Dark Heart (Dark Heart 1)

“Elise. I’m so sorry. Mom told me a little while ago.” So my mom’s telling people. I nod mutely against his shoulder.

He pulls slightly away so he can look into my eyes. “You okay?”

I shake my head. “But I know I will be.” Tears start flowing again.

“Was it last night?”

I nod.

“Ree said you were trying to link up with Luca?”

“Yeah,” I rasp. “Do you know where he is?”

He frowns. “I think I saw him upstairs. Let me go check. You want something to drink? I’ll have someone bring you something,” Jace says, like he lives here.

“It’s okay.”

Jace and Dani exchange a look, which makes my pulse quicken. As soon as Jace is out of earshot, I frown at Dani. “Hey…is something wrong?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. I mean…besides the obvious, you know.” She looks like she’s not sure if she should smile or cry, so I roll my eyes.

“Besides that.”

Dani wraps her arm around me. “Maybe Jace is trying to shield you from too many eyes. Or help you rest.”

“Maybe.” But why didn’t Jace take me to Luca? “I just want to see him.”

“I know you do.”

Dani’s arm around me stiffens, and I look up to understand why. Lorenzo Missanelli is striding toward us, holding two champagne flutes and smirking with both dimples showing as he locks his eyes on Dani.

“Jesus Christ,” she mutters, pulling her arm out from behind me. “Look at bozo the clown.”

“Dani,” I hiss. “He looks nice, I think.”

She snorts.

Loren is tall and lean, wide up top but not as bulky as Luca or Jace. Tonight he’s got on pale jeans that are ripped on one knee, a white Nirvana shirt, and he has a purple mohawk. No one had seen it until graduation, when we all assumed he had it done specifically to piss off his father, Senator Serg Missanelli. “Serg the Sarge”—as Loren calls him—is almost always in Washington, D.C., but when he comes home, Loren always gets weird. Well, weirder.

Seeing him with crazy hair gives me a little boost. I can’t help smiling when he hands Dani and I our drinks and grins right at her with those killer dimples.

“Daniella.”

“Lorenzo,” she says pertly.

Loren runs a hand back through his purple hair—self-consciously, I think, but then he realizes the tell and grips a tuft of his hair. “So whaddaya think about my new do?” He smirks as if he’s got the upper hand, even under Dani’s withering stare.

“I think you look like Tinky Winky.” Dani lifts her chin, now smirking back up at him.

“Tinky Winky.” He looks totally affronted. “You saying I look like a fucking Teletubby?”

“I’m saying you look like the president of the Teletubbies. The grand leader. Chancellor, prime minister. Really might as well just get the full-on Tubby suit because that would make me laugh, and I need to laugh. We all need a laugh, Lorenzo. So thank you for that tonight.”

I’m surprised when Loren halfway sits on top of Dani, wrapping both of his hands around her ear to whisper something.

I watch Dani’s nostrils flare, and then she leans away. She gives him a fuck off look and says, “You can go now, Lorenzo. Thank you for the alcohol.”

She holds her flute up and Loren arches his brows, like he’s not happy but not sure what to say.

“You’re welcome,” he says finally, and he goes.

“C’mon.” Dani sighs as she stands. “Let’s go somewhere else so I don’t ‘accidentally’ run into him again. It’s been happening for weeks now, and I’m over it.”

I follow her, holding my own cool glass flute. “Has it?”

She nods. “You know he’s dating that girl from Horace Mann. I even think she’ll be here with him tonight. But he can’t resist fucking with me. It’s insane.”

I’m kind of surprised to hear Dani go off on him. Not really, because those two have been at each other’s throats since we were all in diapers. But a little. Last year she decided “Lorenzo”—she’s the only one who calls him that—was “dead to her,” after he came to her house to hang with her brother and the two of them set up a bike ramp on a hill, which had them jumping over Dani’s car. She never drives the car, but she was none too pleased when Loren crashed into the windshield like a bird into a slider door and left blood and little Loren hairs all in the glass.

“Boys are morons,” she mutters now.

Her hand is at the small of my back, and I note she’s walking pretty quickly as we head down the hall toward a side door that leads onto the back porch.

“Are we going outside?” I ask, feeling a kick of panic at the idea we won’t be where Ree expects when she returns with Luca.

“Just for a second. I’d like to smoke. If Ree doesn’t see us, she can just call.” She holds up her leather clutch, where I assume her cellular is.