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“He better not touch you.”
Pretending I don’t hear Reece, I stride out to the middle of the street to meet Phil on the dividing line.
“Where have you been? What are you doing out here all alone?”
“Can you keep a secret?” I circle him to keep his attention on me, and nowhere near Reece.
Phil looks me up and down before nodding his head. “Anything.”
“I thought it’d be good for me to get out, get my mind off things, but I miss Kordin. I miss our home.” I make my body sway on my heels.
“Is that where you’re headed?” Phil glances around, so I clamp my hands on his forearms, willing his eyes to stay on me.
Fortunately, they do.
Unfortunately, so do Reece’s. I don’t even have to see him to know he’s riveted from his darkened spot.
“I’m so embarrassed to bow out this early. I really thought tonight would be a nice break from everything going on.”
“Everybody had a great time. I don’t think anyone but me even noticed you were gone.” His hand finds my bare back, massaging the skin side to side. “Why don’t you come back with me so I can drive you home myself?”
Faking a heave, I cover my mouth like I’m holding back vomit, causing Phil to leap backward, his hand disappearing from my skin as if it caught fire.
“After spending the last thirty minutes in the bathroom, you’d think there wasn’t anything left in my stomach to puke up.” I do it again, throwing in a loud gagging noise, too.
“Maybe I should call you a cab instead.”
I straighten my spine. “I think I’ll be okay to drive.”
He starts to argue, so I look around with doe eyes.
“Phil? Would you mind walking me to my car? This area isn’t what I’m used to and I’d feel safer having you with me.”
Jumping on the opportunity to be my knight in shining armor, Phil escorts me all the way to my Range Rover, miraculously forgetting all about me being too wasted to walk, let alone drive. Not once do I feel the COO remove his hand from my elbow, and not once do I feel Reece remove his eyes from the COO.
Lex
Idip my index finger into the cup of water, then run it along the outer rim of the dough in my other hand. Using my middle finger to tamp down the potato filling in the middle, I fold the pierogi in half, pressing the edges together tightly. I place it on the counter, fork ready, but the moment I press the tines down, crimping the edges, pain radiates from my hand, past my wrist, and up my entire arm, reminding me of Friday night. The fighting, the fucking, Reece during all of it. Alternating between being defiantly in control and voluntarily giving me the power, he was a perfect storm of dominance and submission. As much as I wanted to look away, I couldn’t, and in the end, I was swept up anyway.
“Marzycielka.”
My mother’s voice brings my attention back to the task at hand as we sit across the peninsula-style counter from each other in her quaint kitchen, making potato pierogis—Polish dumplings—from scratch. It’s Halloween, and even though it’s a Sunday, her doorbell will be ringing starting as soon as the sun goes down until midnight, when the teens are finally called back inside. Due to the long driveways, my neighborhood doesn’t get trick-or-treaters. At least that’s what Kordin says. I spend Halloweens here, with my mom, because she gets…nervous. More nervous than usual.
“I’m not a daydreamer,” I argue, using the English translation for marzycielka. I’m not any kind of dreamer.
“Where’s your head? In the clouds?”
Not in the clouds. In bottomless pits of obsidian.
My leg bouncing hard enough to make the stool under me squeak, I finish sealing my pierogi, then add it to the tray.
“I have a lot going on right now.”
“Boy trouble?”
The kitchen goes silent.
“Mum?” I wait for her to look at me before saying, “I’m twenty-six,” reminding her I’m not sixteen anymore. She still treats me like I’m sixteen sometimes, not because she’s one of those helicopter parents who doesn’t respect boundaries, but because that’s how old I was when a bullet tore through her head.
