Casablanca: The Book Novels & Stories

Her heart shaped face housed her full red lips, perfectly angled nose and intense gold eyes. The elevator doors dinged open. But I couldn't remember how to move. Well until they started closing again. I reached out to keep them open and led Cameron out, my hand around her slender waist. I opened the door to our room and let her walk in first. Following behind her and closing the door. I turned around to see her walking over to the glass floor-to-ceiling windows. Looking out over the city lights. It was quite a view from the 5th floor. Higher than any other building nearby. I losened my tie and pulled it off, throwing it and my jacket over the closest couch and loosening the top two buttons o

"You have. We watched it. In the loft. You cried." "I don't have a loft. I have a studio apartment." "In Timeline 14," Cale murmured, his eyes glazing over. "You had a loft. Brick walls. Industrial windows." "That wasn't me," Elion said, grabbing Cale’s shoulders. "That was a different me. In this timeline, my favorite movie is Casablanca. I told you that on the first date." Cale blinked. The glaze cleared. He looked horrified. "Casablanca," Cale repeated. "Right. The airport scene."

Her contact name for him was "Don Mio" Lina asked, "Where is the 'I love you' you promised me?" Vincenzo transferred her a million dollars right away. Lina didn't accept it. Instead, she sent it back and repeated, "I only want 143! It means 'I love you'!" Vincenzo replied with a string of ellipses before eventually sending her 143 thousand dollars instead. Lina added a shy emoticon and replied, "That's more like it." I saved a screenshot expressionlessly.

Casablanca. The Underground. "Le Mirage" Casino. 11:00 PM. Dr. Braun had given them two things: A loan of 500 euros (at 50% interest). A vintage tuxedo that smelled of mothballs (for Sebastian) and a red silk dress he claimed was left by a "forgetful duchess" (for Harper).

Thirty days. One month. A single, heartbeat-stopping wager. Benjamin Parker was the sun. A golden-haired scholarship recruit with flour on his hands and a heart that he wore—vulnerable and beating—on his sleeve. He spent weeks chasing the school’s "Ice Prince," offering handmade tarts and a smile that could melt the coldest winter. He thought his persistence finally paid off when Jonathan Hayes—the obsidian-eyed, terrifyingly beautiful heir to a tech empire—pinned him against the school gates and claimed him in front of everyone. But the "Golden Romance" was a lie from the very first kiss. Jonathan didn't choose Benjamin because of his heart; he chose him because he was a convenient t

"I hope I'm not interrupting." "How did you—" "Get up? Security knows me, darling. I've been coming here for years." She walks past me into the living room, her heels clicking sharply on the stone floor. She runs her hand along the back of the sofa. "Nothing's changed. Still so sterile. I told Gabriel a thousand times this place needs warmth." She picks up a book I left on the coffee table—one of Gabriel's from the library. "The Count of Monte Cristo. Gabriel's favorite." She sets it down with a thud. "He identifies with Dantès, you know. The man wronged by the world, building an empire on revenge."

That adventure, when it finally arrived, might look less like escape and more like walking voluntarily into the unfinished rooms of another person's history. The rest of the journey unfolded in stages that seemed to loosen one world while fastening another. A train south. A long taxi ride through afternoon light that rendered everything unfamiliar and exact at once. Olive groves giving way to scrub. Billboards in Arabic and French. Petrol stations, roadside cafés, distant minarets, the occasional glint of the sea. By the time Casablanca began gathering around them in layers of white and concrete and satellite dishes and laundry and traffic, Estrella felt suspended between exhaustion and heig

She quickly replied, rapidly moving to follow the woman as she noticed the maid had already started walking away. She obediently trailed after the old woman round the massive staircase and into what looked like an office, the girl once again marvelling at the sight as it held only the finest furnishing as well, with a desk fit to accomodate a true king and an appropriately stocked bookcase, all designed in the same nuance of dark cherry and baroque carvings. "I see that you have worked before as a cleaning maid," The woman commented after a quick glance into her resumé, neatly placing the file over the desk before she turned back to look at the young girl.

Why stop now? When we got back to the ranch, Ryan asked if I wanted to go horseback riding. I declined, so he headed to the studio to work on some music for the band, and I wandered into the library. It was just a small room with bookshelves on every wall and a comfortable desk and chair in the center. As for books, there was a little bit of everything, from World War II pulp fiction military novels (which I’m assuming had belonged to Ryan’s grandfather) to Jane Austen to Harold Robbins paperbacks. I went unconventional (for me) and settled on a book titled Papillon about a French safecracker in the mid 20th century who was sentenced to life on Devil’s Island. The paperback’s cover – which w