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I can tell from the way he says it that the words came out before he meant them to. There’s a moment of silence, and I can feel a warmth spreading through me, a tightening in my belly that has nothing to do with the anxiety I felt a moment before.
“It was locked,” I repeat, my voice sounding a little more breathless than before.I hate this. I hate that he does this to me.Don’t I?“I couldn’t get in to look for anything. And he doesn’t leave stuff lying around, so that was pretty much my only chance. I was about to go back to bed when my phone went off. Whyareyou calling, anyway?”
I’m starting to ramble, I can hear it. I clamp my lips tightly shut, forcing the flow of words to stop as I wait for him to respond, my pulse picking up again.
“I wanted to make sure you were safe.”
It’s such a simple, honest-sounding statement that it takes a minute for it to sink in. My chest tightens with an emotion that I know I shouldn’t be feeling–and a flicker of fear, too.
“I’m in Grisha’s apartment,” I whisper. “Where you put me. Why wouldn’t I be safe?”
“No reason.” Levin clears his throat, and I have a distinct impression that he’s not entirely telling me the truth. “The date went well, I take it, if you’re still there?”
“What’s your definition of ‘well’?” I can hear the hint of resentment in my voice. “We had wine and charcuterie and I let him seduce me into ‘forgetting’ about his infidelity and the fact that he has a wife and kids, and pretended that I don’t hate his fucking guts now. Is that what you mean?”
The words are so acidic that I’m surprised they don’t burn through the phone. Levin is silent on the other end for a moment, and I wonder what he’s thinking. I wish I knew.
“You slept with him?”
I can tell he’s trying to say it without emotion, to keep the words flat and inflectionless, but I know better. Even in the short time I’ve known him, I’ve come to pick up on some of his mannerisms, the way he speaks. If I let myself think too much about it–which I’ve been trying very hard not to do–I’d chalk it up to another aspect of the chemistry that we seem to have in spades.
“Define ‘slept’. Because I haven’t gotten any sleep yet.”
I don’t know why I say it like that, exactly. What Ishouldhave said wasyes, I had sex with Grisha. As far as he knows, all is right again. I did my part, and I’ll keep doing it until you say I can stop.
But a part of me wants to needle Levin, to find that vein of jealousy and dig into it,carveat it until I find out exactly why he’s so insistent that I do this job, and yet seems to hate it the entire time.
“What did the two of you do? Tell me exactly.”
I hesitate. “What do you mean? I don’t–”
“You said you slept together. What did he do? What did the two of you do together?”
Something twists in my stomach uncomfortably. “He–we started kissing on the couch, and he–”
“Did you do anything there? Did he touch you? Go down on you?”
“I don’t know why you need to know all of this.” I swallow hard, gripping the edge of the countertop with my other hand. “Levin, I–”
“Just tell me.”
There’s something sharp in his voice, a bite laced with that jealousy that I’ve heard before, that I don’t understand.
“He–” I lick my lips, keeping my voice very low, a hushed whisper that sounds too intimate for what I’m saying. “He slid his hand up my thigh on the couch. Under my dress, while he kissed me. Slowly, like he was waiting for me to stop him.”
“And did you?”
My mouth feels dry. “No.”
“Did you want to?” There’s that jealousy again, that hint of sharpness in his voice. It feels like pinpricks over my skin.
“Yes. I wanted to stop him. But I couldn’t. You told me to let him do whatever he wanted, this time.”
“Because it’s the job.Yourjob.”
“Yes.”
I understand, in that moment, what this is. Why Levin is making me recount the details of my night with Grisha to him, why this conversation is going to go on until he’s heard all of it. He’s driving it home to both of us what this is, that this is a mission, a job, and that what happened between Levin and I in the hotel room can’t happen again. He’s trying to put an end to it by making me say it all out loud.
