It’s not true. I don’t mean it. A person like Haley, who sobs from a strapping and blushes when it makes her wet, could not survive what happened to me. Wouldn’t survive. She would live but she wouldn’t survive. It would break her.
I won’t whip her. But fuck, I want to hurt her. I want to make her cry. I want to give in to the monstrous humiliation that squeezes my muscles in its fists and stops my heart. How dare she. How fucking dare she.
“Okay,” she whispers, her face the picture of pain and fear and everything I should want out of a Constantine. “Okay. If that’s what you have to do. Okay, okay.” One tear slips down her cheek, then another. Haley’s shoulders shake. The urge to fuck her is as strong as the urge to hurt her. I want them both.
The sweet, crying Constantine lifts her hands and puts them on my chest. Flat. Soft. No nails, no fight. I’m not calmed, no, fuck no. But I feel closer to the ground.
I take a step back.
Haley bolts.
On instinct I reach for her, my fingertips brushing fabric, but she’s fast. The door to my rooms is already open and she goes through. For the first time in years, I can’t move. Anger has settled into my cells, radioactive and heavy. It clouds my mind. Makes my jaw hurt. Makes my back hurt and hurt and hurt. Nerve pain I can’t shake.
I should go after her before she causes a scene in the household. There’s been enough drama for one night. Enough bullshit. Enough of these emotions, which have teeth and claws.
The one thing I can’t do, even in my own home, is go after her without clothes. It pisses me off all over again.
“Fuck you,” I say to the empty air as I stalk into my closet. I don’t know who I’m saying it to.
Haley
I’m used to swallowing fear and its lesser cousin, nervousness. How could I not be? I’m a Constantine who is not a Constantine. I never know how people will react when I walk into a room. Some of them are disapproving, verging on dangerous, like Aunt Caroline. Some of them never bother to look twice. Some of them dig and dig and dig until they finally find out I’m not that kind of Constantine. Not the kind with money or status. But I have the name, so I could be useful.
This terror can’t be swallowed. I’d choke on it, and I’d die.
Leo might have meant what he said. That’s the big fear, the one that has me running down the stairs in bare feet, my hand grazing the railing. He’s capable of whipping a person until they bleed. I know that. Everyone knows that. He’s capable of every dark and terrible thing. But that’s not why I’m gasping, unable to catch my breath, holding in more sobs.
It’s because of what I saw in his eyes.
Shattered glass. A shattered heart. A dark well brimming with hurt, and at the bottom—shame. Leo wasn’t only angry at me for being in a place I wasn’t supposed to be. He was furious that I saw a secret he’s been trying to keep for long enough that it’s cut him up on the inside.
It hurts him so much. It’s impossible to judge the size of what it is, to judge the contours. All I know is that his secret is a kind of torture, and a person in that much pain will do anything to make it stop.
I reach the bottom of the steps, turn blindly to the right, and collide with Mrs. Page, who has a neat stack of clothing in her arms. Clothing that looks like it’s for me. I take a pair of socks off the top and put them on.
“Haley?” Her worried eyes meet mine when I straighten up. “What—”
“Where is the door to the garage?”
Her mouth drops open. “Miss Constantine, I can’t—”
Panic body-checks me and slithers its way down my arms to my hands. I grab for Mrs. Page’s shoulders and shake her. “Tell me where to go. Now. Right now.”
Mrs. Page takes a step back and gestures down the hall behind her. “A left at the end of the hall. There’s a passageway that goes through—”
I don’t stop to listen to the rest. I’ve never been to the end of this hallway, but once I’m there, I see it doesn’t end. A hallway winds through to an outer door that is blessedly not locked. It opens under my frantic push and I hurry through another hall built from stones and set with narrow windows. On the other side a door leads into Leo’s cavernous garage.
I was right, that first night I arrived. There are more than four cars. There are nine, counting mine, tucked all the way at the end in front of one of the doors. A panel on the wall has easy enough buttons. I hit one and the door in front of my car lifts.
A hundred silent prayers race through my brain while I run. Please, let the keys be in the car. Please, let him not be chasing me. Please, please, please. The first thing I do is pop the trunk. Wedged all the way in the back are a pair of rain boots I had for a mandatory horticulture class. A brisk wind whips in as I pull them on. Better than nothing. Better than staying.
The keys are in the ignition and the car comes to life without hesitation.
I sag over the steering wheel. “Thank you,” I whisper to the car.
Which makes me think of Leo.
Which makes me put the car in drive and gun it out of the garage.
The final obstacle is the gate, and I accelerate toward it and hold my breath. Believe. Believe that it’s going to open. Believe that I can survive this if I have to crash through it and run. I believe.
It opens.
I sail through, almost let down by how easy it was.
A fresh layer of powder covers the center line, and I concentrate so hard on driving that it takes me several miles to notice the lack of snowflakes inside the car. Someone must have been working on it. Leo must have had someone working on it. I shake my head and turn up the radio. No thinking about him now. Not when my heart is out of its mind.
I follow the light pollution to the highway, and the highway to the city, and the city’s edge to the same road where all of this started. I’m three blocks past the alley where I first met Leo when the car shudders.
“Not now,” I tell it, and pat the wheel. “Not now. We have to get home first.”
It shudders again, and dread turns my stomach.
“No, no, no.” I don’t have a coat. I don’t have a purse. I don’t have anything, and if this car dies, I will be so, so screwed. It’s nighttime at the wharf. My hair is standing on end.
The car whines, rising into a shriek, and the wheel jerks in my hands. It’s unsteady now, all wrong noises and a hard rattle that makes my teeth snap together. I make it to the side of the road and throw the driver’s side door open.
Screaming into the steering wheel will not fix this. The only thing that will fix this is walking until I find a place that will let me borrow a phone. Jesus, it’s cold. The wind is made from blades that grab at my dress and tear at my skin. Going across the street at least gets me some mild protection from the gusts. I’m not much of a runner, but I break into a jog. The air is so cold it hurts—or I’m used to Leo’s house, which seemed cold at first, cold and forbidding, but is actually warm. It’s so warm.
I do not want to go back.
I don’t.
My teeth chatter. All the stores I pass are dark, but there will be a bodega or a café or somewhere with a person inside. Someone will have a cell phone. Somehow I’ll call my family, and they will come to get me, and I will be warm and safe and—