Two Months Later
The silence after I hung up the call from my mother lasted four exits. At the fifth, as my mind went over the call, I forcibly peeled my fingers away from the leather steering wheel one by one. My mom hadn’t yelled or cried. The phone call had simply been short and guarded.
“How is the drive?” She had asked, her voice tight over the car speakers.
“It’s long,” I said. “Traffic isn’t bad.”
“And Elliot? Is he settling into his summer classes?”
“He’s fine, Mom. Keeping busy.”
We avoided the big things. She didn’t mention my dad. She didn’t talk about the last few months. But right before we ended the call, she paused.
“I was thinking,” she said, her tone softening. “I might come visit you at Ridge Cross in the fall. Just the two of us. Maybe we can get lunch.”
“I’d like that,” I told her.
The highway hum now replaced the dial tone and stayed there. With my father, silence used to mean I’d screwed something up, another mess I was supposed to untangle before it got worse.
Now there was nothing to untangle. Mom had called because she wanted to. A lunch in the fall, just the two of us. It wasn’t some grand apology, but it was more than I’d expected from her.
Small steps. I could work with small steps.
The remaining hours of the car drive blurred past. Trees thinned into industrial outskirts. The GPS guided me off the highway and onto surface streets, past abandoned factories with broken windows and corner stores with barred fronts. The sky shifted from blue to hazy gray as I navigated deeper into the city.
My SUV bumped over cracked pavement when I finally turned onto Aleksey’s street. Boarded-up windows and rusted chain-link fences lined the block. A few kids playing street hockey paused their game; the scrape of their hockey sticks cutting off as they turned to stare at my car.
I spotted him in the third-floor window before I’d even cut the engine. His silhouette pulled back the instant I looked up, and by the time I lurched the car into park, the front door of the building swung open. Aleksey walked out to meet me, hands shoved deep into his pockets, shoulders slouched forward.
His nervous posture caught me off guard. I’d never seen Aleksey slouch like that.
He stopped near my front fender, scanning the street before his gaze landed back on me. A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth, quick and crooked, there and gone.
I didn’t wait. I simply rounded the fender and closed the distance before he could say a word. My arms hooked around his back, and I pulled him into a hard hug, my face pressed into the collar of his denim jacket. He felt as solid as ever under my grip, the hard muscle of his back flexing as his arms locked around me.
Aleksey pulled back first, a brief kiss brushing the corner of my mouth before he checked the street again. And then his arm draped around my shoulders as he steered me toward the building. “The neighbors are gonna stare at that SUV all day.”
“Let them.”
“I’m serious. Someone’s probably already taking bets on which rims get stolen first.”
“Then you better get me inside before I have to fight a twelve-year-old for my hubcaps.”
“The twelve-year-olds around here?” Aleksey snorted. “You’d lose.”
Moments later, the front door swung shut behind us with a metallic thud, sealing us in the dim stairwell where a single bulb buzzed overhead, casting low light over peeling paint.
But I barely registered the sound, because the second we were alone, I grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him in.
The kiss hit hard, his mouth opening under mine as his hands found my waist. His fingers dug into my sides, gripping tight like I might vanish. I backed him against the wall, and he made a low sound in the back of his throat that I felt in my teeth.
When I finally leaned back, both of us breathing hard, I kept my hand locked on his neck and pressed my forehead to his.
“Okay,” I said. “Now that’s what I call a warm welcome.”
Aleksey’s laugh was low and rough against my mouth. “Shut up.”
“Make me.”
