“The sidewalk in front of it is pretty crowded.”
“Jesus. Is it that big of a thing?”
Noah cuts his eyes to the side. It is that big of a thing, what happened with Elisa, but if everyone would just shut the fuck up about it, then….
I let out a heavy sigh.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Back tomorrow, then?”
I nod to him and cut another piece off the steak.
“This whole thing is—” I’m interrupted by the soft sound of the elevator door closing behind Noah. “Of course.”
I drop the fork down onto the plate with a clatter and lean back on the couch, grab the remote, start flicking through the available movies. I’ve seen everything I ever wanted to see, and then some.
I can’t stay in here for fucking ever, although part of me is perfectly willing to just sink into this unbelievably opulent sofa and never emerge in public again.
You’re being a pussy.
The voice in my head isn’t wrong, but my chest clenches anyway. Elisa never would have let me wallow in here like some kind of guilty recluse. She would have dragged me out, probably to somewhere like Central Park, by the middle of Saturday morning.
But she’s never going to do that. She’s dead.
The thought is still so sharp, so harsh, that it’s hard for me to breathe.
My phone buzzes on the cushion next to me and I snatch it up, all the tension going out of my shoulders. A distraction. Any distraction.
The text message reads, Ace Kingsley???
I don’t recognize the number. I pause with my thumbs over the keyboard on the screen. I should just ignore it. It’s probably someone from the press. But I’m so damn bored, so damn frustrated with feeling like this, that I type out a reply and hit send before I can change my mind.
Yeah. Who’s this?
Elijah Pierce.
Who could forget Eli Pierce? He and his brother Christian threw the best parties at boarding school. How the hell did he get my number?
I remember you. Are you in the city?
I’m always in the city. Come out with us on Friday.
He hasn’t changed much.
I start to toss the phone back to the cushion, to ignore Eli Pierce and his pushy invitation, but I don’t.
What’s the worst that can happen if I go out?
Another text comes in.
We go to a club called The Purple Swan. Heard of it?
Elisa and I were going to get a membership to the Swan when we came back to the city one day, but we never got the chance.
Yeah. Who’s we?
You remember Jess Reeves? Carolyn Banks?
Dark hair, both of them, and they were always in orbit around the Pierce boys. Married now, I think. Safe. Out of the picture.
Another message.
Jess is married to an actual prince—king now, I guess. They’re in town, and there are parties. Come out with us.
I don’t know why the hell Eli Pierce would text me out of the blue, years after we last talked—was it college? I can’t remember—and invite me to a party, but maybe I don’t care.
With the movie paused, the silence of the penthouse is so deafening that it presses against my eardrums. My jaw tightens just thinking of how much more life there would be here if Elisa was with me. If she was still in the world. If the rest of my life wasn’t going to be consumed with vicious lies and speculations about what happened between us in Italy.
Damn it, Ace, you cannot let that take over the rest of your life.
I have to face the outside world someday, or else—or else what’s the alternative? That I rot in this penthouse? That I finally go back to the penthouse on the Upper East Side and rot there instead, a billionaire hermit who reduces all those years of working out in the gym turn to flab?
What the fuck is the point of my life then?
Does it even really matter if Eli Pierce has some kind of agenda? I doubt that he does, although my last impression of him is probably 10 years old at this point. And the Swan—an exclusive place like that, with membership fees so high they’d make a normal man’s eyes bleed, isn’t going to be swarming with paparazzi. Whispers, maybe. Photographers, no. They’ll have security to keep them on the outside.
The elevator door opens, admitting the butler, who’s wheeling in another tray. I stare at him for a second. Right. Dessert.
My life cannot be reduced to room service, even if it’s the best, most lavish room service New York City has to offer.
At the same time, I don’t want to seem like I’m fucking desperate. Even if it’s the truth.
I could probably make it.
Be there at 9.
My escape from this gold-lined prison is set in motion.
Chapter 5
Carolyn