28. Lex
After Miri and Carter left, things just carried on.
Ivy and I started law school. She buried herself in books and legislation and trying to find a way to fight back against our parents. I buried myself in weed, booze, and tattoos. A forest on my lower back, in the free space between my ribs and my hip. A square with an X in the middle of my forearm. A symbol that only we would understand.
I tried with Ivy for a while. I tried to cuddle her when she needed it, attempted to pick up the pieces and put her back together like I promised Carter I would. But I would never be Carter. And she would never be Miri. We both were dreadfully aware of that resounding devastating fact.
As much as we tried to be civil, our heartache simmered below our skin. Looking at her reminded me of them. As I’m sure looking at me reminded her of the same. It drew me to her and broke me apart me at the same time.
Were it not for this splinter in my heart and the scabs on my hands, I could have easily moved on with my life. Cut the cord with them as I’d done with every other lover I’d ever had. Except…they weren’t any other lovers. I’d married them. They married me.
They were mine.
Mine.
And we should have been together.
Until the end.
Ivy tried to text them, but her messages went undelivered. I tried the same, only to learn our numbers had been blocked on their phones, which didn’t make any damn sense at all.
“Have you heard from them?” Ivy asked a few days after they’d left.
“No.” I ran a hand through my hair. “It’s driving me fucking batshit.”
I wrote again, pleading with them to call me, to talk to me, to either of us. I sent direct messages on their socials, creating new accounts to try to reach out that way, but nothing either of us did made them react. It was almost like they’d gone out there and forgotten we existed altogether.
It stank of political puppeteering, and just when I was about to go to my father and accuse him of fucking with my life again, Carter sent a group text.
“Weeds, DC…listen. We’ve given it a lot of thought. Stop reaching out. This hurts too much. I love you both, but we knew this would only last so long. Please don’t contact us again. This is the end.”
Miri added, “This is the end.”
It shattered what little hope Ivy had left. I’d never seen her broken like that before. She never gave up fighting and she never backed down. She was as stubborn as a fucking fly at a cookout. But believing Carter didn’t want her anymore?
Well, if my heart wasn’t just as broken, I would have flown to that fucking Malibu dream house myself to strangle him in his sleep.
Take care of her,he’d said. Put her back together, he’d made me swear. And then he pulled this shit? Over text message?
The next time I saw him and my princess, I was going to take it out on their asses.
Part of me didn’t want to believe it was them, that my father had something to do with it. But…Weeds…DC…Until the end? How could anyone else know about that shit? That was insider info only. Maybe it was easier to quit them cold turkey. Maybe that would end up killing us all in the end like a more grotesque version of the DTs.
Life went on.
We put on the good show like the political monsters we were, but six months after we’d returned from Ireland, things got fucked-up…a lot more fucked-up.
We were two weeks out from finals, and I had to get an A in my litigation class in order to beat Ivy for best GPA. (I said our affection for each other had dissipated, not our competitiveness.) I studied all fucking day and any free time I had was devoted to busting my ass at my internship or helping Ivy take down our parents’ political aspirations.
Stressed didn’t begin to describe my agitation when my father invited me to family dinner, which was just a nice way of saying I got a free meal while he berated me and my mother acted like the secret to life was at the bottom of a wine bottle.
“I’ve confirmed the wedding will occur right after you graduate from law school. Three years lines up nicely with my re-election.” He chewed his steak, the jowls on his chubby chin rattling with the movement. I refocused on my mother, who pursed her lips and pushed food around on her plate.
“Whatever makes you look good,” I said on a sigh, clawing at my cigarette box. My appetite had been soiled by the invitation to this shit show, and all this talk of marrying Ivy made my stomach even tighter. We’d been scheming all these weeks and had nothing to show for our efforts. Short of jumping on a plane to California, adopting new identities, and going into drowning debt for facial reconstruction surgery, our options were rather fucking limited. “My opinions obviously don’t matter.”
“I’m happy you’ve left that English whore alone,” he murmured, cutting into another slice of meat. “What a hilarious charade that was.”
I snapped my gaze to him, and the nights spent holding Ivy while she cried went through my mind—the depression we’d both sunk into, the yank on my heart at having been split in half by Carter and Miri’s rejection, how terrible it felt to see them on social media looking so damn happy.
Why would he bring her up now?
I narrowed my eyes, and suspicion clawed its way to the forefront of my consciousness again.
“Was it you?” My voice came out low, like a growl.
He stopped and looked up at me, his eyes perplexed. “What?”
“Did you send that text to us?”
“What text?” He bit another piece of steak. “Alexei, what are you talking about?”
“The text from Carter. The one that ended things.”
“Things?” My father seemed genuinely confused, but he was a politician after all. One of the best. “What are you talking about?”
It had been a long day in a long month in an even longer fucking year. Half my heart was missing. I hadn’t slept in forever, and this fucking fake marriage bullshit grated on my nerves.
I said the words as calmly as I could, even though my temper flared in the center of my chest. “Tell me the truth. Did you tear us apart? Are you keeping us apart?”
The air pulsed between me and my father, and I looked at my mother to see if she saw it. When her reaction didn’t change, I cleared my throat and blinked.
I must have imagined it. I’m just tired. Really fucking tired.
Then my father said, “We’ve been planning your marriage to Ivy since Marcus died. Princess Miriam was always a blip, and I’d force you two together again if it meant I’d get elected.” He stood, the link between us blinding and blaring, a physical pull between my mind and his mouth. “Six years of watching you fail has made me regret every part of being your father. You were right when you said it should have been you, and standing here today, I’d drown you in the Boston Bay myself if it meant I’d get my son back.”
I balked. Froze. Shock and disgust and utter fucking relief coated my veins when the connection broke and he shook his head, blinking like he’d been in a trance. My mother gasped, dropping her wine, the shattering glass deafening and muffled at the same time.
My father had never talked to me like that. He’d always verbally denied his hatred for me, even as he continued to act on it.
My eyebrows shot halfway up my head, and my father squared his jaw, his hands turning into fists. “What was that? What did you do to me?”
I didn’t have answers because…I didn’t know. “I didn’t do anything.”
He slammed his napkin down on the table and stormed through the dining room to the foyer. My mother locked her eyes on me. Her mouth hung open, her gaze searching for a difference in my appearance. Maybe devil’s horns or a pointed tail.
I shrugged and gaslit my father, saying something like, “Well, he’s obviously cut off,” but that was just my dick move to cover my own ass.
“I’m sorry, Alexei,” she said in Russian, shaking her head. “Your father’s behavior tonight was unacceptable. He shouldn’t have said those things to you.”
I answered her in the same language. “Doesn’t make them untrue.”
“They are untrue.” She dabbed at her eye with her napkin. “You are my son, and I love you.”
I snorted a sad laugh. Yeah. Sure. She loved me a lot, enough to sit there and say nothing while my father admitted he’d rather kill me himself than live with me as his surviving son. To be fair, I hadn’t given him much of a reason to feel differently.
Just my whole fucking future. Just a marriage to a girl who drove me wild and the loss of my two favorite people.
“You are his son, too,” she said. “He knows that. He’s just angry. The election is wearing on him.”
I swallowed down the agony that gathered in the back of my throat and pinched a cigarette between my lips, holding a lighter up with shaking hands while I inhaled on it.
No, I thought. He believed it. Because I had made him say those things. Magic had shifted around me, the same way it had while we were in the woods. I felt it. Except this time, I could control it. I could wield it.
“You promised me I wouldn’t have to do what you did.”I switched to English now, preferring to say what I needed to in my own language. “You promised I would be free. And you lied.”
“Alexei,” she said.
“And you never apologized for that.” I kept my tone level. Clear. Concise. I wanted her to know I’d spent time considering what I had to say next. Tears burned my eyes. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d ever cried, the last time being when my brother died. But I knew the truth, and well—what was stopping me now? “I’ll never forgive you for this. I am your only child, and I despise you both.”
Then I stood and walked out of that fucking hellhole like I might never go back.
I should have told Ivy. I should have figured out how to get ahold of Carter and Miri and insisted they fly home so we could figure this out. My finger even hovered over Ivy’s name for a millisecond.
But in the end, I kept it to myself.
Please don’t contact us again.
Maybe I was too fucked in the head about my father finally admitting what I’d always known. Marcus was the golden child in his eyes, and I was the scum on his shoes. An inadequate replacement he’d been forced to raise.
It should have been me.
It seemed easier than having to admit that whatever bees’ nest we’d kicked over in Ireland had followed us back to the States. I thought if I ignored it and pretended it wasn’t there, it would go away. That like the lust that had gripped us three days after midsummer, this would stop with time.