Chapter 17
Sofia
Fear didn’t leave; it settled in and took root.
In daylight, I could almost pretend. Groceries.
Rent. A sink that coughed up nasty, brown water for a minute before remembering its job.
But at night… that’s when the shadows stretched longer, and in them, I saw things I knew weren’t really there.
Invisible monsters seemed to snarl from the shadows in the alley behind the bar when I took out the trash.
Keeping my senses open for trouble, I would pretend nothing was wrong, but I always hurried inside as quickly as I could.
Lately, Maksim carried tension like other men carried wallets.
It sat beneath his skin, a hum you could feel if you stood close.
He scanned constantly. More than once, his knuckles were skinned when he took his seat at the bar.
His ribs carried a yellowing bruise one morning he didn’t bother to explain.
Still, he tried to maintain a sense of normalcy in our relationship. It was Monday night, and it was my night off. Maksim had taken me to a Broadway show, and we’d stopped for drinks afterward. Well, I did. I swore Maksim wasted more money on vodka that he hardly drank more than a sip of each time.
We’d decided to stay at his apartment and take the subway to avoid fighting for parking.
On the train, a man bumped me hard enough to make me stumble. Maksim was on him before I could say, “It’s fine,” wrist twisted, cheek against the pole, the sound of bone creaking like a floorboard about to give way.
“Maksim,” I hissed, fingers on his arm. “Stop. Please.”
He let go, the man collapsing into a wet, angry heap of curses. The car had gone very quiet. A child stared with round, solemn eyes as his mother wrapped a protective arm around him.
“You’re scaring me,” I breathed when we stepped onto the platform. Truth tasted like the bitter rind of an orange.
“Good.” He didn’t look at me when he said it, gaze cutting through the press of bodies like a blade. “Fear keeps you alive.”
“What about love?” The word slipped from my lips, uninvited, stupid.
He stopped. Turned. Something shifted behind his eyes, softer and more dangerous than anything else I’d seen there to date. My heart hammered as he stared at me.
“I suppose that keeps you alive too,” he finally said, and then he kissed me hard enough that an old woman clucked her tongue and turned away.
We walked the rest of the way to his high-rise. Truth be told, I didn’t actually like staying there. It made me feel like a fraud. Everything was all glass and chrome. Expensive. Way out of my league.
As I brushed my teeth with the toothbrush he’d bought for me after the first time I’d stayed, I watched his reflection in the mirror. He was in his room on the phone, pacing as he spoke in low tones.
He looked up and met my gaze in the glass, then ended the call. He came in and rested his hands on my waist. “Something came up. I need to go out for a bit. I won’t be long. I promise.”
I nodded.
He kissed my cheek and was gone.
That night, he smelled like smoke when he slid into the bed. Not cigarettes, though. More like something burned out and hastily doused. He wrapped himself around me, and I pretended not to notice the tremor that ran through him once, almost like a shiver.
He didn’t tell me what happened. I didn’t ask. The silence between us was not empty, as it was quickly filled with soft sighs and needy moans.
Whatever he’d gone to do was a door we both wordlessly agreed not to open—yet. The worst part was that I didn’t actually want him to tell me. Because whatever secrets he was keeping might shatter the fragile, impossible world we’d built.
And for reasons I was finally understanding, I wasn’t ready to lose it yet.
Because I’d fallen in love with him.