Chapter 6 Annie
ANNIE
Istare miserably out of the window on the drive back to my house, wishing I could rewind time and take us to a different bar.
But what would that solve, really? Elio was right, we shouldn’t have gone out for drinks.
I was pushing at the edges of something that doesn’t need to be touched, looking for something that doesn’t exist any longer.
That should be clear to me after the way tonight ended.
And I don’t know how to feel about Desmond. On the one hand, his jealousy was out of control, especially considering the fact that we’ve only ever been out on one date. On the other—
A part of me enjoyed the jealousy. Enjoyed watching two handsome men ready to come to blows over me.
I’ve had so little of that in my life—romantic desire, possessiveness, the urgency of a man to have me and make me his.
I don’t really want a man to lock me down in ways that would hamper my independence permanently…
but that little taste of jealous possessiveness made me feel an odd pleasure that I hadn’t expected.
It upset Elio, though. And another part of me, the part that can’t ever seem to forget what we used to be to each other, hates that. Hates anything that could ever make him unhappy.
Leon parks the car, and I head inside, heading straight to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of wine before heading upstairs to my bedroom.
I unzip my boots and kick them off, stripping off the dress and digging in my top drawer for a pair of silky lounge pants and a matching camisole, with a berry-colored cashmere cardigan—one of my favorites—over it.
Reaching for my laptop, I decide that I need to talk to someone about all of this.
I can’t stop my spiraling thoughts, vacillating between the guilty pleasure of seeing Elio and Desmond puffing up with jealousy and the knowledge that I’ve upset both men.
And beyond that, the fact that Elio was jealous at all—
He still feels something for me. He must, or he wouldn’t have cared about Desmond.
It could have just been the chivalrous desire of a good man to protect a friend from a man who came off as overly possessive, but I think there was something more to it.
I think of how Elio tensed when Desmond said that we’d been out on a date at the speakeasy, how upset he looked, briefly, to think of me being with another man.
There’s still something there. We can’t explore it, I know that… but I can’t get it out of my head, either. It stirs up everything that I buried, making my chest ache with longing to talk to Elio and get it all out of him.
But that’s not going to happen. I know that for sure.
The rational part of my brain understands why.
In our world, loyalty and trust are currency, and betraying either can be fatal—literally.
Ronan has given Elio everything he has now, and maintaining that alliance is crucial for both their operations.
Getting involved with me would upset Ronan, would make it seem as if Elio can’t be trusted, as if he accepted Ronan’s offer just to get close to me again.
Elio hasn’t proved himself in a way that would make Ronan consider him as a match for me, either.
I can think of all the ways it would complicate things, and none of them are things that Elio would risk…
or that I should. But the irrational part of my brain—the part that still remembers frantic teenage kisses and the discovery of pleasure with a boy who longed for me as much as I longed for him, that remembers secrets and yearning and finding out what desire means for the first time—that part can’t stop thinking what if.
I take another sip of wine and close my eyes, trying to push away the memory of how the evening ended.
Desmond's smug expression, Elio's immediate retreat, the awkward silence after. What should have been a perfectly good night ruined because I was stupid enough to take Elio to a place that I knew was one of Desmond’s favorite haunts.
Reaching for my phone, I fire off a text to my best friend from college, Mara.
She’s an art dealer in New York now, and I helped her with her business plan our senior year.
We’re as close as two friends can be who don’t live in the same city, and I try to go see her as often as I can, since my schedule tends to be much more flexible.
Annie: Hey. Are you out? Could we FaceTime?
It takes a moment for a response, and I bite my lip. It’s a Friday night—she’s probably out on a date, or at a gallery event, or just out in general enjoying the New York nightlife. But a moment later, my phone buzzes with a text.
Mara: Sure! I want to hear all about how the date went.
I bite my lip. It wasn’t a date, I fire back. It was a business meeting.
Mara: With Elio? You really want me to believe that?
Annie: That was over a decade ago. There’s nothing there now. And he works for my brother.
Mara: Oooh, I love that trope. Gimme a second to get a drink and my laptop.
I shake my head, opening my own laptop as I sit cross-legged on my queen-sized bed, propped up by the mountain of pillows I like to keep on it.
Mara knows all about my past with Elio—we met early on in college, when the wounds were still very fresh.
Over the years, she’s respected my desire to bury all of that and let it be in the past, but as soon as I told her that Elio had come home and that we were going out for a business dinner, she was quick to read more into it than I ever wanted her to.
She doesn’t know what my family does exactly, although she’s smart enough to have picked up on the fact that it’s not all above board.
I’ve kept the mafia specifics a secret for her own safety over the years, so she just thinks we’re a very rich family with some shady business dealings. Which is every rich family, basically.
She’s definitely the only person I trust to help talk me through the whirlpool of thoughts in my head right now.
Ten minutes later, Mara's face appears on my laptop screen, a glass of red wine in her hand and her dark hair pulled back in a messy bun.
Even over video chat, she manages to look effortlessly put-together in that way that made all the boys in college fall in love with her.
I took a while to grow into my looks, but Mara has always been a dark-haired, vintage-Goth supermodel.
"Okay, spill," she says without preamble. "And start from the beginning. I want allll the details."
I bite my lip, taking a bracing sip of my wine. "Remember Elio?"
"The childhood sweetheart who broke your teenage heart and disappeared to Chicago? The one you've been pining over for the last decade? That Elio?"
"I haven't been pining—"
"Annie." Mara's expression is patient but firm. "We've been friends for ten years. I know every boy in college that showed the slightest interest in you was immediately compared to that dark-haired Italian heartthrob.”
“Yeah, and none of them went anywhere because I’m followed around 24/7/365 by a ton of security.”
That was another thing I had to explain away to Mara in college, without giving away that my family is Irish mafia.
I said my father was overprotective, which wasn’t a lie.
Padraigh was willing to let me go to college so I could work for the family after, but that didn’t mean that he was happy that my education was going to mean taking me away from the watchful eye of the family.
College was a touch too much independence, as far as he was concerned, but it was unavoidable if he was going to get what he wanted.
“So yes,” Mara continues. “I’d say you’ve been pining. Now tell me what happened."
I take a large gulp of wine and launch into the whole story—Elio's return, the last week of running into him at meetings, and just… around, tonight's dinner and the tension between us, and then Desmond’s appearance, jealousy, and the impromptu end to the night as a result.”
Mara listens without interrupting, her expression growing more concerned as the story unfolds. When I finish, she's quiet for a long moment, swirling the wine in her glass. I let out a breath, looking at her through the computer screen.
“I feel like there’s still something there between us,” I say quietly.
“Like he didn’t forget what happened. He didn’t like hearing that I went out on a date with someone else, I saw it.
And all that happened was that I upset both of them.
Elio clearly pulled away after—which is probably for the best—and Desmond seemed pissed that I brought another man to the speakeasy, which, in hindsight, was probably a shitty thing to do.
And on top of that…” I chew on my lower lip.
“I kind of liked them both being jealous over me, Mar. Isn’t that awful? ”
Mara laughs. “Well, first of all, I think that’s totally normal. Especially considering how… dry your love life has been, well, since you were eighteen.” She smirks at me, and I glare at her.
“You don’t have all the complications I do,” I shoot back. “Dating is easy—breezy for you. No nosy family, no rules, no inheritance, nothing riding on your choice of men except what you want.”
“I get it,” Mara says patiently. “Really, I do. But let’s unpack this.
First of all, he’s clearly into you. The fact that he got all jealous that you were dating someone else is plenty of proof.
And the fact that he let you take him out for a drink after dinner is another hint.
If it was really just all business, he’d have closed up shop and gone home after dinner. ”