“No hope? That’s brutal, King.”

“You say he’s an aspiring writer. Break him, then.” Kingsley sipped his Scotch and laughed to himself. “It’ll be good for his art.”

He started to button his shirt, but Eleanor stopped him with a hand on his chest. She pressed her hand against the scar tissue. He didn’t seem surprised when she touched his chest. Not surprised and not at all displeased.

“This nun at my school always said Hell was the absence of hope,” Eleanor said, tracing the hard line of the scar. She couldn’t imagine how much pain Kingsley had suffered, how he’d even survived such a wound. But it was beautiful in a way, this scar of his. She almost wanted to kiss it.

Kingsley covered her hand with his.

“Then your nun was never in love with someone she couldn’t have. If you care about this boy at all, give him no hope.”

He raised his hand and traced her bottom lip with his thumb.

“I know you, Elle,” Kingsley said, his voice so low it lulled her in closer to him, so close they could have kissed if one of them dared to do it. “I know what you are. You will never be content with a boy like that. He will be a game and you will play him and you will tire of the game and him. You need so much more than such a boy can give you. I know this because I’m the same way.”

He looked into her eyes and Eleanor looked into his. She could almost imagine their lips meeting … She could rip off his shirt, yank his pants open. He’d look beautiful on his back underneath her, her hands on his wrists, his c**k buried inside her as she rode him into the couch.

Wait. What the f**k was she thinking?

Eleanor pulled back and sat on the opposite end of the couch from Kingsley. He continued to stare at her, a smug smile on his lips as if he’d read her thoughts. He didn’t bother buttoning his shirt.

Kingsley took another swig of his Scotch, then handed it to her. She stared into the murky liquid before taking a deep drink of it. She coughed only once as the liquor burned its way down her throat.

“I’m f**ked, King.”

“Not yet. But the night is still young.”

“What should I do?”

“What do you want to do?”

“Fuck them both.” She laughed mirthlessly. “I know what I don’t want to do. I don’t want to hurt Wyatt. I don’t want to hurt Søren.”

“A nice dream, but this is life, the real world. You will hurt them. They will hurt you.”

“Wyatt … he’s my age, you know?” She stared down into the Scotch at the bottom of Kingsley’s glass in her hand. “He’s an NYU student. We can go places together, be seen together. We’re both writers. We make sense. Søren and I? We don’t make sense. At least to no one but us.”

Kingsley traced the wet rim of his glass with his fingertip.

“Elle … I wish you could have known him back when he was a teenager.”

“What was he like?”

“Old. He was older then than he is now. An old soul, as they say.” Kingsley chuckled at what must have been a good memory. “Mon Dieu, you’d never met anyone more arrogant, haughty, pompous and condescending. Everyone at the school hated that blond shit. Everyone but the priests.”

Eleanor burst into laughter.

“I can totally picture that. Why was he such a prick back then?”

“We’re all shits when we’re teenagers. God knows I was, but for him, I think it was this fear of his. He thought he’d been tainted by his father, his past. Better to be hated than loved. Love lets people in. He wanted no one near him. He’s better now. Being a priest … he’s more open with his affections. Being with you …” Kingsley paused as if the next words didn’t want to come. “Being with you makes him better. Happy. Less troubled. My God, he’s almost …” Kingsley shook his head. “Almost fun.”

Kingsley said the word with exaggerated horror.

Eleanor laughed. “He wasn’t fun as a teenager?” She gave Kingsley his Scotch back. If she kept it she might drink it all and then some.

“In a different way,” he answered, and Kingsley smiled his secret sort of smile before the smile died. “No, he was not fun then. He was cold and closed off, dangerous and nearly impossible to get close to. It nearly killed me getting close to him, but in the end the reward was worth the price.”

“If I left him …” She faced Kingsley and stared into his dark eyes. “What would happen?”

Kingsley twirled the remaining Scotch and ice around the bottom of his glass.

“You have only seen him by day, and by day we see only light and shadow. But if you left him, the night would come. And then we would all see the darkness.”

“What’s the darkness like?”

“I will say only this—when le prêtre is in the right mood, he can make even the devil afraid to turn his back.”

Kingsley downed the last of his drink. Eleanor buried her face in her hands again.

“I hate my life tonight,” Eleanor said as his words slipped in through the hairline fractures in her heart and widened them.

“Elle, I once stood at the same crossroads you stand at now. I have never regretted walking the darker path. The view is better down here. And I am many things, but I am never bored.”

“I don’t want Søren to ever leave the priesthood, but if we get caught, if he gets in trouble … I wish I could I see the future.”