“Go dip your balls in his drink,” I said.
“You’re so weird,” he answered with a laugh. “I’m going to miss playing against you.”
I was too. But I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Not yet. Not until I’d processed that this part of my life was actually over. We hugged one more time before another hand took mine, and it was a momentbefore I recognized the grip of slender fingers and long nails that came to a sharp point.
“Katya.”
“My brother’s busy annoying Alexio, so I thought I would steal you for a moment. Tyoma wants to meet you, but he doesn’t want Vanya’s chaos there.”
I should have probably defended my boyfriend—my fiancé—but I understood what she was saying. And why Tyoma might want a private moment.
“He’s in the kitchen,” she said.
I grazed one hand along the wall, the other slightly in front of me so I didn’t crash into anyone, and followed Katya down the small hallway and to the right.
The kitchen was quiet, apart from the sound of the kettle boiling, and then I heard Tyoma clear his throat. We hadn’t met yet, but I’d talked to him a few times when Vanya called his siblings.
This felt strange though. The terrifying man who helped me take down the man who tried to ruin everything. I owed him my life, and I had no idea why he went so far out of his way.
“Micah,” he said. His voice was deeper than Vanya’s, a low, pleasant rumble.
I stuck out my hand, and he took it, but instead of shaking it, he pulled me in and pressed a kiss to each cheek. I was still getting used to their way of greeting. Jonah, Caleb, and I touched each other a lot out of necessity, but there was very little affection in our gestures unless shit was really bad.
“Sorry,” Tyoma said. “Is that too much?”
“No, no. Ah…it’s just been kind of a night.”
Katya laughed. “Yes, we watched the ceremony. You looked…”
I waited in silence for what she was going to say.
“Like you wanted to be anywhere else,” Tyoma filled in for her.
“Exactly,” she said. “I’ve seen that look. When Vanya starts singing his show tunes.”
I groaned, and they both laughed. Tyoma gently pressed his elbow to mine, which I appreciated. I wondered if Vanya had coached his siblings on how to interact with me.
“I just wanted to say thank you,” he said after a beat.
I startled. “Thankme? For what? Making your brother’s life harder?”
Tyoma sighed. “For loving him. For understanding him. I think most of us have worried most of our lives that Vanya wouldn’t find someone who cared for him the way he needed. He’s always worked too hard and gotten too little out of it. I knew right away this was different. That you were different.”
I didn’t know what to say other than I didn’t deserve that because I’d been a shit to him for so long. But I didn’t because Vanya and I had worked through that, and my therapist was helping me accept that Vanya had forgiven me for the moments I wasn’t the best to him.
And she was helping me recognize all themoments I wasn’t shitty—and hadn’t been since I realized just how much Vanya meant to me.
“I feel the same way about him,” was what I eventually said.
“Good.” He was quiet for another beat. “I hope you don’t think I’m some kind of monster. I don’t normally go after people the way I did with this—” He said a word in Russian I didn’t understand, but I knew it wasn’t kind. “When Vanya told me what he did to you—and then what he did to Vanya’s home—I couldn’t let that stand.”
“All you did was get him caught,” I said.
Tyoma coughed, then cleared his throat. “Yes. Of course, that is all I did.”
I wasn’t going to ask. I knew too much already, and in truth, I didn’t give one whisper of a fuck what happened to Hunter now that he was gone. They’d found evidence of his plans—what he wanted to do to me. Rantings and ravings on his hard drive in both text and videos he’d never posted about his sick ass fantasies.
I had no idea if he ever planned to carry them out, and I never had to hear the details because he’d pled guilty, and the only time we were in the room with him was when he was being sentenced.
