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“I need to get out of here,” I say. “Not home, just… somewhere that isn’t school.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
Alek stands and grabs my wrists, lifting me with ease. His hands hold a firm grip on my arms to steady me on my feet, which is good because my legs have turned to gelatin.
“We can’t leave,” I say. “The police are at the gate, and they won’t let any students out unless they’re leaving in a car. Some made-up security bullshit.”
“Then it’s a good thing I have a car.”
He grabs my hand and leads me toward the faculty parking lot. Most students are dropped off in town cars by personal drivers rather than driving themselves to school.
However, Alek brings me to the passenger door of a sleek, black sports car. He opens it and gestures for me to climb in.
“What sort of teenager drives a Maserati?” I ask, staring at the logo on the steering wheel.
He grins, resting his arm on the roof to lean down. “A rich one.”
I roll my eyes. “Shouldn’t the president’s son have a bodyguard drive him to school?”
“I pay him to look the other way,” he says, giving me a mischievous wink. “Having him tail me around school all day was getting annoying.”
The car door shuts before he comes around to the driver’s seat. I take a moment to appreciate the all-black interior, including the buttery leather under my fingertips.
This fits him. It even smells like him.
Once settled, Alek starts the ignition, and the car roars to life with a growl that fades into a rumble. “Hold on tight, malishka.”
The car rips out of the parking lot and down the hill, gliding through each curve with precision speed. It doesn’t take long to arrive at the gate, where the policemen start to wrangle the crowd of protesters on the other side.
As soon as the gate is open, Alek punches the gas, tearing past the demonstrators. They yell at the car with angry voices, but when we turn onto the main road, we take off like a racecar.
Alek doesn’t make me talk. Instead, he turns up his Russian hip-hop music, and the bass is so loud I can’t hear myself think.
But I don’t want to think right now. In fact, if I could erase today from my memory, that would be fantastic.
Everything except Alek.
We drive to a small cottage restaurant on the outskirts of Olininburg. When we walk inside, it looks like a country kitchen with its wooden tables and gauzy white curtains. This is the last place I’d expect a bad boy like Alek Kurochkin to be.
The restaurant is empty after the lunch service, but Alek leads me to a table in the corner. Natural light washes over the room.
A stout, older woman comes out of the kitchen and spots us. As soon as she recognizes Alek, she starts fussing over him like a grandmother over her grandchild. He gives her a charming smile and converses with her in Russian.
She scurries off to the kitchen, leaving me alone with Alek once again.
“Let me guess,” I say. “You’re a nice guy possessing Alek Kurochkin’s body, right? Because the Alek I know is a psychopath.”
He leans back in his chair, resting his elbow on the seatback. He appraises me with a mischievous smirk, as though he knows something I don’t.
When he doesn’t say anything, I continue. “So, have you seen it?”
“Seen what?” he asks.
I give him a pointed look. “The video, moron.”
“I saw enough.”
I burrow my face in my hands, wishing I could disappear off the face of the earth. Alek is one of the last people I wanted to see it.
