I hailed a cab, knowing full well the woman would be gone from his apartment by the time I got there. Sure enough, Elliot was padding around his living room, dressed in nothing but some low-slung pants as I stepped across his threshold.
I dropped myself onto his sofa and let out a breath as he rubbed his eyes.
“What the fuck brings you here on a Sunday morning?” he asked, and I spat it out before I came to my senses.
“Elaine fucking Constantine.”
He looked at me like I’d taken a blow to the head since he’d last seen me.
“Why the holy crap would Elaine Constantine do anything to you? Please tell me you’ve stayed away from her. Your dad will lose his shit. Her family will start a war.”
Predictably for Elliot, my one friend in the world, he read my mind.
“You fucked her, didn’t you?”
“Not quite,” I told him, and cursed myself under my breath.
He crouched down in front of me, eyes searching for signs I’d taken a battering to my brain. “Not quite as in what? What the hell’s going on?”
I shouldn’t have told him any of it. I should’ve put it to bed in my mind and turned my back on it for all time. But I didn’t. I was still twisted up enough from her bullshit ways that I didn’t. “Tinsley Constantine’s masked ball,” I said, and he pulled a face.
“Yeah, what about it? Everyone’s been raving about it. Tabloids have been lapping it up.”
“I was there,” I told him, and he laughed at me. Actually laughed at me.
“What in the living fuck were you doing at Tinsley Constantine’s ball?”
“Finding a wife.”
He scoffed. “Right. Sure. Next thing you’ll tell me you’re going to be a father. And what the fuck has that got to do with Elaine?”
I wished I was a smoker, just to take a drag on a cigarette and break up my own damn mood. “You can guess.”
“The whole world knows she’s a fucking party girl. I heard she was in debt to the Power brothers last time the Constantine gossip was going around the Regent.”
That pricked my interest—one small sliver of Constantine intelligence that had slipped my ears. “The Power brothers?”
“Big time, apparently. They say her mother is coming down hard on her.”
I was mulling over this new information when he spoke again.
“So, what happened when you saw Elaine Constantine at the ball?”
I despised the shame and humiliation brewing in me. Elliot had been a trusted ear for decades, but I was struggling to voice this confession to him.
He saved me the battle. “You grabbed her, didn’t you? You let your dick rule your hate, and you grabbed her?”
“That isn’t quite how it went—” I began, but he was already grinning at me.
“Don’t beat yourself up, Lucian,” he said. “I’ve seen her. She’s hot, even by Constantine standards. I mean, they’re all hot, but she’s something else. I doubt there are many guys in that position who wouldn’t want to fuck her if they had the chance.” He thrust his hips to demonstrate. It felt cheap to hear it framed that way.
“It wasn’t anything to do with her pussy.”
He was still grinning. “Yeah, but it became about pussy, right? Believe me, I know you well enough to know she’s got you all fucked up over that tight little body of hers.”
“Forget it,” I said and made a move to leave.
He pushed me back down in my seat, dropping his humor. “Jesus Christ, Lucian. You’ve got feelings for her. Are you out of your mind?”
“I don’t have fucking feelings for anyone.”
“Nah, I’m serious. This isn’t you, pal. She’s done something to you.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said, but he wasn’t believing me. I could see it in his stare.
I wanted to believe myself, and I should have. The concept was absurd. Never once in my life had I had feelings for anyone, let alone anyone with even the hint of a Constantine connection. I didn’t do emotions, let alone the fluffy bullshit of falling in love and all that crap. It was weakness. Nothing but weakness. People were tools for me to use. Nothing more.
“It’s all right, you know,” Elliot carried on. “Seriously, just spit it out. Whatever needs saying.”
“You’re not a goddamn counselor, Elliot. Nothing needs saying,” I countered, but he gestured to the clock above his fireplace.
“Not quite what you showing up here before nine on a Sunday morning is telling me.” He smiled. “I kicked Melissa out for this, you know. I was planning on at least one fresh round of fucking her ass before she left today.”
“Melissa?” I asked. “The girl behind the bar at the Aegean?”
“Don’t change the subject,” he said, and joined me on the sofa, kicking back with his hands behind his head.
I forced myself to speak, for my own sanity. At least if Elliot knew about my bullshit choices then he stood a chance of keeping tabs on me if I lost my head again.
I told him about Tinsley’s ball, and about how I’d grabbed Elaine in the bathroom. I told him how she’d wanted me, even through her fear. I told him how I’d liked it, even if I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself.
“So, what happened next?” he pushed when I was done with the ball recounting. “Did she call you for a date night?” He laughed at the prospect.
That’s when it got awkward. That’s when I should have shut my mouth for good and bailed on out of there.
“I got access to her calendar through Alto. Her personal calendar.”
“What the fuck?” His whole body spun in the seat to stare at me. “You got access to her personal calendar? They’ll skin you for that, your side as well as hers. If they find out—”
I cut him off at that. “It’s a fucking calendar. Nothing more.”
“Yeah, and a swipe at an inroad into the heart of the Constantine world. They’ll come after you with full fucking force.”
He was pointing out things I already knew. It was redundant speech but still he kept on telling me how raging mad my father would be, and just how attacked the Constantines would feel through something so concrete in its intentions.
I’d wanted to track her down and destroy her. They’d know it. They’d react to it. It was a big statement, and I’d known it. I’d known the risks.
It wasn’t anywhere near the severity of me sneaking into the Constantines’ private party, but that didn’t seem to matter shit to Elliot. There was more concern than that in his tone…he was too astute for his own good.
“You tracked her down already,” he said, and there was no question in it.
“Yeah, I tracked her down already. I was intending to marry her.”
He shook his head. “Nah, you weren’t. Tell yourself that all you like, but you were intending to do a shit ton more to her than marry her.”
“I did fuck all to her in actuality,” I told him. “I tracked her down to some shithole bar and stalked her from the sidelines, enjoying every little sniff of her ignorance. Then it gets even better.” I paused to soak in his expression of crazy. “I followed her to some shitty apartment of some friend of hers. It seemed the perfect backdrop to fuck her, slowly.”