TWENTY-NINE
GRAHAM
I could end things with Elle now.
That was my intention when I sent her home three days ago, to quit her, and it was all thanks to that picture. Bennett said he had no clue why it was put up in the first place, but that our mother—our wonderful, oblivious shell of a mother—had given ex-wife number three a box of our childhood photos at Daria’s request. He’d promised to take it down, destroy it. I told him I didn’t give a fuck.
But inside, I’m still seething.
Pissed off at Elle for not returning my goddamn calls. Irritated that she’d recognized Charlotte. Angry at myself for reacting and not making the move I planned from the moment I saw Eleanor Courtney at that shitty sports bar she briefly worked at. Furious because, in the end, I don’t want to make that move because I can see Elle’s face front and center in my mind whenever I consider it. Because I still hear the last words Charlotte said to me nine years ago: ““You’re too harsh on everyone around you, Graham. It’s sad. So goddamn sad that I feel sorry for you.”
I’m still that way, even a decade later.
I nurse my bourbon and shake my head at the bartender who lifts her eyebrows, as if to ask me if I’m ready for another. I’ve spent plenty of time drowning my misery over the past week since Elle left Manhattan, leaving behind the scent of blackberries and vanilla on my sheets and every other corner of my apartment. I had drunk myself stupid over old memories—in private, at the seedy bars where I’d never run into someone that recognized me because the shits that frequent those places don’t even know what a voter registration card is. Since duty called, I pulled myself together yesterday morning just in time for my flight back to D.C.
And then, eventually, to her.
I’d returned to work yesterday morning as we convened for the second session, but I was distracted at a swearing-in and then at the vote on the new health secretary later that evening. Every time I looked at her bastard father, instead of picturing my fist shoved down his throat or the look on his face after I’ve ruined his daughter, I just thought of her. Not as a pawn in a game of silent revenge, but as the beautiful girl in jeans and scuffed Converse. She’d smiled at me like my intentions were good and kissed me like she didn’t give a fuck if they weren’t.
She shouldn’t have done either.
And that’s precisely why I ended up here at the same piano bar that I took her to the night I cost her job.
It’s a reminder that I have everything I wanted from her.
I could send the photos to her father, and whoever the hell else I chose, and blame it on a slip of the finger. I could make Robert Courtney look like a fool in five minutes flat. It wouldn’t bring Charlotte back or fix how he’d screwed her over, but I could do it and stick one to him.
I just won’t go through with it.
This plan was flawed from the beginning, but I never considered it would backfire so violently. I thought Elle Courtney would be three holes to fuck and a head to fuck with because I had the power to do it, not a walking, talking personification of everything that’s good.
I could end things with her now. I should because she’s better off without a man that set out to use her. But gaining a conscience doesn’t make me any less selfish—if anything, it makes it worse.
Furious with her for not having the decency to call back, I grab my phone from the bar counter and start a text.
I tell her I expect to see her in an hour.
Tonight is early 2000’s night, so the pianist is shitting all over “So Fresh, So Clean” when I realize Elle’s not planning to show, nor has she returned my message. She’s read it, all right, but she’s caught on to the game. She’s becoming the most powerful piece on the board—the queen. I can’t stand it.
I send another text, this time to Vero, and she’s standing in front of her Impala parked on the curb twenty minutes later when I stumble out of the bar. She’s dressed like she’s planning to go out for drinks herself—formfitting black dress and black pumps that put us eye to eye—but the look she gives me is 100 percent Veronica. She thins her red-painted lips in a disapproving line. “Don’t start,” I growl.
“You’re coming undone.” She jerks the passenger door open and sarcastically gestures for me to get inside. “I’ll take you home before you do something stupid or make an ass of yourself.”
I slide into the seat and shut my eyes. “You should have children. You have a penchant for killing buzzes and fucking hopes and dreams.”
“Is that so? Your dream is to make yourself look like an idiot?”
Opening one eye, I meet her glare. “I don’t know what my dream is.”
“Typical Delaney. You’re drunk, Graham, just stop talking.” She slams the door before I can get another word out and stalks around to the driver’s side. On the way to my apartment, she punishes me by blasting the heat on its highest setting. She smirks when I bitch about swallowing linen with every breath, then reaches toward the vent and adjusts the clip-on air freshener so it’s pointing right at me.
“You’re hateful sometimes.”
“I learned from the best.” She makes a face when we run into a traffic jam on Constitution Avenue. Putting the car into park while we wait, she stares straight ahead at the sea of brake lights. For a long ass time, she pretends to listen to the radio. We’ve always had similar taste in music, and I remember this song well from our childhood. She’d played The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” on repeat so many times one summer I’d thought about breaking the fucking CD and telling her to shove her Cruel Intentions obsession.
It’s ironic that this is the song she’s forcing me to listen to. “Trying to tell me something?”
“Yes, Graham, I used my superpowers to make a random satellite radio station play a song that makes you feel bad.” She sucks in a breath through her teeth and drags both hands through her short blonde hair. “Maybe you just have a guilty conscience.”
Resting my head on the headrest, I cut her with a sharp look out of the corner of my eye. “Do I look like I have a guilty conscience?” She snorts because she knows me too well. It’s the worst part about working with Vero, that and my shit temper. “Why do you still put up with Bennett—with any of us?”
Clenching the steering wheel, she tears her gaze from mine back to the traffic ahead of us. “Because I love you.” The edges of her mouth jerk up. “Not like him, but you mean everything to me, Graham. Hell, I even love Cain and I never know what he’s thinking.”
“Fucking you.” Talking is starting to get to me, starting to make my skull pound as the bourbon does its damage. I rub my temples to get rid of the pressure as Vero assures me Cain’s never seen her that way. “You’re high. He sees every beautiful woman like that but you’re even more appealing to him because you’re a challenge.”
“Ugh. Only you can turn something crude into a sort of compliment. No wonder you’re in office.”
It’s not like it’s a lie. Usually, I’m the one going at Bennett’s throat about V, but I’d watched my brothers come close to strangling each other a few years back when Cain wondered aloud if Veronica’d ever be into his kinks.
She wouldn’t, and Ben had let him know that with a fist. Then Bennett had gone and married someone else. In my brother’s warped mind, there’s no better way to get over the woman he loves than by walking down the aisle with someone he doesn’t truly give a damn about.
“I love Bennett,” Veronica says in a scratchy voice. “I know you think that L-O-V-E is a stupid, foolish word, but I don’t really value your opinion when it comes to him. I never will. I don’t care what your mother thinks, or that my friends think I’m too soft for caring about someone who’s so awful. I know I’m torturing myself, and I just don’t care.”
Fuck, when she puts it like that and brings up torturing herself, maybe she is Cain’s type.
I swallow and almost gag at the bile in the back of my throat. Fucking liquor. Fucking Eleanor Courtney for not showing up. “Yeah, Ben loves you, too.” She releases a bitter laugh, her hand shaking as she shifts the car into drive and starts to follow the sluggish flow of traffic. “He’s just—we’re all no good.”
“Where’s this coming from? This conversation and the drinking and—” Her breath hitches and she turns big gray eyes on me, coming close to rear-ending the Ford in front of us.
“Shit driving, V!” I’m regretting not calling an Uber because initiating this heart-to-heart, then dealing with Veronica’s driving, is bound to destroy me.
She jams the brakes but doesn’t stop looking at me. “Did you do something to that girl?”
I wish it were that simple. “No.”
“Then—”
“I’m starting to wish I’d never approached her.” A half-truth. I’m not sorry I met Elle. I just regret who her father is and that I find her company more enticing than it should be. “She can’t even answer her fucking phone.”
Vero blinks at me. And then, she does something that grinds my teeth: she laughs. Deep, shoulder-shaking braying that clenches my hands and brings a growl from deep inside my throat. “Did you try asking her nicely instead of making demands?” She presses the heel of one palm against her eye to rub away the amused tears she’s shed at my expense. “It normally works for us regular people.”
“She’s not a regular person,” I say, and Vero’s laughter stops, her mouth snaking into a grin. “Don’t look at me like that or I’ll fire you.”
“And then I’ll sue you for unlawful termination.” Traffic lets up once again, and she drives in silence, switching the radio station when a Marcy’s Playground song comes on. She picks some pop station and turns the volume up. Tiny knives stab into my splitting skull while she sings along, off-key, with some hopeful sounding shit about Malibu.
The song makes me think of Elle and her story that first night about writing articles on Zuma Beach. “Do you remember where she lives?” I say, and V accelerates in surprise.
“Who?”
“Don’t with the bullshit, V. I need you to take me there. Now.” She complains. She reminds me that I’ve been drinking—as if the headache and the dry mouth aren’t enough—but in the end, she does what I ask. After a stop at a floral and produce market that’s two blocks away from her apartment, I promise V I won’t bother her again tonight, and she pins me with a smug look.
“I won’t answer if you do.” She parks at the curb in front of Elle’s apartment and turns toward me. “I’m having a late dinner with a friend and have no intention of picking your drunken ass up again.”
“A late dinner. With a friend.” I skim my gaze over her tight black dress, and she rolls her eyes. “Bennett will be heartbroken.”
“I said I wouldn’t stop loving him, I never said I was going to wait for nothing.” She glances past me to the entrance of Elle’s building. “Now, get the hell out of my car before I’m late.”
Needing to get my head back in the game, I stay on the sidewalk until Veronica’s Impala becomes a tiny speck in the distance before I head in and take the service elevator to the fourth floor. I stand outside her door, choking on the smoke floating from under one of the neighbor’s doors and waiting like a goddamn fool for her to answer.
The tiny blonde who finally opens the door just stares back at me with her mouth hanging wide. She glimpses down at the package in my hand, then back up, blinking. “Looks like I can mark Padick and Woodfield off the list,” she mutters.
What the fuck is she talking about?
She opens the door wider and looks over her shoulder. “Elle, you have company!”
“Who?” My gut churns when I hear her voice. Fuck, what’s happening to me? I look over the blonde’s head, watching as she pads barefooted into their living room. She’s in an oversized sweatshirt and ripped black leggings with not a smudge of makeup on her face. Nothing like the woman in pearls and nude heels but I can’t rip my eyes off of her.
“Blake, who is—?” Lifting her gaze from the silly pink and blue “It’s A Girl” gift wrap she’s holding, she startles. I grin like she hasn’t stolen the air from my lungs like a fucking thief. “Graham,” is all she can say.