Page 21 of Suck This

CHAPTER 6

One never knows why a man falling in love does stupid shit when he could’ve prevented it by not engaging at all.

-Con to Abe

CONSTANTINE

“Why did you stay in that jail cell when you didn’t have to?” Pavlov asked in confusion.

“Because they knew who I was, and where I supposedly lived. I wouldn’t be able to walk around the city ever again unencumbered. They would’ve killed me on the spot.” I sighed. “And to be honest, I quite like my head attached to my body.”

“You could’ve made the illusion that you were there. You didn’t have to stay,” Pavlov countered. “You wanted to stay because of the woman.”

I sighed. The man was sometimes too smart for his own good.

“Brother, leave it alone,” Abraham, Abe for short, said.

Abe and Pavlov were brothers, real life brothers, and they were twins on top of that. They were identical twins, in fact, and I couldn’t tell them apart. Not when they were actually trying to look like twins.

The only true way for me to tell them apart was by the sound of their mind, but that was something I didn’t intrude upon often. I didn’t like when they did it to me, so I didn’t do it to them.

Though, that was only something the men of my inner circle, which consisted of four men, could do.

Pavlov, Abraham, Fox, and Render were four of the only men in the world I would trust with my life, and that was it. I didn’t even trust my own maker, Carrion, with my life. Not when he was the first person to take it… or at least try to.

“Yes, I have a thing for her,” I answered. The other men around the room chose not to speak up, keeping their thoughts on my revelation to themselves. “However, that had no bearing on why I chose to stay in that jail cell. If you’re ever in the position that I was in tonight, I’ll find you a lawyer. There better not be any disappearing, because I don’t want them to kill me in search of you. Understand?”

I looked at each man in turn, and they all nodded their assents.

Pavlov stood and brought me a stack of messages, knowing I was finally done with the ass chewing I’d been giving them for the last twenty minutes.

“You got three calls, two of which were from the girl.”

I could tell he was trying not to smile, and I wanted to smack him upside the head.

Pavlov, however, would retaliate and I didn’t feel like ripping the clothes I was wearing. They smelled like her, and I would look weird wearing torn clothing around tomorrow. I could pass off the pants and the shirt, no one would know but the men in the room that I was wearing them for the second day in a row.

Who was the third call from?

I’d lapsed into telepathy, not even realizing I’d done it. Though, I’d been doing it all night, coordinating with the men to figure out a way out of this without losing my head or burning up due to the sun that was only seconds away from rising in the sky.

Not that it would’ve done me any serious harm, though they—the humans—didn’t know that. And I wanted to keep it that way.

There were a lot of things that they were still learning about us, and the more we could keep them in the dark about our abilities, the better for us that it was.

“Jolie.”

I growled low in my throat. “Did you tell her that I refused to take her call?”

Something I’d been doing for a month now, and she couldn’t take a fuckin’ hint.

“She can’t see past the fact that you don’t want to talk to her to comprehend the fact that you no longer need her services.”

I laughed roughly under my breath and stood, walking to the small fridge in the corner of the room and yanking out a bag of blood.

Normally I liked to feed straight from the source, but the bagged blood had been taken today, meaning it wasn’t too old to taste like shit yet. Anything over two days was disgusting to me, though it was still fulfilling.

It was like drinking a hot beverage when it should be cold. I could do it, I just didn’t like doing it.