The Hate Vow by Nicole French

Ten

“You’re an asshole,” I mumbled sometime later.

“I know,” he said in a voice still searching for breath.

Maybe it was seconds. Maybe it was years. But my voice was weak, and my nose was happy. God, I loved his smell. I sagged against him, finally satisfied. I felt like one of those big predatory cats that don’t eat for days, then gorge themselves until their bellies drag on the ground. That was me. An overstuffed pussy.

I snorted. If I could speak at all, I’d have made the joke out loud. Eric, in his blissed-out state, would probably have understood. Hell, he’d probably have started purring just to jump in.

Still, there was truth to the analogy. I hadn’t known it until then, but it was like there was an animal pacing inside me most of the time, and only Eric knew how to let it out. He gave it the space to be fierce, to yowl, to roar as it needed. And then he and his slacks-clad ass tamed it, so I was nothing but a sleeping feline. Goodbye, leopard. Hello, house cat. Meow.

Tomorrow I’d hate him for it all the more. But right now, I was in an exceptional state of bliss.

“Clearly you’ve been keeping up your skills,” I remarked, immediately annoyed by how much the idea bothered me. Like I had a claim on him. Like I should care at all where he’d been for the last five years.

He stood up straight so he could look down at me, and I watched with some sadness as his mask of indifference reappeared. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

I worried my lips together, but looked away. Maybe he was right. Maybe I couldn’t.

When he pulled out, though, instead of walking away, he swept me off the console and carried me in his arms like some idiotic romcom character. And I, in my sex-hazed stupor, was too tired, too sated, too tamed to fight it as he toted me into a large, equally pristine bedroom and carefully laid me down on one side of the giant, cloudlike bed. I burrowed into the delicious, thousand-count sheets I remembered from years before. It was the little things that betrayed his tastes.

It’s the little things you miss.

Eric left to clean himself up. When he returned, I watched dazedly as he started getting ready for bed, pulling his shirt the rest of the way off. Damn. He really had filled out.

Like he could feel me staring a hole through his psychotically defined abs, he looked up, startled like a wild animal. Then a slow, satisfied smile spread across that square jaw. “Enjoying the show?”

I propped my head up on one hand. “I can’t complain.” I pointed up and down his body. “I don’t, um, remember all of this business.”

He looked down at his chiseled physique. “I wasn’t so bad back then.”

“No, but you didn’t look photoshopped either.”

He chuckled, but didn’t respond as he finished undressing. It was almost like he was doing it deliberately slowly. Turning around, he paused like a model on a runway in front of his closet. So I could get clear views of his ass in those tight black boxers. Enjoy the way the lean muscle in his back rippled in the moonlight. Observe the way his abs crunched deliciously when he bent to pull on his pants.

He stood up fully and turned back, giving me another head-to-toe view of his sculpted body. Good lord. It was like staring at the David—well, a fiery-eyed, ass-slapping, much better “equipped” David.

Eric padded to the bed and sat on the edge. “Are you planning to sleep in your shirt, Lefferts, or should I take your clothes the rest of the way off? Not that they don’t look good, but seems like they would be kind of uncomfortable.”

“Who said I’m sleeping here?” I asked, though a yawn was already overtaking me. This bed felt like a cloud and the daze of alcohol and sex was setting in. A few more minutes, and I’d be completely immobilized, regardless of the way my blouse was bunched around my ribs.

Eric chuckled, then crawled on his knees so he was close enough to undress me. Noodle-limbed, I let him remove my socks and lift my shirt over my head, then retrieved my other clothes from the hall. I put on my underwear and tucked myself under the covers while he folded the clothes and set them neatly on another white chair in the corner of the bedroom. Then he returned to the other side of the bed.

He didn’t pull me close—he knew me too well for that. We hadn’t exactly made love—just scratched an itch both of us had. And maybe tore off some skin in the process. Instead, he set a hand on my hip and turned me over, then draped us both with his comforter so we were cocooned in the plush cotton.

“We probably shouldn’t do that again,” I whispered, suddenly mesmerized by the way his chest gleamed in the moonlight like it was covered in dew.

Eric’s eyes flashed, then closed. When they opened, they were collected again. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

“Not that it wasn’t good. It was. I…I just think it complicates things, you know?”

He didn’t reply, just continued to watch me with that unreadable face. But I found my vitriol was gone, at least for the moment. I knew in the morning, I’d feel real regrets, not just the ones I thought I should feel. Right now, I had the space to ask the questions my pride wouldn’t allow earlier.

“I just need to know one thing.” I turned my back and studied the way the moonlight striped the ceiling through the blinds. “Why me?” I glanced back to see his expression.

Eric’s forehead crinkled with a few more worry lines at thirty-two than he’d had at twenty-seven. It was the only real sign of aging I could see. And I couldn’t lie. They worked for him, just like every other change.

“What do you mean, why you?” he asked finally.

I sighed. “That song and dance about me knowing you better than anyone? It’s bullshit. I don’t know you at all. I didn’t know about any of this, and I bet there’s a lot more about your history I’ll learn if I say yes. So why me, Eric? Really? And don’t you dare say it’s for shock factor. Or for the hate sex. I’m not a dancing monkey or your courtesan.”

He snorted. “I wouldn’t have called you either one of those things, Jane. Give me some credit.”

I flopped back to my side. “And you better not say it’s because I’m funny.”

He shook his head, but his mouth quirked deliciously. I found myself wanting to tackle him all over again. Down, girl.

“No, it’s not that either, although I usually enjoy that too. But if I wanted to marry someone for laughs, I’d find a poor comedienne.” He shook his head. “I was engaged once before, you know.”

My eyes flew wide. “What?”

His mouth pressed into a firm line, and the worry lines reappeared. “It’s not something I particularly like discussing.”

“Well, tough shit, J. Edgar. Start talking.”

Eric gave me a hard look. “‘Bright star, were I as steadfast as thou art…’”

I screwed up my face. “Lemme guess: Shelley?”

Eric shook his head. “Keats.”

“And that’s supposed to mean…”

He sighed. “It means, have a little fucking patience, Jane. This is going to take a minute to get out.”

So I waited. And waited. And waited. Did I mention that waiting wasn’t particularly my strong suit?

“Penny was my girlfriend in high school,” he said. “She was…she was a scholarship student. A girl from Astoria whose parents owned a diner.” He rolled onto his back and stared up at the fifteen-foot ceiling. “Penelope Kostas,” he said softly.

“She was Greek?”

He nodded. “She was. And sweet. And smart. And not particularly rich. And definitely not from the Upper East Side.” He snorted. “Not even close.”

I digested this carefully. Eric had been in love. Eric, king of the one-night stand, date for every night, dipped his quill in every fucking ink jar in Boston…had once been in love. Who would have thought? I wouldn’t have believed it, but the reverence in his voice was clear, and the dreamy, far-off expression on his face couldn’t be mistaken for anything else.

He said it once to you too, Jane Brain, came my dad’s voice out of nowhere. Which was funny, since he had never even met Eric. I had never even mentioned him to my parents.

“She came with me to Dartmouth,” Eric continued. “She attended a community college across the river and waited tables in Hanover during my last two years. Her parents were furious. Well, both of our families were upset.”

“I bet,” I said. “All that work to get their kid into prep school, and she follows your sorry ass to collect fifty-cent tips from legacy frat boys? Fun.”

His mouth twisted sadly. “Yeah. Well. I asked her to marry me during my senior year. It only seemed right, and I did love her, regardless of whether or not we were too young. The plan was to move back to the city so she could finish at CUNY while I took up my rightful place at DVS. That, at least, made her parents happy.”

“But not yours?”

“I think my dad would have liked her,” Eric said. “But since he died when I was a kid, I’ll never know.”

I quieted again. How did I not know this about him either? How had we spent an entire summer fucking and three years of being classmates without knowing such fundamental things about each other?

“But the rest of them…no,” he said. “They hated her. My cousin. My mother. Aunts, uncles, everyone. And most of all, the matriarch herself: my grandmother.”

“This is the one who wants you to get married now?”

Eric nodded again. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

It was, I had to agree.

“So, what happened?” I asked. “Obviously you didn’t get married.”

“What happened?” he asked, his voice soft enough that it almost sounded threatening. “What happened was, they made her life a living hell.”

I frowned. “Like, how?”

His jaw ground for a second, and a muscle flickered in the side of his cheek. “Little things. They’d invite her to lunch, but no one would be there. Or they’d tell her to dress the wrong way for a party. A costume instead of black tie. Once someone spilled red wine all over her dress. That sort of thing.”

I tipped my head. “Oh, nice. Your garden-variety bullying, then.”

Eric nodded. “I hoped it would die down the longer she was around them, but it didn’t. They started to be more overt about it. Tell her to her face she was trash. Refuse to let her in at functions or family gatherings or make her take the service entrance. Later, they would convince her I was doing terrible things on the side too. That I didn’t love her. That I was ashamed of her. That she had no right to be a part of ‘their’ world. Fucking vultures. All of them.”

I was quiet as he bit the words out. The hatred Eric so clearly nursed for his family was unnerving. “That’s awful.”

Eric worried his jaw for a moment. “It was. So many small, seemingly insignificant moments, but they all came together, you know? Years of it, until one day, Penny believed it all. And that was when I came back to our apartment and found her lying in the bathtub with her blood running down the drain.” And then, finally, he turned, with eyes that looked black as the night outside. “She slit her wrists. Left me a note on the bathroom sink. She was sorry, she said. But she knew it was the best thing for me.”

My hands flew over my mouth. “Holy shit. Oh my God, Eric. I’m…God, I’m so sorry.”

I could imagine it, though I hated to. A young, strapping Eric, eyes full of love for this girl, walking in to find her dead. How his heart must have ripped in half. Had he cried? Howled? Run to her?

My chest shook as each potential action coursed through me.

Eric remained completely still. “So, you see,” he said after a few minutes. “There’s no love lost between me and my family. Because they took the only thing I ever loved to begin with.”

For a second, I hated her. I hated a dead woman, because the bitter pill of jealousy sitting on my tongue made me hate the fact that the world’s biggest player, the ice-cold, empty-chested lothario of the Northeast did in fact have a heart. Had in fact met one person he could have loved.

Except he did say it to you, peanut, my father’s voice reminded me again.

I shook the thought away. That wasn’t love. A summer of sex? Endless fights and a string of breakups? That had never been love.

I was a terrible person.

“I’m so sorry,” I said again. “Eric, I really am. I hope…I wish…God, I wish there was something I could do.”

Finally, his eyes softened a little. “Jane, there is. I’ve already asked you to do it.”

My face screwed up with confusion. “I don’t get it. How is marrying you going to help this situation? This…God, it’s an utter tragedy. But it happened ten years ago. Maybe…maybe it would be better for you to move on, you know?”

Eric sighed. Again, I felt terrible. Who was I, a woman with her dead father chattering in her head, to dictate the limits of anyone’s grief?

“This story is why I’m asking you, Jane,” he said, turning onto his side. He took my hand, stroking the ridges of my fingers and lingering over the left one. The one that could bear a ring. “I’m asking you because I respect you. And because you’re the only person I’ve ever met who would be strong enough to bear it. Them. Their ways. Their fucked-up forms of pressure.” His hand returned to my hip and stroked lightly. “It’s bad enough they’re roping me back into their lives like this. The fuck if I’m going to give them the satisfaction of marrying one of them too.” He sighed, and then his mouth quirked again. “You don’t give a shit about what anyone thinks of you. I always envied that about you.”

“But…” I pressed my lips together. No, I shouldn’t say it…it was so pathetic, so ridiculous. It would sound like I wanted his approval, which I didn’t. Did I? “But you don’t even like me,” I bit out, recalling Skylar’s rant. “I drive you crazy. Why would you want to marry someone you can’t stand?”

Eric blinked. “Is that what you really think? That I can’t stand you?”

Out of nowhere, my lower lip trembled. Fucking hell, were those tears threatening now?

I looked back up at the ceiling. “I don’t know. You’ve certainly acted like it.”

“We might spar, Jane, but I think that’s a strength.”

“You said I was a pain in the ass.”

“You are. But in the best possible way, I promise.”

I turned back. “So I’m not a total nightmare.”

One side of his mouth hooked up, a sly smile that was forgiving. Even warm. “No,” he said. “You are definitely not a nightmare.”

I smiled back. I couldn’t help it. “That’s good to know.”

His smile widened, brightening the whole of his face. “Then it’s settled,” he said. “I can stand you, and you can stand me. Now the only question is whether you’ll marry me.”

* * *

We fellasleep in the cozy nest of his bed, facing each other without speaking, letting the haze of memories and attrition settle over us like a blanket until we drifted off. But a few hours later, I woke again as the sun was peeking over the harbor, just evident over the rooftops of the North End.

Careful not to disturb the sleeping, golden god next to me, I slipped out of the bed, wrapped myself in a thin blanket, and crossed to the window to watch the sunrise. From here, Boston glittered. I felt like a queen surveying my kingdom. I kind of liked it. Queen Jane.

There was a rustle behind me. I turned.

“Hey,” Eric said groggily, pushing halfway up. “Everything all right?”

“I don’t need more time,” I said from where I stood at the window.

“Oh?”

I touched my hand to the glass. It was cool against my fingertips. “I thought about it. And my answer is yes. On one condition.”

Eric’s reflection tipped its head. “What’s that?”

I turned, full of determination. Not to fight him. To fight my own instincts. “You keep that pretty girl stuff to yourself from now on.”

Eric studied me for a moment. The early morning light cast a golden glow over his body, and for a moment, he seemed larger than life, a figure lifted from my ultimate fantasies, waiting to welcome me home.

My heart twisted.

“You sure?” he asked. There was nothing sarcastic in his tone.

We both knew what we had. Sex, hate, and maybe a little bit of fondness for one another in between those. And respect, apparently, nicknames aside. But if we got married, something was going to give. How many friends did I have—Skylar and Brandon notwithstanding—who complained about how much “changed” once they married their husbands? Who talked about how marriage turned them into objects? House cleaners and trophies. Babysitters and models.

They stopped being people. They lost themselves.

All it took was a few minutes on top of a console to forget my name. What would happen if I was married to the person doing that?

I had no idea. I just knew I couldn’t lose the most important thing I had—my sense of self.

So I nodded. “Abso-fucking-lutely. You and I know that is not a good place for us to revisit. This isn’t going to work if we do.”

Eric didn’t say anything, just continued to watch me from the bed. His eyes were black in the early morning light, the sunlight creating deep shadows over his perfectly chiseled cheekbones, the square pectorals, and the carved muscles of his deltoids and biceps. The man was a work of art. A work of art I had no problem defiling.

That itself was the primary problem.

“I’m serious, Eric,” I said as I returned to the bed and sat next to him. “You try that dominant shit on me at any time and can kiss your billions goodbye. No more sex. This has to be a business transaction. You help me out, and I help you out. And maybe at the end we can come out friends again. Okay?”

“And if I do?” he said just as directly. “If I promise? You’ll do it? No games, no push-and-pull?”

His voice was deep, but trembled slightly. It wasn’t until that moment I realized the real stakes here. I was going to marry the new head of one of the most powerful families in the world. Which meant I’d be at the head of it too. It didn’t matter if this promise was false. It didn’t matter if we were lying or not. If we were going to do this, it had to be all the way. With a partnership that no one, not even we, could shake.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll do it. If you promise.”

Somewhere, a gull voiced its lonely cry amidst the ships bobbing in the harbor. A foghorn blew in the distance, likely from a massive shipping container. Maybe even one of his.

“All right, Lefferts,” Eric said solemnly. “It’s a deal. You marry me in six months, I won’t touch you unless you ask. On my honor.”

I blinked, but he didn’t. He meant every word he said.

Cautiously, I held out a hand. Eric examined it, and we shook, like a couple of gangsters in a bad film.

“Deal,” I said. “Let’s get married.”