7. Dahlia
7
DAHLIA
T he party is like every other dinner or gala I’ve ever attended here in D.C. with my parents. It’s elegant and stuffy, the guests comprised of important members of the political circle in the city, their wives and adult children, and some staffers who managed to score an invite, as well as donors. I sit stiffly at the table with my parents across from one of my father’s colleagues and his wife and daughter, making small talk and glancing around to see if Jude is headed this way. My stomach tightens every time I think I see someone who looks like him—which is constantly, considering he looks like a stock cut-out of every privileged, preppy politician’s son in this city.
Resentment coils in my stomach, sending another wave of nausea through me. Dinner is delicious—lamb chops with garlic mashed potatoes and roasted squash—but I can’t bring myself to do more than pick at it. Thankfully, no one really notices—or at least my father doesn’t, too caught up in talking shop with his colleague. My mother always approves of me eating less, so even if she did notice, she wouldn’t say anything.
“Dahlia.”
The sound of my name makes me turn around, and I see Jude standing there in a blue suit with a thin red tie, his dark hair swept back from his face and kept in place by a little too much gel. I force myself not to wince, curling my lips into a smile that I hope he can’t tell is forced.
“Jude.”
His smile is genuine, though the way his eyes drift over me makes my skin prickle uncomfortably. “Come grab a drink with me?” he asks, clearly expecting that I’ll be glad to escape the monotony of the table conversation. And I would be—if it weren’t with him.
I can feel both of my parents’ eyes on me, waiting to see if I’m going to cause a scene. Out of spite as much as anything else—because I know my mother at least is expecting me to refuse—I force the smile a little wider, and get up gracefully from the table.
“Sure.”
I don’t actually want to drink. My stomach is still flip-flopping, and I can’t imagine any form of alcohol will make it better. But when we reach the curved, gleaming mahogany bar, Jude turns to look at me, a clear question in his eyes.
“Gin and tonic with lime,” I tell him, as much to avoid the question of why I don’t want to drink as anything else. He nods, turning back to the bartender, and I hear him order a rum and coke for himself.
“How’s New York?” he asks as he hands me my drink, leaning against the bar casually. His eyes sweep over me again, and I feel that prickling, crawling sensation over my skin once more.
I hesitate. This is as good a chance as any to try and see how he feels about my career, and the life I’ve built in New York. But I’m hesitant to share those parts of my life with this man, who wouldn’t even be considering this marriage if he really cared about me or my life. But all the same, I decide to give him a chance, just in case he’s as much of a pawn in this as I am.
“It’s good,” I tell him honestly. “I have great friends. My job at the Met is amazing. I love where I live—it’s all really good. I’m happy.” And a month and a half ago, I had the best one-night-stand of my entire life. I keep that part to myself, though.
“I never liked it,” he says flippantly, taking a sip of his drink. “The whole city is insane. They really mean it when they say it never sleeps. Noise at all hours of the nights, crime, filth—” Jude wrinkles his nose. “It’s probably my least favorite place that I’ve been.”
Instantly, any desire I might have had to give him a chance, or the benefit of the doubt, dies away. Who the hell does he think he is ? I think irritably, lifting my glass to my lips and taking the smallest possible taste just to give myself a moment before I respond. I just said I loved my life there, and his response was to shit all over the city that I call home.
“You’ll be happy to come home to D.C., I’m sure,” he continues, as if he didn’t hear a word I said. “It’s got to be hard, being away from your family. Especially when your father has been so supportive of your—” He pauses, as if he’s not sure what to call my life . “Time away,” he finishes awkwardly, and it takes everything in me not to throw the drink in my hand at him.
Time away? He makes it sound like my life, my career, everything I’ve built for myself is nothing more than a gap year or a backpacking trip through Europe. Like I’m some socialite who decided to fuck off and ignore her responsibilities for years, instead of a woman who’s worked hard for what she has.
I can’t marry this man. I know that, deep down, but I also don’t know what to do about it. The thought of losing my family for good makes my heart ache, and the thought of being so suddenly cut off, completely on my own, makes my stomach lurch up into my throat with anxiety. I know it’s partially my fault—I should have been better prepared to be independent, but I never in my wildest dreams thought that my father would force me into marrying someone like this.
“There’s some lovely estate houses just outside of D.C. that I’ve looked at,” Jude continues, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I haven’t said a single word since his opening question. “Once the proposal is official, we could tour some of them. I’d want your opinion on that, of course?—”
The way he says it seems to imply that there’s a lot of things he doesn’t want my opinion on, outside of the house we live in. And everything he says to me seems laced with condescension, as if he’s older, wiser, instead of the same age as me, with a similar education. I’ve accomplished just as much as he has, and the way he’s talking down to me sends another lurch of nausea up into my throat?—
Shit . I press my lips together hard, realizing that the nausea might be more than just ripples of it due to anxiety. I suddenly feel like I might actually throw up for the first time since this morning, and I hold up a finger, shaking my head as Jude looks at me with a mixture of confusion and annoyance.
I swallow hard, waiting for the feeling to recede, but it doesn’t. Quickly, I set my glass down on the bar, managing to say tightly: “I’ll be right back,” before pivoting and looking frantically for the ladies’ room.
I barely make it inside, past a gaggle of older women touching up their blush in the mirror, and into a stall before I start to vomit.
It’s worse than this morning. I press a hand to my stomach, tears welling in my eyes and dripping down my cheeks as I heave again and again, sweat prickling at the back of my neck. By the time I’m finished, I feel utterly exhausted, and I lean into the side of the wall next to me, reaching up weakly to flush.
As if it weren’t adding insult to injury, I’m supposed to start my period soon, too, and if I’m actually getting sick ? —
I freeze as the thought goes through my head, grabbing a wad of tissues to wipe my mouth with one hand as I fumble in my clutch purse for my phone with the other. I thought I was supposed to start my period any day, but now that I think about it, last month I had just finished it before I met Alek at the bar. I remember, because I joked with Genevieve about it the next morning, that I was so glad it had been a slightly short one, and my night hadn’t been ruined?—
That was six weeks ago.
A crawling dread fills me as I realize that the nausea might not just be anxiety, or food poisoning, or a stomach bug. Hoping I miscalculated, I open my phone to my period tracking app with shaky fingers. But I didn’t miscount. I finished my last period the day before I met Alek, which means I’m two weeks late.
Another surge of nausea threatens to overwhelm me, and I drop my phone, leaning over the toilet again. When I finish throwing up for a second time, I lean back fully against the wall, closing my eyes as I struggle not to cry.
I have to get out of this party. If I go back and tell my parents that I’m sick, my mother will insist on going home with me—or at least I think she will. After today, I’m no longer quite as sure that I know what she’ll do about anything as I once was. But if she does, she’ll have questions, and I won’t be able to do what I need to.
The bathroom has gone quiet, and as I stand up on shaky legs and peek out, I see that the older women who were at the counter are gone, and the room is empty now. Carefully, I slip out of the stall and rinse my mouth out at the sink, splashing some cold water on my face before I walk back out into the hall.
From the main room, I can hear the faint sounds of someone giving a speech, and then the rattle of applause. I duck around a corner, heading for the back door of the venue, hoping I won’t run into anyone who will see me and tell my parents that I was headed this way before I have a chance to call an Uber. I already have the app open, planning to already be gone before I text my mother and tell her that I didn’t feel well and left.
Fortunately, the back of the venue seems to be empty, except for a few cleaning and catering staff that are passing through, and I make it to the back door without anyone seeing. I slip out into the early spring chill, shivering in my dress, and I bite my lip as I wrap my arms around myself and wait for the Uber to arrive. My coat is back at the check, and I don’t think I could have grabbed it and left without being noticed.
A blue sedan pulls up to the curb just as my teeth start to chatter, and I quickly slip into the warm interior. “I need to go to the closest drugstore,” I tell the driver. “Whatever is open. CVS, Walgreens, I don’t care. Just anything nearby.”
“Sure thing.” The driver pulls away as I look out the window, trying to keep my nerves from bubbling over and making my nausea even worse. I bite my lip, wondering what I’m going to say to keep my mother from digging with too many questions. And my father is going to be furious that I ditched Jude, stomach bug or not.
At least if they think I’m sick, I might be able to push off the decision. As much as I know what I’m going to say, I don’t know what I’m going to do after, yet. And especially if?—
The thought of what might really be making me sick makes my stomach tighten and turn all over again, and I clap a hand over my mouth.
“There’s a fee if you puke in the car,” the driver says as he looks in the rearview mirror, in a dispassionate tone that says he gives drunken college kids rides every weekend and has had to deal with this more than once before.
“I won’t,” I manage, with a little more surety than I actually feel. The last thing I need is a cleaning fee, though, when I don’t know how much longer I’ll have my father’s help backing me up financially.
Quickly, I send my mother a text, telling her that I’ve been feeling under the weather and had to run to the bathroom to be sick, and that I left so I didn’t risk embarrassing them by being sick again in public. I’m headed home , I add, and then tuck my phone back into my purse.
The driver gets to the drugstore in a matter of minutes, undoubtedly out of worry for his upholstery, and I slide out into the chilly air, which feels even colder than before right now as the wind picks up. It cuts right through my dress, and I hurry into the store, heading straight for the aisle with the pregnancy tests.
Looking at them makes me feel faintly dizzy. The last thing I’d ever expected was to end up here—at this point in my life, anyway. Maybe not ever, if I’d had my way, instead of being forced into a marriage that would result in my being expected to have children.
There’s solutions to this problem, of course, if I want to go that route. But I can’t even begin to think that far ahead. I need to know if I’m right, first. Maybe it’s just stress making me late, I think, clutching at that last strand of hope as I look for one of the brands that gives you an actual pregnant or not pregnant in the little window, instead of lines. I’ve always been like clockwork when it comes to my cycle, but this entire situation with my father and Jude has made me more anxious and stressed than I ever have been before. It is possible that it’s just making me both late, and sick with some kind of stomach flu.
Letting out a sharp breath, I grab two of the boxes and head for the register, grabbing a twenty ounce bottle of ginger ale on my way. A bored-looking cashier rings me up, not even really bothering to look before she tosses the tests and soda into a bag, and I look for another Uber on my phone with one hand as I slide my card with the other. This time, I wait just inside until the car pulls up, and then hurry out into the night.
I desperately want to get a hotel room for the night, just to avoid questions about what’s happened—from my mother especially. She still hasn’t texted me back, which I expected—she thinks it’s rude to look at your phone in public. She and my father both probably think I slipped out of the party and left because I didn’t want to talk to Jude, and I know there’s going to be plenty to explain when they get back to the house. All of which I’ll have to lie about, until I know for sure what’s going on, and have decided what I’m going to do about it.
But not going home will only make things more complicated. I give the driver my parents’ address, reaching for the soda and taking tiny sips to try to settle my stomach.
The house is still dark and quiet when I get there, and I let myself in, letting out a sigh of relief at having some time to myself. I don’t bother turning on any lights, heading upstairs to my bedroom in the cool darkness, and I sink onto the edge of the bed. I can see the glimmer of the street lights outside, the moon hanging full and heavy in the sky and adding to the light, and I want more than anything in this moment to be home. Back in my own apartment, with everything that’s familiar, and my friends. I could call Evelyn right now, if I were home in New York, and she’d come over. She’d stay the night until I could take the tests in the morning. But I don’t want to text or call her when I’m so far away. She’ll worry, and not be able to do anything to help.
I finally push myself up off of the bed, stripping off the blue dress and laying it over the back of the chair in front of my vanity. I don’t flick on a light until I get to the bathroom, letting out a long sigh as I start to take off my makeup. The familiar routine of my skincare is soothing, and when I’m done, I look for a place to hide the tests where my mother won’t look. I finally decide to leave them in my clutch, tucking it under the pillow next to me in bed. She’s not likely to dig around there, especially if I manage to wake up early enough to take them before she gets up.
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to sleep. But even with my thoughts churning through my head, I’m so exhausted that I barely have time to set an alarm before my eyes are closing, and I fall into a deep sleep.
—
The sound of the alarm jolts me awake, and I’m instantly flooded with dread. All I want is to curl up tighter and pull the blankets over my head, and pretend like none of this is happening. But instead, I know I need to get up and take the test before my mother comes upstairs to lecture me about last night.
Nausea hits me the moment I sit up, and I have just enough time to grab my purse from under the pillow and flee to the bathroom, flipping the lock behind me, before I throw up into the sink. This is fucking miserable, I moan inwardly as I clutch the counter, reaching for the mouthwash to rinse out my mouth before I resignedly reach for the tests.
I can’t look at it while I wait. I set the first one on the counter, setting a timer on my phone and sinking to the floor. I should have made him use a condom. But he wasn’t going to wait for that, and in the heat of the moment, it had felt passionate. Sexy. And he had pulled out, which means if the test is positive?—
I’ll be one of those unlucky ones for whom that particular method of birth control didn’t work. It’s definitely not reliable, and I know that. But just the one night?—
I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, waiting for the timer to go off. When it does, I quickly turn it off, reaching up behind me to grab the test. When it’s in my hand, I slowly open my eyes, and all the air goes out of me in a rush.
The small, single word in the tiny window is unmistakable. Pregnant. My eyes instantly well with tears, another surge of nausea sending me lurching up to puke into the sink again, the test clattering to the floor. I heave deep breaths as I clutch the counter, trying to think of what to do.
I have to get back to New York. I need to be home while I decide what to do. I need Evelyn, and Genevieve. I can’t figure this out here, with my mother hovering and my father trying to force me to marry Jude. I haven’t given him an answer yet, and I need to leave before he drags one out of me, so I can buy myself some time.
I can’t keep this baby. The thought hits me like a punch, fear warring with dread and a sick feeling of being completely unprepared to make yet another choice. I can’t even imagine myself with a child. I never really have. One of my objections to the marriage with Jude is that children would be expected, and I have no idea if I really want them. I’ve always wanted to be absolutely sure before I made such a monumental decision, and I’ve always been careful.
Up until that one night. I’d never had sex without a condom before Alek. I’d never felt what that was like before, with anyone, and something tightens in my chest at the thought of that. It’s not as if I were saving that particular act for some special person, but I feel an odd ache at the thought that it was with someone I’ll never see again.
A man whose baby I’m carrying.
I can’t do this. I swallow hard as panic washes over me in a fresh, nauseating wave, trying to think of what to do. A memory of the tattoos on Alek’s hands flash through my head, and my stomach drops as I remember seeing the one that made me think he’s Bratva. What if he finds out? I can’t imagine he’d want me to keep the baby, but what if he did? The thought of him angry with me tightens something low in my stomach that’s fear—and something else, too. Something I don’t want to think too closely about, because the last thing I want to remember right now is how he made me feel that night. How much I might like an excuse to see him again?—
But not like this.
I run both of my hands through my hair, looking up at the mirror and the dark circles under my eyes. He’s not going to find out, and he’s not going to look for me. The fact that he left so quickly that night is all the proof I need that he clearly didn’t want anything else to do with me afterwards. He wanted the same thing I did—a one-night-stand. And while it was unforgettable for me—in more ways than one, now—I don’t think it was nearly as much so for him.
This decision is going to be mine, and mine alone. And I can’t figure it out here.
Glancing at my phone, I can see that it’s early enough that I don’t think my mother will be up for at least another hour, since it’s a Saturday morning. The beginning of a plan starts to form in my head, and I grab the tests, shoving them back into my purse as I rush back out into the bedroom.
I throw as many of my things as I can grab haphazardly back into the little rolling suitcase I brought, searching for a plane ticket in between on my phone. In a matter of minutes, I have the next flight to New York that I can reasonably get to on time booked, and I’m calling an Uber to my parents’ house. I grab my bags, hurrying over to my balcony as I unlatch it.
My bedroom faces out to the pool deck, and there’s a balcony outside of the French doors that has a small staircase coming off of it that leads down to the deck. As a teenager, I thought it was incredibly luxurious, being able to go directly out to the pool from my bedroom. I never realized just how handy it would be one day as an adult, though.
By the time I make it across the pool deck, resisting the urge to look back and see if anyone has noticed me leaving, the Uber is waiting outside. I throw myself into the car, quickly tapping out a message to Evelyn.
Dahlia: I’m getting a flight back to New York. Can you meet me??? I’ll send a pic of the details.
Evelyn: Of course. Is everything ok????
Dahlia: It’ll be better once I’m home.
I’ve never meant that last sentence as much as I do in this moment. New York is unequivocally home to me, and I need to be there right now. I need to be surrounded by the things I love, while I try to figure out what to do next.
I do need to tell my mother what I’m doing, though, before she wakes up to find that I’m gone and calls the D.C. police force in a panic.
Dahlia: I woke up feeling even worse. I got an appointment with my doctor in New York and I’m flying home. I just can’t handle any more parties this weekend feeling like this. Tell Dad we’ll figure out the situation with Jude when I’m feeling better.
I hesitate, and then add a quick love you , before shoving my phone back into my clutch. With any luck, by the time she sees the message, I’ll be on the plane and my phone will be off.
The flight is far from smooth. I throw up again in the airport bathroom before I even make it to the plane, and then twice more on the plane itself, rushing back to the tiny bathroom and apologizing the whole way as I bump into passengers trying to get back to their own seats. By the time I’m back at JFK and I find Evelyn waiting by the baggage carousel, I feel exhausted and haggard. I don’t dare turn my phone back on yet. By now my mother will have seen my texts, and I don’t feel in any way equipped to handle that yet.
“Dahlia, what’s going on?” Evelyn grabs my suitcase off of the carousel for me, her face scrunched up with worry. “You look?—”
“Like hell?” I supply, and her nose wrinkles.
“I wasn’t going to say it out loud. Come on. We’ll go back to the mansion and you can tell me what happened. Was the party that bad?”
I’m on the verge of telling her that I want to go back to my apartment, but she’s already hustling me towards the front doors, my baggage in her hands and that no-nonsense look on her face that I’ve seen when she’s handling customers, and I decide to just go along with it. I don’t have the energy to argue, and honestly, I’m not sure that I want to. Not when I have my best friend here, and she’s trying to take care of me.
There’s a black town car waiting outside. The driver standing next to it opens the door, taking the bags from Evelyn without a word. “After you take us home, take her things back to her apartment,” Evelyn directs. “You have a doorman he can leave them with, right, Dahlia?”
I nod, momentarily startled. Sometimes I still forget the kind of life Evelyn leads now, one that has more privilege than even my upbringing. “That works,” I manage, and Evelyn gently nudges me into the car, sliding in after me.
She rubs her hands together as the door shuts, leaving us in the warm interior as the driver pulls away from the curb. “Are you okay?” she asks, turning to look at me, and before I can manage a single word, I abruptly burst into tears.
I don’t know where it comes from. The whole morning, I suppose, I’ve been in triage mode, focused on getting away from my parents’ house and back to New York. I haven’t been able to stop long enough to cry, and now that I’m sitting here with Evelyn, everything that I’ve felt since the possibility of my being pregnant occurred to me last night comes out in a rush of shoulder-shaking sobs.
“Dahlia!” Evelyn sounds alarmed as she reaches for me, pulling me into her arms and smoothing her hand over my hair. “It’s alright. Whatever’s happened, it’s going to be okay. I promise. We’ll figure it out together.”
I want to tell her, but I can't stop crying long enough to speak. I’m crying so hard I can barely breathe, my stomach twisting into knots that make me afraid I’m going to vomit again, and I just barely manage to avoid that as Evelyn tries to soothe me.
“We’ll talk when we get to the mansion,” she says. “Just try to breathe. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”
I nod, the tears still coming. As soon as the car pulls up to the Yashkov mansion, Evelyn hustles me into the house, past the housekeeper and staff and up the stairs to one of the guest bedrooms, and straight to the attached bathroom. She starts the shower, turning me firmly so that I’m pointed at it, and looks at me.
“There’s everything you might need in there. You’ll feel better after a good shower. I’ll bring you something to change into. I’ll ask one of the staff to make us some tea, and we’ll talk.”
I’m too grateful to have someone taking care of me to do anything other than exactly what she says. Once Evelyn leaves, I strip out of the leggings and sweater I wore on the plane, stepping under the hot spray of the shower. She’s right about that—the hot water and the sweet-smelling soap makes me feel a little more human, and I scrub myself down before getting out, drying off, and finding mouthwash and a spare toothbrush in the medicine cabinet.
Evelyn left a pair of soft cashmere sweatpants, a long-sleeved shirt and slippers out for me, and I slip into them gratefully, throwing my hair up in a messy bun before venturing downstairs to find her. She’s in the kitchen, talking to a middle-aged woman who I assume must be the household cook, and the moment Evelyn sees me she picks up a steaming mug from the counter and thrusts it into my hands.
“Come with me,” she says. “We’ll go sit in the living room and talk.”
The smaller, informal living room is plush and cozy, with a fire going and a large, soft couch just in front of it. Evelyn sinks down on one side and pats the cushion next to her, and I sit down, too.
“What happened?” she asks, and the look on her face is so sweet and encouraging that I somehow manage to just come right out with it.
“I’m pregnant,” I blurt out, feeling the word drop into the air between us with the heaviness of an anvil, and Evelyn’s eyes go wide.
“Oh, Dahlia,” she whispers.
Relief washes over me at the tone in her voice. Evelyn is pregnant too, almost four months now, just enough to see the soft swell of her stomach underneath the soft fabric of her sweater. Her pregnancy was unexpected, too, but she’s happy about it. I hadn’t really thought that she’d suddenly think that every pregnancy is a good thing just because she’s happy about hers, but there had been that tiny bit of worry in the back of my head.
It’s clear that she doesn’t feel that way, though. “Is it—” she says slowly, and I nod.
“That guy I took home from Hush. It must be—it had been a while since I’d been with anyone before him, and I haven’t been with anyone since. And—” I feel my cheeks heat up. “We didn’t use a condom. He pulled out,” I add quickly, before Evelyn has a chance to think that I completely lost my mind that night. “But I guess that wasn’t good enough.”
“It’s not the most reliable method of birth control,” she says wryly. “But at least an effort was made.” Her expression sobers and she reaches for one of my hands, squeezing it. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know,” I say miserably. “I only found out this morning. That’s why I came rushing back. I didn’t even see my parents this morning. I left before they could wake up and got the flight home.”
“So it wasn’t something that happened at the party last night?”
“Sort of—” It all comes out in a rush then, and I explain all of it to Evelyn—how I’d gotten sick while talking to Jude, the moment that I realized that I was late, getting the pregnancy test, all of it. She holds my hand the entire time, squeezing it gently as she listens, and when I’m done I sag back against the couch, exhausted.
“And you don’t want to try to find him?”
I shake my head. “I only know his first name. And anyway, he was so quick to leave that night.” I bite my lip. “He obviously only wanted the one night, and he didn’t have any interest in finding me or seeing me again after that. I don’t want to chase down someone who doesn’t want me. He’s not going to want the baby, either.”
“And do you?” Evelyn presses gently, and I feel a strange wave of emotion wash over me.
Of course not, I think immediately, but I feel a small pang at the thought of ending the pregnancy. It’s just hormones, I tell myself. Or the fact that my own family is on the verge of rejecting me completely, so I’m tempted to start one of my own. A therapist could probably have a field day with all of the reasons I’m even a little bit on the fence about this, when I’m so completely unprepared to have a child at all right now, let alone as a single mother.
“I’ll support you no matter what you want to do,” Evelyn continues. “I know things are hard with your family right now, but you have me, Genevieve, and your other friends. I won’t let you go through this alone. If you need someone to go to any kind of doctor’s appointment with you, I’ll take you. If you need money, I’ll help you. A place to stay—” she trails off, biting her lip as she clearly thinks about something. “Actually?—”
“I don’t know what I want to do!” I blurt out, feeling tears burn at the corners of my eyes again. “It seemed obvious this morning, but now I just feel tired, and confused, and I know as soon as I turn my phone on I’ll have a hundred missed texts and calls from my mother. I still haven’t given my father an answer about the marriage, and?—”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to ask Dimitri about what you said this man looked like?” Evelyn asks. “Or give me his name, and I’ll ask Dimitri if there’s anyone working for him who matches the name and description? You said he had a Bratva tattoo, and Dimitri would want to know if one of his men?—”
She breaks off just before I can tell her no, absolutely not, that I under no circumstances want Dimitri dragged into this. I can just see the look of brotherly disappointment on Dimitri’s face, and I’m not up to dealing with it right now. But there’s the sound of footsteps just outside the door, and the words die on my lips as Evelyn twists around.
“Alek, what are you?—”
My stomach drops. It’s a coincidence, I tell myself, as my blood runs cold and I twist around too, my heart suddenly pounding in my ears. Whoever is walking in, he can’t be the same Alek I met in Hush, the one who gave me the most passionate night I’ve ever experienced, whose baby I’m?—
Dizziness washes over me as I see the man standing in the doorway, his face frozen in a mask of shock as he sees me, too, and I can’t hear anything over the sudden ringing in my ears. For a terrifying second, I think I’m going to pass out.
It is Alek. And I don’t know what the hell he’s doing here.