Chapter 6 #2
I swallow.
“We have history.”
The answer hangs there, thin and unsatisfying.
He knows it too.
“What kind of history?”
I shake my head. “The kind I don’t want to discuss right now.”
His gaze doesn’t leave mine. “And yet it followed you to your room.”
That gets under my skin because it’s true.
I fold my arms more tightly across myself. Not over my stomach. Never there. Just enough to feel like I’m holding something in place.
“I took this job because my friend had an emergency,” I say. “I got here, realized this weekend was going to be a mess, and decided I could either do the work or fall apart. I chose the work.”
“And Ethan?”
I let out a breath. “Ethan has always thought he has the right to say whatever he wants.”
“To you.”
“Yes.” The word comes out flat.
Viktor is quiet for a moment. He glances toward my wrist, where the marks are darkening, then back to my face. “And tonight he came here because he was drunk and angry.”
“Yes.”
“Angry about what?”
I almost laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “Take your pick.”
He studies me for another second, and I can feel him deciding whether to push harder. I can almost see the questions forming.
I can’t let him get there. Not tonight. Not when one wrong answer might pull everything else after it. So I say, more softly, “Please don’t ask me for more than I can give you right now.”
That finally stops him.
Not because he’s satisfied. He clearly isn’t. But because he hears what I mean. I’m holding on by my fingernails, and one more sharp question might be enough to rip the whole thing open.
His face changes a little. Less heat. More restraint.
“All right,” he says.
I blink. “All right?”
“For tonight.”
There’s still too much in the room. Too much unsaid. I lean back against the wall and close my eyes for a second. Relief comes mixed with dread. This isn’t over. It’s only paused.
When I look at him again, he’s still watching me with that same unsettling steadiness.
“You should have told someone he was a problem,” he says.
I sigh. “I can’t exactly remove the groom from his own wedding.”
A small silence passes between us. The rain taps softly at the window. Somewhere in the house, a door closes. Everything around us sounds normal in a way that feels almost insulting.
Then Viktor says, “You’re shaking.”
I hadn’t realized how obvious it was.
“I’m tired.”
“That isn’t all.”
“No.” I look toward the door. “It isn’t.”
His gaze drops for the briefest second, not to my face this time but lower, toward the loose fold of the robe. I go still inside. My body almost reacts before I catch it. I want to put a hand over my stomach so badly it hurts.
Don’t.
I keep my arms exactly where they are.
When he looks back up, his expression is unreadable again. “You should lock the door after I leave,” he says.
I stare at him. “That’s it?”
“For now.”
The words should calm me. Instead they leave me with the strange, hollow feeling of standing on the edge of something much larger than this room.
He takes another step back, giving me space at last.
The distance helps, but not enough. My skin still feels too aware. My pulse is still unsteady. The kiss is still there between us, alive in the silence.
At the door, he pauses. “If he comes near you again tonight,” he says, “you call me.”
I almost tell him I don’t even have his number. But the point isn’t practicality. The point is the certainty in his voice. The fact that he means it. And the more dangerous fact that some part of me believes him.
So, I nod.
He leaves without another word.
The door closes behind him, and only then do I let out the breath I’ve been holding. I stand there in the middle of the room, hands pressed against my ribs, trying not to think about how close that came. How close I came to telling him too much.
I’m too buzzed. I can’t sleep. I take my journal out of my bag and start writing. It’s something my therapist suggested to keep my anxiety away. Since I don’t have any family, and very few friends who actually check up on me, my journal is my only respite.
I write down everything about the encounter today, the way my lips still tingle.
How do I tell Viktor he’s the father? That’s so fucked up, especially now that I know he’s Ethan’s dad.
Ugh. I resist the urge to throw the journal away.
Tomorrow is going to be worse.
I know it already.
I wake before my alarm. Not because I’m rested, but because my body has given up on sleep.
The room is still dark, the estate quiet in that expensive, muffled way old houses are quiet, but my mind is already running. Breakfast on the lawn. Coffee service. Champagne, because apparently no one in this family believes in morning without alcohol.
That last thought makes me press the heels of my hands to my eyes.
What a mess.
I lie there for a second, staring into the dark, and try not to think too hard about the shape my life has taken.
It would be easier if this were just one terrible mistake.
It isn’t. It’s two. Or maybe one and a half, if I’m being honest with myself.
Ethan was a long time ago now, and whatever I felt for him had already curdled into humiliation and habit by the end.
Viktor is different. Worse. Better. More dangerous because none of it feels stale.
I really did this, I think as I push myself upright. I somehow managed to get tangled up with both father and son.
I almost laugh, but there’s nothing funny in it.
By the time I’m showered and dressed, the sky outside the windows has only just begun to pale.
I pull on one of my lighter dresses, pin my hair up, and tell myself I’m doing this because I have to work.
Because breakfast won’t set itself. Because movement is easier than lying still with my own thoughts.
The hallway outside is cold and dim. I head downstairs with my binder tucked under one arm, already running through the schedule in my head. Halfway down the service corridor, I turn a corner too quickly and almost walk straight into someone.
I stop short.
A tall figure is coming the other way with a huge arrangement of white flowers balanced against one shoulder, half her face hidden behind roses and trailing greenery.
“Sorry,” I say automatically, stepping back.
The flowers shift, and for one split second the face, the expression, pulls something out of me before I can stop it.
A memory.
I’m standing in the plane bathroom afterward, staring at myself in the mirror like I’ve lost my mind. My hair is a mess. My mouth looks kissed raw. My thighs are trembling so badly I have to brace both hands on the tiny sink just to keep steady.
The private cabin is only a few steps away, and in it is a man I do not know, a man with silver at his temples and a body built like he’s still fighting wars with his bare hands, and I just let him ravish me several times at thirty thousand feet like I forgot every rule I’ve ever had.
In a private cabin.
On a plane.
With a stranger.
I remember looking at my reflection and thinking, What is my life?
Then, because humiliation apparently likes company, Ethan’s face flashes through my head too.
Ethan, who had dumped me in Spain and was already posting polished, smiling pictures with a blonde before I even stopped crying over him.
Ethan, with his neat little replacement and his expensive smile and his gift for making me feel like too much and not enough at the same time.
Maybe that’s why I let Viktor touch me.
No, not let.
Wanted.
I wanted his mouth, his hands, his praise, the roughness of him, the way he looked at me like my body was something worth devouring instead of apologizing for.
So in that airplane bathroom, I had splashed water on my face, taken three impossible breaths, and told myself to get back out there before I made an even bigger fool of myself.
And when I opened the door, I nearly walked straight into a woman waiting in the passage outside the suite.
She looked me up and down once, cool and cutting and far too composed for someone standing outside a private flight cabin in the middle of the night.
“Stay away from Viktor,” she said.
I remember blinking at her. “Who are you?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
She leaned in just slightly then, not enough to be dramatic, just enough to make the warning feel personal. “It won’t end well for you,” she said. “Men like him don’t change because they want something for a night.”
Back in the present, my mouth moves before I can stop it.
“You.”
The woman pauses, the flowers still in her hands.
Her face stays perfectly composed. “I’m sorry?” she says.
I just stare at her.
It’s definitely her. Same voice. Same face. Same cool stillness. Only now she’s acting like she’s never seen me in her life.
“You were on that flight,” I say.
The faintest crease appears between her brows, not enough to look real. “I think you’re mistaken.”
No, I’m not.
Her denial is so smooth it almost makes me doubt myself for half a second, but then I remember the bathroom door, the look on her face, the way she said he’s a bad man like it came from experience instead of gossip.
She knows exactly who I am. She just doesn’t want anyone else to know it.
I lower my voice. “You warned me about him.”
Her eyes flick once down the corridor behind me, checking whether anyone is coming. When she looks back at me, her expression hasn’t changed, but her voice has.
“You really do have me confused with someone else,” she says in a normal voice. Then she steps around me and keeps walking.
I stand there in the corridor, frozen, my binder clutched against my chest, listening to her heels disappear down the stone floor.
What the hell is going on?