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Feelings?
No. Fuck no. Absolutely not. I stare at her, studying her hard. She studies me right back. No—I could sleep with her, and it wouldn’t be a problem. I could fuck her right now, right here on this couch and feel nothing. Nothing but lust, and pleasure, and satisfaction. But nothing deeper. Of course not.
Of course not.
“Why did you do it?”
I look at her. “Why did I do what?”
“Kill him. That man, Konstantin’s brother.”
“It wasn’t personal,” I say, taking the glass when she leans over to offer it back. “It was business.” I note with pleasure theway her face pales, the blood draining a little from it. And she looks away, like she can’t bear the thought of it—me, killing a man. She’d be disappointed to learn the story of how I became the man I am today, I’m sure of that. “In my line of work, it’s simply an occupational hazard.” ?
She’s quiet then, for a moment, tracing the threads in a throw blanket folded beside her on the sofa. “Do you know what I do? For work?”
Yes. You’re a photographer. A good one.Good enough that her photos sometimes have the strange power to make me want things I never have even imagined wanting before; a romantic engagement by a waterfront, a wedding in an orchard, under the pale pink cherry blossoms; a woman showing me the sonogram of her—our—unborn child. And those children, as they grow. As they join soccer leagues and go to kindergarten to learn how to paint with their hands and play well with others. Her photos make me see the magic in an ordinary life.
I resent her for it. “No,” I say. A lie. One that I’m not sure she’ll believe. “I don’t know what you do for work, and frankly, it doesn’t matter.”
She smiles again. This one is mean. Another kind of smile I didn’t know she had in her arsenal. “I take photos. Of events, and for people. You know, the special days in their lives. That kind of thing.”
“I see.” I pour more whiskey and extend the glass to her, but instead of taking it, she gets up and walks around the sofa, and sits beside me. Right beside me, turning to face me directly. Our faces are close, and I can feel her warmth radiating onto my skin, igniting my insides.
My breath catches hard in my throat—does she notice? It takes all of the power and focus in me not to lean either toward or away from her. But to stay where I am, rigid and unflinching. My heart is trembling hard against my ribs, and I swallowthe tight knot that has begun to form near my Adam’s apple, hoping that she can’t tell how tense I am. She’s too close, and it’s making my blood boil.
She’s looking into my eyes, her own calm and satin-lidded, like I don’t scare her at all. Slowly, she takes the whiskey, pulling the same move I did, sliding her fingers over mine and pulling it away like a petal off a rose, soft and gentle and full of something enticing. She drinks, watching me all the while. Heavy lashes hanging on her soft, pink-flushed cheeks. The smell of the whiskey we have been sharing is drifting off of her tongue as she speaks, and the sweet scent of her skin is mingling with the alcoholic buzz in the air, like a pheromone that’s calling me to move closer, begging me to fuck her. To take her and make her mine, as she once was. When she was moaning my name. God, what I would do to hear that again.
“Did you regret it?” Her voice is a whisper, and I feel myself leaning into her words, hating myself for such an unintentional movement. It’s as if she has some cosmic power over my subconscious, and it’s leaving a heady, uncontrolled feeling in my chest. I don’t like it. “Leaving me? Sleeping with me?”
I say nothing. There is no safe answer to her questions, and I think she knows this as well as I do. I want to pretend, or at the very least be able to convince myself, that I don’t know the answer to either of those questions. But I do. The answers are on the tip of my tongue in the space of her asking them, wanting to slip from my lips and carry over to hers, to close that electrified distance between us.
I can see the liquor has a foothold on her. She’s no longer looking at me, but instead gazing distantly, head tilted slightly to the right, smooth locks of hair spilling over her shoulders, a strand in her eyes. Windblown, wild, natural as a nymph in tall grass. It’s an inviting, sultry look that she’s posed in front of me, but I know that, as much as I can blame the alcohol forher demeanor, I must own up to it myself. I’m slipping, and I have to get out before I get caught in the intoxicating web that we both seemed to have weaved between us over the span of the evening.
“I should turn in,” I say quickly, looking away from her. “And you should too. I’ll walk you to your room.” I stand from the now stifling cushion, walking toward her bedroom, and it takes her a moment to finally trail behind me, silent.
Chapter Seven
Kat
How much?
How much would it take?
I’m tipsy. Warm and floating, every cell with a flawless, heady little buzz. Buzzed. Buzzy—that’s just how I feel. Like I’m at some high and uncontrollable frequency, buzzing around. Alive and in myself, my bones and my body. Wholly aware of every inch of my skin, enough to be overwhelming.
The scalding water from the showerhead courses over my face and shoulders, down my spine. I feel every burning rivulet like a finger running down me in a merciless manner. Like his fingers, like his hands, like the tip of his tongue; tracing all around me, a divine, intimate little exploration. Of me, of an entire world. I truly thought the memories of the night we shared together were gone. Cast off like lines, jettisoned, far away from me and my life. They’re in me still, though, coming back in fragments and fractals as I spend more time around him. As I have my ex-lover in my house with me. It’s more of the little things that we shared, and less of the big, overwhelming memories. Like the way he kissed the inside of my knee, or just below my ear. Like the way he pulled the duvet over my body after we were finished making love, and slid his arm beneath me, pulling me close, flush against his warm body, still slick with our shared sweat. The way he laid his hand across my jaw and guided my cheek to his chest, where I could listen to the rapid but slowing rap of his heart against his ribs. His slowing breath meeting mine in a calm rhythm.
I close my eyes slowly, taking a deep breath. Cosmically, I beg him:Come to me. Come for me.It’s a familiar request, I recognize. When we parted ways, it was a common prayer forme to ask for him to stay, as double-edged as a fairy tale wish. I wanted him, but I knew that he was too dangerous to have. I wanted to tell him the truth, that I was pregnant, that the child was his, but I knew the baby would be safer with me, far from his world. I wanted him to love me, to fall in love with me, to propose to me and marry me and make me his wife, to build a world with me and leave his dark one behind.
And I knew I was not enough; I could never be enough for a man like him. But I begged the world in wishes anyway, because I was too scared to simply speak the words aloud. Too scared to find him or pick up a phone or get on a plane. Too scared. A coward.
And now?
Now…four years have passed. Now, I’ve been on my own for so long I don’t even know how to rely on another person, much less ask them to build a world for or with me. Now I’m my own person, and I know better than to believe in fairy tales—even the ones where the wishes turn out to be curses, too.
He’s not coming, I think, closing my eyes, drenched in the burning shower, drunk and happy in the steam. Alive and present in my body in a way I haven’t been in so long, in so many years. I feel as if my skin is crawling with electricity, and I don’t want to stop this sensation.Give it up, Kat, he’s not coming for you. He never was, and he never will.
But…what the hell is stopping me?
