Chapter Five
Nora
This was so stupid. A decision made purely out of ego, out of some desperate need to prove to myself—and to Slava—that I could move on.
But it's a lie.
I'm still in love with Slava.
And now I'm driving back to my sister's cabin with a stranger in the passenger seat. Inez won't mind; she's always told me to treat her place like my own. But I still feel like I'm breaking some unspoken girl code, bringing a random man back to her house in the middle of the night.
I grimace as his phone rings for the tenth time in the last half hour. He keeps declining the call and texting frantically instead. Is he—is he in the middle of a fight with another girl while he's on his way to get some from me?
Thankfully, there's no traffic, so the drive shouldn't take more than half an hour. But it feels like it's never going to end.
At one point, he actually answers, hisses, "You pushed me to this!" into the phone, and hangs up before whoever it is can respond.
God. It seems like we're both using each other tonight.
He hasn't said more than four words to me since we got in the car, choosing to text whoever's on the other end instead. When the cabin finally comes into view, it's like hearing church bells. Finally.
"This is me," I say a little awkwardly as I park.
He puts his phone down and pounces before I've even taken my seatbelt off, so unexpectedly that I flinch.
His mouth on mine feels wrong. His tongue against mine feels filthy—and not in the good way.
His hand slides back to find the messy bun I threw my hair into before we left, fisting into it, and it doesn't feel like anything at all.
We have zero chemistry. I think we both know it. Neither of us stops anyway.
Maybe some petty part of me wants to taunt Slava. Maybe I want him to finally understand we're done, so he'll stop watching me from tinted cars and let me actually move on.
I can't move on while I constantly feel him nearby. While he keeps making it obvious that he isn't giving up. I want to do something that says we're finished, loud enough that even a man like Slava has to hear it.
What's louder than another man's hands all over me?
We get out of the car, and I lock it behind us so we don't come back to find some raccoon nesting in the front seat by morning. If I'd still been with Slava, I wouldn't have had a second to think this clearly about anything—his touch never gave my brain room to wander. No. Thinking. About. Slava.
The second we're both out, this guy's on me again, one hand on my lower back, one curling around my throat. He tilts me back to get deeper into the kiss.
He's doing everything technically right.
It feels so fundamentally wrong.
We stumble toward the door between kisses, and he pins me against it to keep kissing me while I fumble one-handed with the lock.
When his hand slides down to grab my ass, the wrongness of the whole thing finally tips over into too much. That's enough. I think Slava got the message I was trying to send. I just can't stand this stranger's hands on me for one more second.
"Hey, um—can you sit here a sec? I need to talk to my sister," I blurt, turning my head so his mouth catches my cheek instead of my lips. It lands on my neck next, and I cringe. That's too intimate a spot for a man whose last name I don't even know.
I push him back gently.
"Seriously, babe?" he says, gesturing down at himself, very obviously still hard.
I give him an awkward, close-lipped almost-smile. "Really. I'm sorry. It's kind of an emergency."
He huffs and puffs but drops onto the couch and goes back to his phone.
Look—I'm a grown woman. But apparently, the second there's any adult within shouting distance, my body defaults straight back to little-sister mode.
So that's exactly what I do. I go wake mine up.
She groans and swats blindly at me the second I open her door.
"Let. Me. Sleep. Or I'll curse you, I mean it."
"Inez, please. Please, please, please."
"No."
"You don't even know what I'm asking yet!"
"What is it?" she mutters, not opening her eyes, already rolling back over.
I smack her on the butt, and her eyes fly open to glare daggers at me.
"Okay, so—I brought a guy home, but I'm not into it anymore, and I'm too awkward to just tell him to leave, so can you come out and, I don't know, pretend to be furious at me or something?"
She squints up at me. "Is he being forceful? Creepy?"
I bite my lip because I have to be honest. "No."
"Then I'm not sacrificing my beauty sleep for this. Tell him if he's not gone in five minutes, your sister will chop him into pieces and bury him out back. Half this town already thinks I would."
They're actually scared of her out here. Interesting. Maybe I can use that.
Oh my God, no, what am I even thinking.
Fine. I'll just act possessed or something until he leaves on his own.
That's when I hear it—what sounds unmistakably like a fist against skin, the shriek of a chair scraping across wood, and a short, sharp squeak.
What is he doing out there?
I roll my shoulders back and go to clean up my own mess.
What I find instead is worse than anything I could have imagined.