Secret Beast - Amelia Wilde Page 0,13
I never, ever do, except when I’m conscious. Except when I’m aware of anything touching my skin, which is fucking always. “Never.”
Eva shakes her head. “Fine. I don’t need you to admit it to me. What I do need you to do is leave Phillip Constantine alone. Leave this project of yours alone.”
“I’d do anything for you.”
She drinks the rest of her Coke, then balances the empty can on her knee. “But?”
“But I’m not leaving Phillip Constantine alone. He signed my contract tonight.”
“Forget the contract.” For the first time since she walked into this room, it occurs to me that she looks tired underneath her makeup. Exhausted. Winter’s short days take it out of her, and everything with Lane didn’t make it easier. “Happiness is the best revenge.”
“You’re not happy.”
“I’m happy,” she insists, and in her insistence she reveals the full, ugly truth—that she’s not happy. That her heart is broken. That she wakes up in the night feeling gut-punched and raw. “I am.”
Now I do stride over to the couch and sit down next to her. “Lane broke your heart, and I will be fucked, honestly, if nobody pays for it.”
“I knew that was a risk when I got involved with him.” A sheen of tears wets Eva’s eyes, but she blinks them away before they can fall. “I knew what I was getting into.”
“Did you? Or were you too fucking young, and he knew that, and he took advantage anyway? Jesus, Eva, this is about your honor.”
“And what about yours?” The fury in her eyes pins me in place, which is an unsettling feeling for a person like me. I’m the one who terrifies people. I’m not afraid of her—never Eva. But we’re skirting dangerously close to secrets that might as well be in a locked box in a locked room in a locked house on the other side of the continent. You’d have to be fucking foolish to go there. “What about what they did to you?”
“What about it? You can’t expect the Constantines to learn two lessons at once.”
“They hurt you.” Eva looks like she wants to throw herself across the couch and hug me, which would not be welcome in this moment.
“They hurt you worse,” I say.
“Debatable.” She looks away from me and into the fire. “We could just forget about all this. Move on with our lives. Never think about the Constantines again.”
Maybe that’s possible for Eva. Maybe she can trick her mind into forgetting everything about Lane Constantine and how much he pretended to love her. I don’t have that luxury. We were both wounded by the Constantines, Eva and me. But only one of us has a set of inescapable reminders. Even if I never came back to Bishop’s Landing again, even if I never set foot in Manhattan, I’d think of those fuckers every single day.
A quiet minute passes. “Is there anything I can say to convince you to give this up?”
“No.”
“At least you’re honest.” Eva hands me her empty Diet Coke can and stands up, stretching her arms over her head. “Am I going to see you at dinner?”
The dinner in question is a Morelli family dinner, hosted like clockwork by our mother. The purpose of these dinners is to let our father pretend he still has any power now that Lucian has taken over Morelli Holdings.
“Yes.”
“Promise? It’s never any fun without you.”
“It’s never any fun. But yes. I promise.” I won’t stop what I’ve put into motion with Phillip Constantine, but I will sit through dinner, if that’s what she wants.
I walk Eva to the front door and see her into the car that’s waiting in the drive. Usually, when she looks this tired, she stays over in one of my guest rooms. I let her redecorate two of them last year. It took her three weeks, and she seemed happy the whole time.
She waves to me through the back window. They’re tinted, so I can only see the ghost of movement there. I wave back. She pulls away.
The night air is bitter and clear. In a very fucked-up way, it feels better through my clothes than the heat of the fire. After the sound of Eva’s car fades, there’s nothing but wind through the bare branches of trees in the front courtyard.
A text comes into my phone from one of my people in Bishop’s Landing.
She’s left home. Heading toward the city.
Haley Constantine isn’t going to wait the full twenty-four hours.
It was generous of me, to give her so