Chapter 21
?
I am not a good girl.
Crisis
The forty minute long car ride did nothing to lessen my exhaustion. I’m barely functioning by the time Viktor pulls into my driveway and I get the key in the lock of my front door. Stifling a yawn, I toddle toward my guest bedroom, flick on the light and present it valiantly—with half a gesture—then I trudge feebly toward my own bedroom.
“You really like fish,” Viktor—more awake given that he just drove us here—says.
I glance back at him, or past him rather, into my super grown up adult person guest room. The lighting ripples from a fish bowl fixture spackled with dark fish outlines, creating an illusion of them swimming across the blue walls. The curtains are a green that match the seaweed bedspread, making sure that my fish room has plants. Since pea puffers require plants. And I’m but a pea puffer in a human body.
Weary, I murmur an intelligent, “Fish.”
Chuckling with very clear ecstasy, Viktor turns toward me, corners of his eyes crinkling. “Where’s Potato?”
“Here.” I shuffle into my room and directly up to my son .
His little bob warms my heart.
“Baby.” I rest my chin on the vanity his tank sits on. “So small. So cute,” I murmur, and then I flop onto my bed. My very own bed. I might actually never leave.
While Viktor hesitates to enter my bedroom—like some kind of gentleman I could have gotten over sharing a bed with for another night in spite of the day’s news—I wrap my entire body around a pillow and await the call of the dreamless dark.
Finally getting over his nerves, Viktor steps up to Potato’s tank. “Hi…” he whispers. “Wow…you really are cute.”
Not even Crimson talks to Potato.
What is happening?
I twist, looking at a man who is obviously putting on a show for me.
He’s already moved on from my adorable fish. Somehow. He’s standing in front of my bookcase, skimming the spines of his own books with a finger.
“Don’t snoop, Viktor.”
He pulls back, finds me all curled up. “Sorry. I like your collection.”
“I keep your books on hand.” My eyes narrow. “To burn .”
This is a tired-induced lie. I would never burn a book. I used to keep them on hand, to fuel my hate, and also because they’re the best books I’ve ever read, but that serves no real purpose. They serve no real purpose, now.
“You’re so sleepy,” Viktor murmurs, smiling.
He’s been smiling a lot since I went back to the ranch. I don’t think I like it, but I especially do not like it when he’s doing it while calmly approaching my bed.
The hair on the back of my neck rises, sticking on end.
“Goodnight, Crisis.” He stops advancing, turns toward my fish tank. “Goodnight, Potato.”
And, with that, he leaves my room, locking and closing the door behind him.
?
We are going to miss our morning motivational thought. Everyone within a two-mile radius can tell I find this news devastating . And so—while Viktor and I eat a heaping breakfast at Honeycomb—I try my hand at standup.
“You’ve so got this today!” I tell him. “You’re going to write twenty—no— thirty pages.”
Calm smile seeming permanently etched across his face, Viktor cuts into his stack of blueberry pancakes. “That is roughly fifteen thousand words.”
“You, sir, are the powerhouse of the cell.”
He laughs—blissful—and something weird flutters in my chest.
So, naturally, I destroy it. “I’m glad you got blueberry pancakes instead of chocolate chip. The antioxidants are good for your aging, unstable powerhouse cells. Antioxidants help prevent Alzheimer’s, which I’m certain you are entering the risk years of.” Scooping eggs onto my toast, I crunch.
Viktor, cheeky fellow, asks, “Are you aware that’s white bread you’re eating, sweet pea?”
“ I am young and spry. The carbs hitting my system like pure sugar are good for me.”
“My elderly wisdom suggests that’s not how that works.”
“Your elderly wisdom can take a long hike off a short pier.”
This isn’t so bad, I think. I just have to ignore yesterday, and the past two years, and the entire decade. If I just dwell on this moment, right now, I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m not a horrible, vindictive person who sold her best years for cheap, uncalled for vengeance. I’m only bantering with my boss bud, eating eggs on toast…and drinking chocolate milk.
Because, canonically, I am a toddler.
I still don’t understand why Viktor likes me.
Not one bit.
But, while I’ve shoved my copious amounts of guilt out of sight, can I see any potential that I might grow to like him? Assuming, of course, this isn’t one giant prank. And it probably is.
On the pro chances I learn to like him side, he said hello and goodnight to Potato.
Unfortunately, on the con side, he’s very sweet, and soft, and complacent . I don’t love those traits in people. I don’t love feeling like he’d let me get away with abusing him if we were a couple. I don’t want to hurt someone I care about. I need someone who stops me when I go too far without pushing me away. Which sounds like a balancing act no one should have to deal with.
Maybe I’m just not cut out for a relationship like the one he wants.
Maybe we need to quit while we’re ahead.
Opening my mouth, I attempt to broach the topic—but a pancake hits me in the face before I can.
The syrupy thing skids down my face, falling in the rest of my eggs, and I sit, stone still shocked, as a child a booth up looks over the honey yellow seat at me, points, and laughs. His mother—horrified—says, “Oh my goodness. I’m so sorry. Jaime , sit down.”
Viktor turns, and the woman pales, sucking in a breath. “M-Mr. Bachelor.” She scoops her son up, pinning him to herself and clamping his flailing arms as she drags him to her side of the table. “I’m so, so sorry. Please forgive him.”
Whatever expression Viktor shares with the woman…it makes her writhing son still, then cry.
As she shushes the tiny mongrel, I shudder, never to be clean again.
While Viktor rises and kneels at my booth, an employee rushes to our table, wringing his hands. “I-is there a-anything I can do to help, Mr. Bachelor, sir?”
Viktor doesn’t look at him. “Damp paper towels.” He gets a napkin off the dark wood table, pulls it through the condensation on his water glass, then begins the tedious job of cleaning me up. “Eyes on me, sweet pea,” he murmurs, tilting my chin. “That’s it. Good girl.”
The paper towels arrive, but I don’t hear the waiter’s sniveling past the pound of my heart in my ears.
Good girl?
Me?
I’m the good girl?
Surely this man did not just good girl me.
I’m a bad girl, a terrible girl, a rotten, horrible, not good girl.
Also, in other news, have I mentioned how weak I am to the endearment sweet pea ?
It is wholly a different sort of affirmation than the ones I normally feed myself. The more I hear it, the more I believe I’m capable of being sweet —just because I’m not biting people. The bar is low, but I’m scaling it. I’m sure there’s a clinical diagnosis for whatever is happening in my brain right now, but I sure don’t know what it is.
Viktor cleans my hair and face, making certain the stickiness is gone before he has the staff bring me another meal to take back to camp.
Sipping chocolate milk out of a to-go cup, I poke at my eggs in the front seat of Viktor’s car, trying not to look at him.
“Are you okay?” he asks, as we hit the road leading to Canter Creek Ranch. The quaint, manicured storefronts turn adamantly into countryside.
I release the straw from between my lips. “I’ve never had chocolate milk in a to-go cup before. It feels illegal.”
“It’s not. Don’t worry.”
“I wasn’t worried. What makes you think I wouldn’t want something to be illegal?”
“You come off rather strait-laced.”
I’ve been committing myself to actions that should have seen harassment charges for the past year and a half. What is he talking about?
“You’ve never once been late to work,” he clarifies.
“Work,” I say. “You mean that thing you’ve let me set my own hours for since March of last year?”
He’s smiling.
I shove a scrambled egg in my mouth. “Not funny.”
“A little funny.”
“Thirty pages.”
“Or what?”
Or what ? What else? “Peanut butter broccoli smoothies for dinner. Since you refuse to tell me no , I know you’ll drink it, too.”
“Actually, I’m taking more initiative in setting boundaries with you. The only way I’m ever putting peanut butter and broccoli back in my mouth at the same time is if you do it with me. Equality and boundaries are very important in a relationship.”
I crunch my toast, deathly careful not to spill crumbs in his car. “Is that so? Have you been reading a self-help book or something?”
“Perhaps. It’s one of the books Desmond worked on before he switched genres. It’s called How to Make Your Enemy Fall for You . Very insightful.”
My brows rise. “There’s no way it’s called that.”
“I promise you. It is.”
“Also, did you just compliment a book?”
A smidgen of confusion settles into his smile. “Yes? It’s a good book. I’m severely concerned for the author’s mental health, but she succeeded in capturing the complicated emotions associated with handling an enemies-to-lovers trope in real life rather well.”
I gotta get my hands on this book. “Who’s the author?”
“Melanie Richards. If you’re interested, I can read it to you. Bedtime story.”
Bedtime story.
First, he brushes my hair. Then, he makes sure I get home safe, ignoring the fact he was pulsing with the denied urge to tuck me in. This morning, he buys me breakfast and cleans me up when I make a mess of myself. Now , he’s introducing bedtime stories into this dynamic?
“Viktor.”
“Hm?”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to get back at me for all my comments about how ancient and decrepit you are.”
“Decrepit,” he muses. “That’s a new one. I’ve not heard about my decrepitude before.”
I ask him point blank: “Are you treating me like a child on purpose?”
“I am the oldest brother of five. Loving someone to me leans heavily on taking care of them. I apologize if I’ve made you feel like a child. I will do my best to curb that.”
I sip my choccy milk and roll my eyes out the window. “It’s not…the worst thing ever…to be taken care of. I guess. I guess…I’m just not used to it. ”
“I very much enjoy the honor.”
There he goes again. With these words like privilege and honor . As though I’ve blessed him with my existence, instead of cursed him with misery. Either he’s demented and pranking me, or I’m just terrible at torture.
Probably the first option.
Yeah.
Lifting my toast as Canter Creek comes into view, I crunch, and try not to think about anything else.