by Mia Madison
Thoughts of Tonio keep intruding. They make my stomach hurt again, so I shove him down, deep inside the black cave in my head where I put all the awful things I can't bear to face. One of these decades I'll let him out … when he's old and fat and ugly.
We actually go to Erin's house, say hi to her parents, and head to her room like we've done a million times before. Any minute now, if they haven't already, my parents will call to confirm with her parents that I'm there. And everything will check out.
Erin has a small tv in her room, so we watch a movie until her parents come in to say goodnight. Once the house is quiet, we change into our club outfits and do our hair and makeup. Erin's room is down in the basement; it's a finished basement, so it's like she has her own little apartment down there. That's one of her perks as the eldest kid in the family.
The basement also has a separate entrance, and Erin long ago figured out how to tinker with the security system so we could get in and out without alerting anyone. Her dad’s old SUV is parked a little ways away from the house, and we climb in and pull quietly away.
She takes us straight to Kosta's, the hottest club in town. It's owned and run by Constantine “Kosta” Adamo, another one of Antonio's cousins. Since the Adamos are unavoidable and it’s the best club by far, I don't quibble.
The bouncer looks at our fake IDs, then at us. We're both wearing killer outfits. I'm in a shimmery LBD that clings in all the right places and barely covers my ass, with sparkly stiletto heels. Erin's is even more daring: silky short-shorts and a halter top, both in white, with black knee-high boots.
With a little smile, he lets us in. We head straight for the bar and join the three-deep crush there. We've just reached the front and are about to order when a voice says, “Whatever the lady wants. And her friend, too.”
I turn to see a tall, sexy, very Adamo-looking guy standing next to us. His eyes are on Erin, and she's staring at him like she's never seen a man before. I'm tempted to warn her – at the moment, I tend to think Adamos are bad news – but I decide against it. It's only one night, after all.
“Got it,” the bartender says. “What'll it be, ladies?”
We both order cosmopolitans. “What's your name, baby?” the man says to Erin.
“I'm Erin,” she says, and her voice is all breathy. It was just yesterday that I was getting breathy with Antonio. I squash the memory down into my black cave and ignore the pang in my stomach. If Erin is going to score, I'll keep my mouth shut and not let my bad thoughts get in the way.
“I’m Kosta,” he says, which is not a surprise; he certainly acts like he owns the place. “Who's your friend?” He barely glances at me, and I wonder if Tonio ever looked at me the way Kosta’s looking at Erin. Dammit! I have to stop thinking about him.
“This is Caitlin,” I hear Erin say as I grab my cosmo and gulp it down. Glancing their way, I see Kosta eyeing me. He wasn't at the family dinner at Antonio's, but word must have made it through the Adamo grapevine that he had a sweet young thing named Caitlin fawning over him.
If he suspects, though, he doesn’t say anything. “Whatever she wants,” Kosta tells the bartender, “put it on my tab.” And to Erin, “You keep me company, babe. Yeah?”
“Oh, but—” Erin turns toward me. She’s in loyal bestie mode, but no way am I messing things up for her. There have to be some good Adamo men, right? They can't all be skunks like Antonio.
“Go on,” I tell her. “I'm fine. I'll stay right here.” I push my glass toward the bartender. “Another cosmo, please.”
Erin hesitates, and Kosta leans down and says something that must reassure her, because the worry leaves her face. “I'll keep an eye on you,” she promises me, and then lets him take her hand and lead her away, circling around the crowded dance floor.
I don't drink alcohol very often, so by the time I start my fifth cosmo I am feeling no pain at all. What I am feeling is bored; rebellion isn't much fun without Erin to share it. I decide that dancing in my spiked heels is a good idea, so I turn around on my stool and slide to the floor.
By some miracle, I don't break either ankle. “Where you going, doll?” I hear behind me. Turning back, I see the bartender watching me.
“Are you one too?” I ask him.
“One what?”
“An Adamo.”
He gives me a quizzical smile. “Yeah. Carmine Adamo.”
I lean in confidentially. “Adamo men are always calling me doll.”
Carmine grins; it's a really nice grin. He's very good-looking, and only a few years older than me. Maybe I should give another Adamo a chance. “Is that right?” he says.
“Doll, babe, bella, bellisima, cara mia ...” I count them off on my fingers, but he isn't smiling anymore. He leans closer, his face serious.
“Who calls you cara mia?”
I open my mouth to answer, then shake my head back and forth several times. “Nope. Not gonna talk about him. Or think about him. Not ever again.”
“Not think about who, doll?”
But I'm done sharing. I turn toward the dance floor, then change my mind and turn back again, wobbling on my heels and almost toppling over. “I'm gonna dance,” I tell him. “I'll be right over there.”
Snagging my drink from the bar, I take a sip without spilling it all over myself and teeter toward the dancers. Carmine slips away from the bar and heads upstairs to where the offices are, but I don’t think anything of it.
Swaying on the dance floor, drink in hand, I'm instantly surrounded by guys — grinning, gyrating, hip-pumping guys. I turn in a slow circle, dancing with all of them and none of them, waiting for their hot sweaty presence to steam-clean my brain of every trace of Antonio.
It doesn't work. I take another half-turn, and I could swear I see Tonio standing right in front of me, looking pissed as hell. He's not dressed in the suit he wore to the benefit dinner; he's got on jeans and a dark shirt and looks good enough to eat.
I must be really drunk to be conjuring up sexy images of him. “Go away,” I yell at the apparition, and take another gulp of my cosmo.
The next moment he's standing right next to me, still looking supremely pissed. “Let's go, Caitlin.”
All the guys who were dancing with me have suddenly disappeared. I look around and see that my hallucination and I have been given a wide berth. “Fuck you!” I yell at drunk-delusion Antonio. “I'm trying to banish you forever!”
Instead of disappearing, he does some kind of jujitsu move and takes my drink away. “You're done, Cait. We're going.”
I open my mouth to yell at him again, and then his scent hits me. Leather and spices and his own masculine essence. Shit. It really is Antonio.
All the emotions I've been bottling up rip through me and erupt. “Go to hell!” I scream.
His face is hard as stone. “I don't know what your problem is—”
“No? Why don't you ask your fiancée what my problem is?”
His head snaps back. “My what?”
“Your fiancée!” I'm too far gone to register his expression. “Your fucking fiancée that you went to the fucking charity dinner with! Go ask her!”
The next moment, I'm upside down over his shoulder, my torso hanging down his back. “Let me go, you asshole!” I yell, pounding on his hard muscles. Lifting my head up, I see Erin and Kosta coming toward us. “Erin! Make him go away!”
They reach us, and Kosta says, “Sorry, cugino. Carmine came and told me as soon as he realized.” Erin looks distressed, but in a confused kind of way, like she's not sure which side to root for.
“It's all right,” Tonio says. “Thanks.” He turns toward the exit, weaving his way through the crowd. As we emerge into the night air, I see half a dozen uniformed police going in.
14
Power Imbalance
By the time we get to Antonio’s house, I’m too sick to care about anything. As soon as he opens the door, I stumble to the nearest bathroom. He brings a cool, damp cloth for the back of my neck, and a glass
of water to rinse my mouth, but he doesn’t say anything.
He doesn’t get the chance, either. There’s a hammering at his door just as I sink onto a couch in the living room. I lie still, eyes closed, head pounding; I hear angry voices, and then my parents are in the room.
“What’s wrong with her?” my dad says. I’ve never heard his voice like that before. He’s beyond furious.
“She drank too much.”
“You took my drunk daughter home with you?” Dad shouts. “Did you take her to the club too? Do you realize she’s too young to drink legally?”
I want to drag a pillow over my head to block out his yelling. “Doug,” my mom says quietly. It’s her turn to talk him down. “I’m sure Mr. Adamo can explain.”
“She and her friend went to a club. I got a call that she was there and drinking a lot, so I went and got her.” Antonio’s voice is flat and matter-of-fact, not that it does any good.
“Why did they call you?” My dad isn’t calming down.
“Because my cousin owns the club.”
“So?” Dad is not appeased. “Why didn’t he call Vic?”
There’s a long silence and it’s a good thing I already puked my guts out, because my stomach is roiling. “Vic?” Antonio says quietly, but there’s an edge to his voice.
“He’s her boss. And her boyfriend. What is it with you Adamo men, anyway?”
I can’t listen any longer. Very slowly, I pull myself up and sit with my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands. I can’t believe this is happening, but maybe it’s just as well. Better for my parents to find out now, after everything’s over.
“Dad,” I croak. “Vic isn’t my boyfriend. You just assumed he was.”
No one speaks, but the air in the room gets heavy. I think my parents are adding two and two and getting a great big four. Finally, my dad speaks.
“You … and Cait?” He’s not yelling anymore. It’s barely above a whisper. “You’ve been with my baby girl?” His tone turns vicious. “You son of a bitch.”
“Doug.” My mom’s voice is icy but controlled. “Let’s get Catie home.”
I don’t protest as they move to either side of me and help me to my feet. My eyes meet Antonio’s. His face is hard and I’m too sick and numb to feel anything. I look away and let my parents lead me outside.
The next day I’m scheduled to be off work, which saves me from having to call in hung over. In the afternoon, Erin calls me and we sort out what happened.
Someone in the club, probably an off-duty cop, recognized her and called it in. That’s why the police were there, to take her home. In the process of getting her out of there, they found out I’d left with Antonio and told Erin’s dad, who called my dad.
“Did you get in a lot of trouble with your parents?” I ask her.
“Surprisingly little. Dad was mostly freaked out that I was talking to Kosta Adamo. But he tried to act like he wasn't freaked. It was weird.”
“So, Kosta …”
“Um. We'll talk about that sometime when we have complete radio silence.” Meaning in person, with no parental units around at all.
“Can't wait,” I tell her.
“What about you?”
“They weren’t happy about the drinking. Or the club. And they really weren’t happy about me lying to them. But they know about Antonio now, so they’re a little bit preoccupied with that.”
“Ohh, shit,” she says.
“Yeah. I think my dad would like to ground me until I’m fifty, and my mom is in Disappointment Mode.”
“Ugh. That’s the worst. But Cait, why was Antonio even there at the club?”
“I have no idea. Does he honestly think he can make a public appearance with his fiancée and then come back to me like it’s no big deal? And what about Gretchen what’s-her-face? Does she not even care? God, I can’t even think about it. It all makes my head hurt.”
There's a voice in the background on Erin's end, and she says something and then is back with me. “Sorry, Catie, I gotta go. I’ll call you later.”
“Later,” I say, and search for a distraction. I'm looking at cute cat pictures an hour later when Erin texts me. No message, just a url that contains the word Adamo. The pain in my stomach comes back with a vengeance, but I click through. I have to.
Holy. Shit.
It's an article announcing that Antonio and Gretchen Howard are absolutely not engaged, and have never been engaged. Moreover, it says, Antonio was not in on the “joke.” There's a quote from Howard's publicist admitting that they made the whole thing up – but it was all for charity, according to him, to draw more attention to the Children's Hospital event.
I call Erin immediately. “I don't know what to think,” I say as soon as she answers. “What if this is all a fake story and the engagement is real?”
“Catie,” Erin says. “How many cosmos did you drink last night?”
I frown. “A few. Why?”
She sighs. “Do you honestly think self-made billionaire Antonio Adamo has nothing better to do with his time than make up stories about engagements to fuck with your head?”
“Well. When you put it that way, it does sound kind of ridiculous.”
“You think?” Erin says. “Listen, Catie ... you need to call him.”
“Oh, hell no.” I roll over and bury my face in my pillow for several seconds before I can go on. “Erin, I can never look him in the eye again. If he really is engaged, he humiliated me in a way I can't ever forgive, and if he's not, I made a complete jackass out of myself. In public. In front of, like, a gazillion people! He must hate me.”
“Catie—”
“No. No no no.”
“Okay,” she says quietly. I can tell she doesn't agree with me but isn't going to push it. We end the call and I stare at the ceiling, my mind filled with a new set of endless speculations.
A fake engagement. For publicity reasons. (“For the charity,” my ass.) I can totally see a fame-hungry actress doing that.
Giving up my pretense at indifference, I go online on my phone and look for other references to Gretchen Howard and her fake engagement. I find a few posts, but there's no new info; they all repeat the same things as the link Erin sent me.
My gut is telling me that the man I was getting to know wouldn't jerk me around like that. But maybe that's just wishful thinking.
Anyway, like I told Erin, he must hate me now. I not only made a fool of myself at the club, I screamed at him in front of all those people. And then I got sick like some lightweight who’s never had a drink.
Maybe Antonio and I really had a chance to be something. Not anymore, though. I've ruined that for good.
I am such an idiot.
That evening, the police bring my car back, along with the news that they have no evidence and no case. There were no prints on the car that shouldn’t be there, and the security cameras outside the café were jammed. Erin’s dad is a homicide detective, but he’s been keeping an eye on my case and he’s there too.
“Be careful,” he tells me when the uniforms are gone. “I don’t want to scare you, but I do want you to be alert to your surroundings at all times.” He looks me in the eye and says quietly, “It’s probably best to avoid clubs and drinking.”
He’s not scolding me, but I still feel embarrassed. “I’ll be careful. Thanks, Mr. Grant.” When he’s gone, I get up and head for my bedroom. Things have been tense, to put it lightly, since my parents brought me home last night.
“Caitlin,” my dad says. I stop and turn, leaning against the wall, my arms wrapped around my middle. “Sit down.”
“I’ll stand, thanks.” If I have to talk to them, I will, but I’m not up for a heart-to-heart. They don’t understand. How could they?
“Catie,” Mom says. “We were young once, believe it or not.” I manage not to roll my eyes. “We know how exciting it is to have feelings for someone.”
When I don’t respond, she lets out a sigh. “It’s just that … relationships are
difficult. It takes experience to make a good one. And for you to get involved with someone who’s so much older …”
I know what she’s saying — the same thing Antonio did when he tried to warn me off. “You think I can’t handle being with him because he’s older and I’m ... inexperienced.”
“There’s a power imbalance,” my dad says gravely, and I almost laugh. Antonio and I had a power imbalance, all right. I could explain to my father just how fucking hot it was, but it would turn his hair white overnight.
“When you’ve met more people,” my mom starts, and I’ve had enough. Maybe it makes me a bad daughter, but I can’t stand here and listen to their well-meaning lectures. I hold up a hand, and she falls silent.
15
Home
“You want to know why I never brought any boys home?” I say. “Because I didn’t want to. Because they bore me. Because Antonio Adamo is the only man I’ve ever wanted in my whole life.”
“Oh, Catie,” my mom says softly. “Baby, you’re so young — you don’t know what you want.”
“Yes I do!” I cry. “You don’t get it, Mom. I have loved him forever — ever since I was old enough to understand what love is. Nothing is going to change that. This isn’t some childish infatuation.”
From the looks on my parents’ faces, that’s exactly what they think it is. I knew they wouldn’t understand. “There’s nothing you can say to change my mind,” I tell them. “I’m an adult, whether you like it or not. Even if you think I’m making a mistake, you have to let me make it.”
I don’t bother telling them that things are over with Antonio. That would just convince them that they’re right, when they’re not. Even if I never see Antonio again, I can’t be sorry for loving him. I’ll never be sorry.