privy to the fact that Lily had gotten the boot after her little performance. Including, by definition, Ava and Gary-Graham-Grant. Whatever his name was.

When I left the bathroom, Jude was out on the balcony, her elbows on the white bannister overlooking the ocean. Her ass, clad in those ripped black jeans, swayed from side to side as she stood on one foot. I was still wrapped in a towel when I approached her, clasping her midriff from behind and grinding my erection into her ass.

“Spent some overtime to cover for your ass.” I bit her earlobe, feeling her body break into chills beneath my touch.

“Looks like you’re covering my ass,” she sassed, wiggling her round butt so my cock was now between her cheeks through her jeans and my towel. My hands slid down, undoing the button of her jeans and sliding the zipper down.

“Bend over and hold on to the bannister, Chucks. Gonna get a little rocky.” I licked my lips, sliding down her jeans and underwear in one go and dropping the towel.

I wasn’t much of an exhibitionist, which was why I’d also rented the rooms on either side of us. But of course I wasn’t going to let her be privy to my level of crazy. What can I say? Having the option to fuck Judith Humphry everywhere in the room and outside of it took first priority, and I wasn’t much of a hedonist, but booking an entire floor was a luxury I’d chosen to take this weekend.

I spread her ass cheeks and slapped her outer thigh lazily as I guided my cock into her already-dripping pussy. I wanted to go slow and steady this time. The last thing I needed was her tipping over the edge. Literally, not figuratively.

“Oh, Célian…” My name on her lips was a prayer.

“Yes?” I asked, thrusting a little harder, bending her down so her upper body was level with my cock and placing a hand over her lower back.

“I missed this,” she whimpered.

But of course, she couldn’t milk those words out of me if my life depended on it. I slapped her ass instead.

“Didn’t peg you for a filthy girl, Chucks. Yet here you are, fucking in front of him.”

“In front of who?” A trace of panic touched her voice, and I laughed, gripping her head and fucking her a little harder.

“Kipling,” I hissed, glancing at her notebook lying on the bed behind us, next to her book.

Yesterday, after Lily had unleashed her crazy in my newsroom, I’d caught Jude writing around the deep hole my ex had created in her notebook, and I’d suppressed the urge to rush out and bite down on her lower lip in front of everyone. Jude’s loyalty, even to objects, mesmerized me.

“Jesus,” she moaned as I thrust deeper into her. “You’re such a jerk.”

“So I’ve been told a million times. Half of them by you.”

I dipped my hand between her legs and rubbed her slit, licking her neck and jaw and the inside of her ear. I didn’t want to admit that fucking Judith felt different, that I was doing things with her I didn’t usually do with my one-night stands. I wasn’t a thoughtful lover. I wasn’t necessarily against eating pussy if it looked delicious, but putting my mouth on a crack meant I was really crazy for a girl. And licking and sucking her every body part while fucking her? That was a first. I didn’t even remember prepping Lily like that.

I felt Judith tighten and spasm around me, and then she came all over my cock, her ass shuddering against my groin. I wanted to come as hard as she had, so I grabbed her by the hair and turned her around, plastering her against the glass of the balcony door.

“Safety first,” I groaned as I drove mercilessly into her. My balls tightened and I pulled out, milking my cum all over her lower back. That was more like it—a fuck, not lovemaking. I gave her ass one last slap and walked into the room, leaving the towel on the floor.

“I’m ordering room service. Clean up and let me know what you want, because your pussy is about to be my starter.”

We never ate the lobster I ordered.

Jude said eating a room-serviced lunch was clinical and sad, that vacation meals equaled dodgy street food from questionable trucks and 7-11 candy bars you didn’t know existed.

She was begging for food poisoning, but I couldn’t deny her. And that was a problem I was beginning to recognize. There was something free and unhinged in the way she viewed life. Her lack of materialistic greed both stunned and ate at me.

So we went for a walk on the beach and ate Cuban sandwiches and drank iced tea on the promenade. The food was greasier than Elijah’s hair, yet oddly satisfying.

Judith then asked if I knew how to skip stones across the water. I told her there were not many things I couldn’t do, and meant it. I mention that our servant had taught me how to do that during summer vacations at our chateau in St-Jean-Cap-De-Ferrat. I wasn’t normally ashamed of my elite upbringing, but for reasons unknown, decided to keep this to myself.

She asked me to teach her. I did.

“Flat, round stones are best. And you want to go fast.” I wrapped her fingers around a little stone I’d found.

She held it in her hand with a smile similar to the one Lily had flashed me when I gave her the engagement ring. Both were stones. Only one was worth more than a fleet of Bentleys. Yet Jude only cared about the important stuff, which reminded me to look down at her feet.

“Yellow?” I asked.

She grinned impishly. “Figure it out.”

We took a walk, and I didn’t hold her hand, and I didn’t kiss her, and I didn’t fucking breathe, because I didn’t trust myself not to do any of those things if I looked her way. I was torn between liking how it felt to spend time with her and hating how she made me want things I’d never cared about.

“How’s your relationship with your mom?” she asked.

“It’s okay. Why?”

“I sometimes wonder what it feels like. To have a mother.”

I raised an eyebrow. I loved Maman, but I couldn’t commit to saying we had a great relationship. For one thing, we were business partners, and I knew she’d run me over for the right price. Still, she was better than my father, not that it said a whole lot.

“Depends on the mother. I have a feeling your father is better than both of my parents combined, so I wouldn’t worry,” I mumbled.

“My father,” she added.

“Not for long. The secondary growths are shrinking, and he’s responding very well to the treatments.”

“And how do you know that?” She stopped walking, her entire body pointing at me, like an arrow.

I shrugged. “I visit him every Sunday when you go to the library.”

It wasn’t a big deal. We were both Yankee fans, and it wasn’t like I had anything else to do. My career was my life, which meant that on Sundays, I had no life. My soft spot for Robert had nothing to do with Judith, and I certainly didn’t want her to think I was expecting anything in return. Plus, I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea about a relationship. Rob was still certain she was with Milton, so my money was on her not really counting on our fuck-buddies status to last past this season.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.” She smiled, but she didn’t look surprised.

I always arrived a few minutes early. I tried to tell myself it was because I didn’t want Jude to bump into me on her way to the train, but in practice, I liked to stop at the Polish deli and watch her through the window as she walked to the station with her headphones deep in her ears. I always wondered what she was listening to.

“Yeah. Well.” I resumed our walk.

She followed, jogging behind me. “You can’t just walk away from this conversation. You’ve been visiting my dad and taking care of him and you haven’t even told me,” she panted.

I liked her little pants. I wanted them against my palm as I fucked her somewhere public, where no one could hear.

“Watch me do exactly that. Walk away from this conversation.”

“Célian, why?”

“Why am I walking? Because I can. Because I have legs. Why am I walking away from this conversation? Because it’s pointless, and it doesn’t mean what you think it means.” I stopped again, this time in front of an old record store with signs in Spanish covering its display window. I wasn’t even sure if it was open, but I wanted us to stop talking, because I wasn’t ready.

Calling it a relationship was one thing.

Acting like we were a couple was another.

I pushed the door. I walked in, and she slipped in after me. The place was dark, with only vinyl records in sight. A man who looked like Meatloaf (the singer, not the dish), was snoring behind the counter, dribbling into a copy of . Judith immediately shut up and started browsing.

Getting her into a record shop was like giving a baby a pacifier. Only hotter, because I still remembered her playlist and had imagined fucking her to it countless times while we were close to killing each other in the office.

“Did you know Barry Manilow didn’t write his song ‘I Write the Songs’?” She slid said singer’s record out of a batch, grinning at me.

I didn’t. I liked that I didn’t. My general knowledge was usually superior to everyone else in my vicinity—came with the territory of making news and having to know everything about anything. But Jude was just as hungry for information as I was, which made her even more attractive. Not to mention lethal.

“Did you know ‘Jingle Bells’ was originally written for Thanksgiving?” I countered.

“Impossible.” She made a shocked face, her jaw slacking. I laughed. She poked me with the tip of the record she held. “The British Navy uses Britney Spears’ songs to scare off Somali pirates. I shit you not.”

We were playing like this now?

“The piano Freddie Mercury plays in ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is the same one Paul McCartney plays in ‘Hey, Jude’,” I countered, leaning into her face and flicking her little nose. “

.”

Was I flirting? I was. But why? It didn’t make any sense. She was already mine in all the ways that mattered. She was in my bed. I’d shoved my fingers in every single hole in her body. Why was I doing this?

She walked across the aisle, her shoulder brushing my arm, and dropped the record back in its place, picking another one instead. I didn’t see what it was and decided I didn’t care.

“Queen and Jimi Hendrix never won a Grammy. Justin Bieber did,” she whispered, her grin signaling that she had won the battle.

“I didn’t give you your iPod back because I wanted to keep a piece of you with me,” I admitted.

And won.

And lost.

And what the ?

“What?” Her smile wiped off so quickly, you’d think I’d told her I’d been giving her father placebo drugs for the past few weeks.

I picked up the record she was holding and walked over to the register to pay for it.

Judith Humphry didn’t want me to buy her nice things. But that didn’t stop from wanting to. Because the truth was, I’d never been taught how to show affection. I was taught how to buy it.

The salesman didn’t even wake up as I slid a note across his counter, plucked a plastic bag, and put the record inside.

by the Beach Boys. Underrated. Romantic. Different.

.

I’d never introduced a woman to my parents.

Lily Davis had attended the same country club, same schools, and had a summer house right next to ours in Nantucket. They’d known her since she was a baby. Maman’s best friend was her godmother, and we were both expected by our families to make it work, since they could see the potential revenue of such a union.

Fuck helicopter parents. Mathias and Iris Laurent were private-jet parents. They’d wanted me to marry Newsflash Corp’s princess, Lily Davis, before I’d found out my dick was good for more than pissing.

I wasn’t nervous. There was nothing to be nervous about. As far as Judith was concerned, she wasn’t going to be assessed or judged. I’d told her my mother was under the impression that she’d come here to assist me with my professional duties.

My mother lived in a penthouse, of course. Rich people loved putting distance between themselves and grounded people. Golden marbled and palm-treed, the skyscraper did nothing for Judith, who was busy taking a picture of a colorful reptile with her new phone. We were ushered in by an entourage of staff the minute we arrived at the lobby. Judith wore a modest black dress and plain black Chucks, with her hair tied back. I was in my slacks and a casual shirt.

Maman would rather see me in a strap-on and ball gag than casualwear. Which, naturally, added a dash of sadistic pleasure to my state of underdress.

In the elevator—why did everything happen in the fucking elevator?—Jude turned to me and said, “If she starts talking to you about Lily, I’m leaving the room.”

“Hate to interrupt your guilt-fest, but you weren’t the reason I called off my engagement.”

“I know. But still.”

Maman was sitting on her throne—a cream-upholstered David Michael sofa, still adorned with the dangling 10k price tag—atop her Persian carpet. The lingering tag was a horrendous mistake, I assumed, but not one I wanted to correct, seeing as she deserved the embarrassment of having her friends judge her for it silently.

My mother was beautiful in a superficial way. The same way I’d imagined Lily would be in about twenty years. Everything was too groomed and too tight, leathery skin on newly bleached hair.

I couldn’t fault her for wanting to look younger. My father treated his women like he owned a car dealership. A newer, shinier model rolled in every few years. Maman’s hair was blow-dried to perfection, and she wore a satin gown in silver.

“My beautiful son,” she purred, not bothering to get up from the couch. I sauntered over to her, placing a kiss on each of her cheeks. Jude stood behind me and offered a little wave.

I gestured to my companion. “This is Judith Humphry.”

There was no point in calling her my employee, because she was much more than that, or my girlfriend, because I wasn’t sure if she was. Maman’s lips curved into a secretive smile, and she hooked her forefinger in the air, motioning for Jude to come closer.

“I don’t bite, my dear.”

“But your son does…” I heard Judith mumbling under her breath as she made her way past me.

She shook my mother’s hand. A few minutes later, the housekeeper presented us with pistachio shortbread cookies and coffee, and we all sat down. Instead of fucking around, I decided to broach the subject I’d come here for.

“Have you listened to the recordings, Maman?”

“I have. How did you get them?”

“Irrelevant. Point is, Mathias is trying to kill LBC by selling ad space to questionable parties and cutting my budget even though we’re making clean profits. In other words, he is trying to weaken our product while injecting harmful commercial content into the channel.”

“Sounds like something my ex-husband would do.”

Iris Laurent was the sole heiress of LBC News Channel. An American-born royal with French roots, she fell in love with my father on the shore of St-Jean-Cap-De-Ferrat, France, under the swooshing trees and the influence of expensive champagne. He’d been a nobody trying to be somebody, a French punk with a thick accent and nothing but a bag of dreams and a lot of charm. A year later they were already married and pregnant with me. Mathias knew a thing or two about social climbing, but my mother still held most of the power in LBC—not enough to overthrow him, but enough to keep him on his toes.

I powered up my laptop, connecting it to the huge flat screen in front of us.

“Give me the skinny on things.” Maman alternated between puffing on a cigarette and sucking on a shortbread cookie without eating it. God forbid.

“Ratings are still strong for our main show, but we’re flailing in other time slots. The morning show is a trainwreck, and the political talk show is losing steam by the nanosecond, due to the fact that Mathias hired someone who cannot string two sentences without offending entire nations.”

“Your father has five more years in him, if he’s lucky.” Maman’s voice was sweet with satisfaction. “Can you not wait it out?”

“At this rate, the network will be dead in five .”

“Well, it is quite unfortunate, then, that you broke off your engagement with Lily. The Davis family holds ten percent of the shares in LBC, and they and I would have made a majority. That’s why I pushed you into dating her when you were kids. I predicted this would happen with your father.”

“And I would have appreciated your endorsement of the Davis girl, had she not opened her legs to your ex-husband. Now, let’s focus on getting the board to see how dangerous Mathias’ game is.” I hit the conference call button.

Jude sat beside us, away from the webcam, and stared at us curiously, Kipling in her lap.

My mother scowled, placing the thoroughly sucked cookie back in its plate.

The conference call was my idea of hell.

My father looked smug in a Hawaiian shirt, sitting on a yacht—hopefully somewhere with Sudanese pirates—his curly white chest hair peeking out of his collar, a cigar between his teeth, and a giggling woman in his lap. Maman kept her mouth pursed as he coughed out the details of the string of deals he wanted to sign, laying out all the millions the network was going to make.

The rest of the board ate it up the minute they heard the magic word .

“LBC is a business like any other. It’s not a nonprofit organization.”—Bigwig 1 “And the fact that the main show is performing just as well despite the cut in staff means the extra employees weren’t necessary.”—Bigwig 2 “No, it means that my employees are breaking their backs to maintain the level of accuracy and quality our viewers are used to so you can treat your third wives to a new set of tits,” I stated matter-of-factly, pushing my hands into my pockets so I wouldn’t punch the screen.

“My son is quite the romantic,” my father snorted around his cigar. “He’s a fine newsman, and a very bad businessman. Just look at his recent choices. Did you know he recently broke off his engagement to the beautiful Lily Davis, heiress to Newsflash Corp, because he fell in love with a junior reporter? From Brooklyn, no less.”

Now I pierced through the fabric of my pockets and tore my slacks. Fuck if I knew how he’d gained this information, but my top guess was it had come from Lily herself. I didn’t know where gotten this information, but I was certain we had a mole, because the chances of Judith opening her mouth and talking about us to anyone who wasn’t Ava and Gary were nonexistent.

A quick glance at her face confirmed she was Team #MaimMathias. She paled like the moon, standing up and excusing herself from the room.

My mother refocused her attention on the screen.

“You’re being absurd, Mathias.” Her red-lipsticked mouth puckered.

“Am I, my darling Iris? I married you and took half of what you have.” He laughed evilly. “Clearly is not the word you’re looking for. May I suggest ?”

“If suggestions were your strong suit, you wouldn’t be held by the balls by your son.” I rolled up my sleeves, getting tired of his little charade.

Maman reddened quietly next to me.

“The last thing you want is for me to really go after you, Father Dearest. As for the deals—they’re going to ruin our reputation and bulldoze over all the hard work we’ve done. We might as well publicly endorse kids drinking and teens catching STDs. By the time LBC dies, you won’t be in charge anymore, and I’ll be the one expected to provide the answers.”

Mathias fingered an invisible goatee, pretending to mull over my last statement. “What do you say, fellas? You’re the bigwigs. My son, on top of being a romantic, also hates money. Should we or should we not take the deals?”

My mother waved her manicured hand.

“I think we should pass on the deals and add more interns to the newsroom to maintain the current ratings.”

“I’m with Mathias on this one, Iris. My apologies.”—Bigwig 1 “Me too.”—Bigwig 2 “Me three.”—Bigwig 3 I slapped the laptop shut before my mother could answer, then threw it across the room. It crashed against the wall, fell to the floor, and broke in half. My mother sat back in her cushioned couch. Her chin wrinkled, like she was about to cry.

“Don’t say anything,” I warned.

“If you want to fix this, you need to talk to Lily.”

She reached for another cigarette, blowing the smoke to the side. I stood up and paced, running my fingers through my hair.

“Swallow your pride. Take her back. Judith is a nice girl, but there will be a lot of Judiths walking in and out of your life. There’s only one Lily who can save you. Protect your mother’s network.”

“My network?” I spat, laughing incredulously. “Where the fuck have you been for the last decade, Maman? Even before you moved to Florida, you didn’t give two shits about LBC. You only attended board meetings, and even that was half-heartedly and solely for the chance of screwing Dad over somehow. You could have managed it yourself, but you chose to give it to some incompetent asshole because working is not your jam. I spend ten hours a day in the newsroom. I live it. I breathe it. I eat it. But when I make one decision that has nothing to do with it, it’s suddenly an issue. This network is not yours more than it is mine. Just because Lily was born into the right family doesn’t mean she’s right for me. And that bullshit where you marry someone without standing up to their fucking face? I had a front-row seat to that scenario at home, and I’m sure I’m not spoiling it for you when I say it ended badly. One last thing—Judith is not, in fact, disposable,” I noted. “But I know a few people who are.”

Now it was my mother’s turn to stand up and throw her hands in the air. “All we ever wanted is for you and your sister to be happy. Don’t give me this holier-than-thou attitude. If I may recall, you’re not innocent, either.”

I kicked her precious sofa’s frame. The price tag fell, and I took sick pleasure in how symbolic that felt. “Yeah, you made us very fucking happy. Especially the part where Dad sent Camille’s boyfriend to a goddamn war zone to keep him away from her because his blood wasn’t blue enough, then proceeded to fuck my girlfriend. All while you were standing on the sidelines doing what, exactly? Finding more hot, young ass my age? Really, you two should host a talk show on how to raise kids. Or, you know, on how to kill them.”

She blinked at me, cupping her mouth with the hand that held the cigarette. “I thought you were the one who sent Phoenix away.”

I turned around, glaring at her. “

”

She rubbed the side of her forehead, looking around for an imaginary person to explain everything to her. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. Lost. She looked lost.

“When I asked Mathias what happened, he said you sent Phoenix to Syria, and that he would never forgive himself for letting you get away with it.

“I was mad, Célian, so mad. I divorced him solely for not standing his ground, but I couldn’t divorce you. You’re my baby. I tried so very hard not to hold it against you. I love you so much. I always will, but I didn’t know why you needed to interfere with Camille’s life like that. You and Camille…you were different. I called you Célian because you were like the moon to me. You shone bright in the darkest time of my life. I gave Camille her name because she was virginal, unblemished. She was always so different from us. A free spirit. She loved who she loved and didn’t care about the consequences. That’s what made her different.”

I wanted to correct Camille happier than the rest of us. Her smile had been contagious. I’d used to tug at her braids and call her sunshine, because her face was round and full of cheeks and always bright. Because I was the moon.

I shook my head. “He lied. He’s always lied. Why would you ever believe him? Only reason I let him do that was because I figured if I could play house with Lily Davis, she could find another charming fuckboy to piss her daddy off. When I realized she was miserable and told her the truth, she ran into the street.”

“I thought she was mad at .”

“No. She was mad at Mathias.”

“Then why do you always think it was your fault?” She plopped on the sofa, holding her head in her hands.

“Because I should have told her somewhere else. Because I should have fought Mathias. Because I fucking failed her.”

There was a coffee table and an ocean between us, and I realized I hadn’t given Jude the entire truth when she’d asked about my relationship with my mother. In all honesty, I had no relationship to speak of with either of my parents. Truth was, I no longer had a sister, or a fiancée. I was no less lonely than she was.

“You never loved Lily,” my mother’s voice softened, and her eyes followed suit.

I shook my head. A year ago I’d cared for her—in some fucked-up way. But to say I didn’t love her now was like saying I disliked eating shit-smeared rocks. A real under-fucking-statement.

Maman nodded. “Can you save LBC?”

“Not at the price of being unhappy for the rest of my life.” I tilted my chin up. All the fucked-up mannerisms of a heartless prick had been picked up at home anyway, so she could hardly blame me for them.

Heart attacks at fifty.

Nameless girls in bikinis every weekend.

An ex-wife who would love to see me in a casket.

Yeah, no thank you. I didn’t want my father’s life. I’d take shitty pasta and a Yankee game in a two-bedroom Brooklyn apartment every day of the week over life in a lonely, sixteen-million-dollar penthouse.

However, watching my family’s business die going to make me unhappy. I was headed straight into misery no matter which path I chose.

Maman stood up, walked cautiously toward me, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed my cheek, her lips halting at my ear.

“You’re nothing like Mathias,” she whispered, “I promise you.”