Chapter 30 Yulian #2
Tonight. I’ll have to make him say he’ll move. While I’m fine with being in a secret relationship, I can’t take these weekend rendezvous any longer.
Even Cy noticed I’m grumpiest on Sunday evenings. And yes, Cy knows about where I disappear to every weekend. He stopped nagging, though, seeming kind of busy lately, and that has everything to do with the “ghost” from his past that he’s been looking everywhere for.
And if I’m correct, that ghost is a nerdy-looking man in his early thirties who I caught Cy stalking in the local library.
When I asked him about it, Cy just smiled maniacally, which is bad news for the dude.
Great news for me, though, because Cy has little time to nag me, and he seems to have lost hope that I’ll give up on Vaughn.
I could be ninety and knocking on Satan’s door and would probably not stop pursuing him.
Despite everything in my past, Vaughn is the only person who makes me like myself when I’m with him. He accepts me exactly as I am, and somehow, I make him laugh. The perpetual grump who once glared at me for sport now smiles and laughs more than anyone else around me.
I did that is all I can think when he bursts out laughing about some random thing I say or do.
I like to think he’s himself in my presence as well. Only difference is that he’ll always be more guarded around me.
When I arrive at the house’s front door, I’m humming while removing my helmet. The afternoon air blows through my hair as I check my phone since this is around the time he’ll text me that he’s taking off.
I grin when I find the text, but it soon drops when I read it.
Mishka
Can’t make it this weekend. I have to attend the opening of a private art gallery with my parents. Sorry for the late notice.
Me
Are you serious right now? You already only come around on weekends, and now you can’t make it?
I come around EVERY weekend, Yulian. One won’t kill you. Besides, all the traveling is depleting my energy.
Will I be seeing you once a month now?
I didn’t say that. I’m just pointing out that I’m flying too much.
You wouldn’t have to fly too much if you’d just switched schools, but you won’t do that, because, even now, you’re still putting fucking distance between us.
It’s just this weekend, okay?
Not okay. Come over, or I’ll do something you won’t like. Like calling my contacts who have the time for me.
Threaten me with other people again, and I’m ending this arrangement. Are we clear? Don’t be childish.
Yulian…don’t piss me off. Answer me.
You might have gotten the idea that I’ll let you do whatever the fuck you want because I like you and want you and have an incurable crush on you, but I’m not a toy you can discard whenever you wish.
When the fuck did I say you were a toy? Are you picking a fight on purpose?
Yulian…don’t shut me out like this. It’s just a weekend. I promise. I’ll make it up to you, okay, baby?
It’s not just about a weekend.
It never was.
Since Vaughn wasn’t able to make it, I caught a plane. A private jet—Cy’s, to be more specific—and that’s how I found myself in New York City.
More accurately, at the gallery opening Vaughn talked about.
Listen, I don’t know how Cy got the details or even procured me an invitation, but he’s a bro’s bro and a genius, which is all that matters.
It’s how he got me an invitation to that restaurant opening where I saw Vaughn again, too. Cy is just a man of many talents. And hackers. Pretty sure he dabbles in that stuff occasionally as well. As he likes to say—technological information is power.
So to the opening I went, I guess.
Not sure who the hell decided canvases with random brush vomit deserve worship, but here I am, glass in hand, surrounded by silent nodders pretending this shit makes sense.
The gallery smells like old money and synthetic roses. The walls are white enough to bleach your soul, and the lighting’s so dramatic, it resembles one of Dad’s torture chambers. A red canvas splattered with what looks like mud gets a slow hum of appreciation from some silver-haired man beside me.
My gaze is searching the crowd, and that’s when I see him. While this isn’t my world and never will be, it’s definitely his.
Vaughn.
He stands before a massive painting I hadn’t even noticed, as if the oxygen itself bends toward him.
One hand in his pocket, his jaw set in quiet disdain, his tux sculpted perfectly over his frame.
His hair is neat, his eyes locked on the canvas with the same razor focus he gives people when deciding where they belong on his chessboard.
The painting shows two faceless figures on stark white—one slumped, bleeding, the other reaching out but never touching. Cold shadows. Violent reds.
I ignore whatever the man beside me says as I stride toward the reason I made this impulsive trip. Vaughn doesn’t hear me over the quiet hum of classical music and polite laughter.
My nostrils flare with his scent as I stand beside him and stare ahead. “This is what you abandoned me for? Shit art?”
His head whips in my direction, his eyes wide, but his jaw tics as he searches our surroundings, then speaks in a whisper-yell, “Why on earth are you here, Yulian?”
“Wanted to see the event that’s so important it prevented you from coming home, and I’m not impressed.”
“That place is not my home,” he says in a low tone, then stares at the painting. “This is.”
He might as well have shot me in the chest.
No, seriously, my heart is in so much pain, it hurts to breathe.
“You should go.” He speaks coldly, emotionlessly. He’s nothing like the smiley, warm Vaughn who grins lazily upon seeing me on the island.
It’s as if he’s had a personality transplant.
Fuck this asshole.
How dare he treat me like this?
“Vinyoshka?”
Vaughn tenses up at the careful feminine voice, and when we turn around, we’re faced by his parents, who are both watching me as if I’m a threat.
Did his dad just reach into his waistband?
Fuck me. This is the last thing I needed.
I grin. “Hi, I’m Yulian.”
“I know exactly who you are, Dimitriev,” Kirill says, his hand still in his waistband. “What I don’t know is what you’re doing here, in my city, next to my son. If your father has anything to say, he can talk to me.”
“No, no, it’s not about my father. I was just around and figured I’d say hi to Vaughn.” I’m speaking coolly, forcing myself to remain relaxed, which is a sharp contrast to Vaughn’s tense jaw and blanched expression.
His brain seems to have short-circuited since his parents showed up. Guess he’s probably panicking about the prospect of them finding out he really loves dick—more specifically, my dick.
Kirill frowns the same way Vaughn does on the regular, and Alexandra watches me intently as she asks, “How do you know Vaughn…?”
“Cursed summer camp four years ago, remember?” I laugh, but they’re not joining in. “We met on the island again when he came by to visit Jeremy and the others.”
“Right,” she says.
“Is that true, Vaughn?” Kirill asks, and only when his son gives a sharp nod does he remove his hand from his waistband.
I guess I’m not going to get killed tonight—for now.
Honestly, I wouldn’t risk anything with them. Not only do I know they’re badass ex-spetsnaz—since Vaughn sings their praises all the time—but they both look guarded.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Kirill decides to put a bullet in my head just for the fuck of it.
“Why haven’t you told us you reconnected with Yulian again, Vinyoshka?” Alexandra asks, watching her son closely.
“It’s not important,” he says assertively, cold-bloodedly twisting the knife in my chest.
The smile I’m forcing cracks at the edges.
Not important.
He said that I am not important.
The past few months that I considered the best time of my life were just not important.
Heat blossoms in my chest as if a fiery being is sitting right on top of my heart, and I need to move before I knock Vaughn’s teeth out in front of his parents.
“If you’ll excuse me,” I murmur, then push through the crowd gathered around the painting and head straight for the exit.
Fuck this. I should’ve never come here.
The pain of not seeing him this weekend pales in comparison to the pain of being so coldly treated by him in public.
I rush to the parking lot, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. The smoke blows in the air, forming a cloud into the night, but it doesn’t expel the pain that’s lurking in my chest.
Fuck.
The lot is lit with dim lights that illuminate the cars lined up throughout. As soon as I reach the rental bike, I kick it. My foot explodes with pain, but I do it again, then again.
“Yulian, calm down.”
My chest constricts at the sound of Vaughn’s voice, and I push back my hair with one hand as I take a drag off the cigarette with the other.
“Calm down?” I spin around and face him. He’s shrouded in the harsh glow of lights, his features guarded.
I release a cloud of smoke in his face, but he doesn’t flinch. “All right, I’m calm. Does that mean I’m important now?”
“You know I didn’t mean that,” he says apologetically. “I only said that because my parents were there.”
“I don’t know!” My voice rises, and he flinches.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re thinking half of the time, Vaughn.
You refuse to move to the island, you refuse to let me in completely, and I just don’t know where we stand.
You make me feel like the most important person in one breath, then act like a stranger in your home territory in the next. It’s giving me fucking whiplash.”
“Yulian—”
I grab him by the throat and swing him around, shoving him against the bike. “Tell me you love me.”
“W-what?”
“Tell me you have feelings for me. Tell me you feel anything toward me. Just fucking say something.”
His eyes widen, and a muscle flexes in his jaw. “What’s with this all of a sudden?”
I snarl as I drive him against the bike, his elbows buckling under the force.
My lips seize his, savage and consuming, teeth biting, tongues clashing in a war of fury.
He pushes back, but my grip tightens around his throat, pinning him, dragging another groan from him as I kiss harder, deeper.
Every ounce of rage, every scar of pain, every shard of resentment detonates between our mouths in a raw, uncontainable mess.
He mumbles something in my mouth, but I don’t hear it, too lost in my own head to listen to whatever he has to say, biting and sucking and punishing him for not liking me as much as I like him.
It’s been this way from the beginning, from when I smiled at him the first time we met and he glared at me.
We’ve had an unbalanced bond since then. He always stands tall, while I’m the one who takes the burn.
“I said stop!” He shoves me away with a hand to my chest, breathing harshly, his lips all red and bitten.
My own breaths fill the air as I sway in front of him.
He straightens, fixing his bow tie and jacket with jerky movements. “The fuck you think you’re doing, Yulian? We’re in public.”
“Right. Public.” I laugh, and he frowns.
Vaughn removes the cigarette from my hand and squashes it under his shiny shoe. As I watch the ember flicker and die, I don’t know why it feels as if he just smashed my heart.
“What am I to you?” I ask in a low rumble, still looking at his shoes.
“What do you want me to say so you’ll stop whatever you’re going on about right now?”
My eyes slide to his cold ones. “Am I just a fuck buddy? Not even worthy of feelings, like Danika?”
“You and Danika are entirely different.”
“I know. She was your girlfriend. I’m nothing.”
“You’re not nothing, Yulian.”
“Then what the fuck am I?” I raise my voice.
“That’s the second and last time you yell at me, are we fucking clear?” He squares up to me, jamming a finger against my chest. “You’re not the only one who can yell. Know your goddamn place.”
“And what is that, Vaughn?” I ask. “My place, I mean.”
“What the hell do you want me to say?”
“Something. Anything.”
“Well, here’s something.” He stands taller, his voice shrouded in cold control. “We can’t be in a relationship, because our circumstances don’t allow it. We both knew this arrangement was temporary and not going to last, so I’m not sure why you’re acting this way right now.”
“Temporary. Not going to last,” I repeat, releasing a humorless chuckle. “Are those the thoughts you had about us from the beginning? Did that pretty head of yours doom us to an end before we even started?”
“That’s what it is!” It’s his turn to lose his cool, pulling and loosening his bow tie before he releases a breath. “We have duties toward our families. We can’t be together in the long-term, Yulian. You know that.”
“If we can’t be together in the long-term, isn’t it better to stop wasting each other’s time now?”
“That’s not what I meant.” His eyes flash, then his voice softens. “That’s not what I want.”
“Well, tough shit. You don’t always get what you want.” I grab the helmet and shove it on as I hop on the bike and rev the engine.
Vaughn’s hands lock around the handlebars, blocking me in. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I get all of you, or I walk away. I’m done settling for half.”
His lips part to say something, but he seals them again and steps out of my way, like the coward he is.
Fuck him.
I speed out of the parking lot, feeling like I’m about to burst from my skin. I ride for a few hours, feeling the wind, then getting into a fight with a bunch of idiots at the gas station. I hate those places now. He ruined them for me.
My ride goes on and on until I feel like my head is about to explode. I only go back to the hotel around dawn, completely depleted. Need to fly back and let Cy say “I told you so.”
I knew he would be right—Cy is always right—but I let my stupid expectations take over.
When I step into the room, I sense movement. At first, I think it’s Vaughn, but then I register the different footsteps and pull out my gun.
But it’s too late.
Someone hits me upside the head, and as I fall, a thickly accented voice says, “Your father wants to see you, Yulian.”