Chapter 9 Micah #2
“I did nothing,” Ilya says, even quieter. “I thought she was asking for it. I hated my father for hitting her, but I hated her as much for staying. I didn’t understand.”
I have to swallow hard around the lump in my throat, and I can’t quite hear over the blood beating in my ears. It takes me several seconds to completely process what he’s saying. Adam has always called them bullshit domestics.
It’s always my fault, but I don’t have it in me to tell Ilya that his mother deserved what happened to her.
“My sister married man my father liked.” Ilya lets out a small chuckle.
“They were the same. I found my sister beaten bloody, and she was crying, and she said she never knew why our mother stayed either. But it’s not so easy after all.
He had all the money. He knew all the right people.
If my mother left, my father would drag her back.
My father didn’t tolerate disobedience. And she had children.
” He reaches up to rub his eyes. “I’m ashamed I never helped my mother. ”
I don’t know what to say to that.
It’s eerily familiar to me.
I have nothing; without Ilya, I have nowhere to go. Adam has connections, and he’s made it clear that he knows enough to where I could end up in jail if I left.
But he’s never beaten me bloody. He might’ve hit me a few times, but I’ve always deserved the blows. If I hadn’t acted out, if I hadn’t fucked up, he wouldn’t have had to do it.
“Is she… still with him?” I ask, the words coming out thick.
Ilya shakes his head. “They are both dead.”
I’m not sure if that’s better or worse. “I’m sorry,” I say. I squeeze his hand again, then I rest my head against his shoulder. “Thank you for trusting me with that. I… I don’t… I mean… I’m not…”
I’m not like her, I want to say, but I know that could come out as offensive.
Ilya strokes my hair gently. “I haven’t told anyone,” he admits. “Only my sister knows. Thank you for listening.”
I close my eyes. “I won’t tell anyone either,” I promise, and I realize that’s the truth as I say it. I could never tell Adam something that personal about Ilya. He would only scoff and diminish it.
It nags at me that I can’t dismiss his mother’s struggles like I dismiss my own, but that’s not something I want to think about.
So I don’t.
“Thank you,” Ilya repeats. He pets my hair for another few moments before letting out a long breath. “We should pick up your cello.”
Nodding, I open my eyes, but I’m reluctant to let go of his hand, reluctant to put distance between us. I do it anyway, and when I stand up, I see that his eyes are red. My heart aches for him and his family, who have known more pain than I could even dream about.
“Okay,” I tell him. “Let me get my shoes on.”
Ilya waits patiently for me, not rushing me to hurry up with my damn shoes, and smiles when I meet him at the door.
“We’ll be fast,” Ilya promises me. “And then you will be done with him for good.”
My heart leaps into my throat.
No. That’s not possible. I’m not done with Adam.
He’s not done with me.
Despite what had happened the night before, I still love him, and he still loves me. That isn’t changing because of one incident, as awful as it had been.
“Yeah,” I say softly. “Done with him.”
Why is there a part of me that wishes that was true? It’s stupid, and I know it’s stupid. I have everything I could need or want from Adam.
I shouldn’t be looking at someone else and wondering if they’re better.
I shouldn’t be wishing it could be Ilya.
So why am I?
I follow him out of the condo and to the building’s garage, and I smile crookedly when he opens the passenger side door for me. With him, it’s like I’m like something to treat like something…
Precious.
“Thanks,” I tell him as I slide into the seat, pulling on my seatbelt.
“Of course.” Ilya gets into the car. Before he starts driving, he texts somebody in Russian.
Is that another one of his shady contacts? Is it a hitman sent to collect on all those debts?
Or maybe it’s something innocuous.
Ilya starts up the car and points to the car’s GPS. “Enter your address.”
I obey, putting in the address before settling back in my seat again. “Thank you for this,” I tell him quietly. I still have no idea how we’re going to get into the house, but my need for my cello is so strong that I don’t really care.
Besides, if he does something illegal to get inside, it’s something to tell Adam, right?
It’s a long drive to Adam’s house. On a cop’s salary, he can’t afford a fancy condo inside the city like Ilya. I think he didn’t even technically buy the house; it’s one he inherited from a late uncle. It’s small, a bit run down, and most people wouldn’t say it was in the city proper.
The traffic is as bad as ever, and I keep stealing glances at Ilya, expecting him to rage about the conditions of the road.
He doesn’t.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” I blurt out despite myself.
“Doesn’t what bother me?” Ilya asks. Traffic moves enough that he manages to get through the next light, but then he has to stop for pedestrians who are jaywalking across the street.
“The traffic,” I tell him, cringing as more people cross the road. “The people. They’re making everything slow, and it’s taking forever.”
“We aren’t in a rush,” Ilya answers. He laughs. “Americans always expect everything to follow an exact schedule. But in Russia, we all know that meetings can run long, that some things take time.”
“Oh,” I say. “Adam gets mad. Road rage, I guess.”
I don’t know why I’m telling Ilya this.
“I just figured everyone who drove did,” I add quickly.
“I used to be angrier,” Ilya admits. “My father… he was an angry driver too. He would cuss at every person who was too slow. He almost hit many pedestrians. But when I came to New Bristol, I told myself to change. I said, I will not be like him anymore.”
I don’t like the comparisons between Ilya’s father and Adam.
I don’t like the way I feel like I can relate to his mother, either.
“That’s good,” I say softly, only to fall silent as traffic inches on, bit by bit, until we finally pick up speed as we leave the city proper.
We get to the neighborhood with its small houses packed close together. Ilya finds a parking spot down the street, just outside the “No Parking” signage.
“I will help carry cello. The cello.” Ilya shakes his head. “I get too excited to speak carefully around you.”
“Excited?” I ask, blinking at him. “What?”
Ilya smiles at me. “I want to speak properly. But Russian has no articles, so I forget sometimes.”
“I don’t even notice,” I tell him. I hesitate, then reach out, squeezing his hand. “It doesn’t bother me at all.”
And it doesn’t. Adam would probably sneer at him and think something derisive, but to me, it’s only part of Ilya.
I release his hand almost immediately, feeling awkward. “We should get this over with, before he comes home for lunch or something,” I say.
Not that he would. The commute is too long for that. But if he decides to come home early, or he was injured, or he’s taking the day off…
Ilya nods. We walk to the front door, and I stare at it, intimidated by the same door I’ve walked through so often.
“Are there cameras?” Ilya asks in a low whisper.
I shake my head. “No.” I don’t say that Adam is too cheap for one, even though that’s the truth. “But there’s no hide-a-key or anything.” I stare at the door, feeling so close to my cello but so far at the same time.
Ilya nods and looks to the side of the house. “Is there a back door? That will be safer.”
Safer?
“Yeah. But the yard is…” Before I can finish, Ilya walks over to the fence. He lets himself in—he has no trouble reaching over the side and pulling the latch up—and heads to the back. I jog after him.
I’m embarrassed by the state of the yard. There are weeds everywhere, and with the cooler weather the yard is covered in leaves, too. I should have raked before I left. Or tended to the plants somehow. Maybe mowed the lawn one more time.
Ilya walks up to the back door and pulls something out of his pocket. I get close enough to see that they’re two long rods.
No, they’re lockpicks.
He stands at the back door and picks the lock. It doesn’t even take him that long. He slides the door open and smiles at me.
“Safer, because fewer neighbors will see,” he says. “Come on. Let’s get your cello.”
I stare at him. I’m not surprised that someone in the criminal underworld knows how to pick locks, but should I pretend not to know that? “How did you know how to do that?” I ask him, hesitating instead of stepping through the door.
My heart is racing, and I look around. I half-expect Adam to appear at any second with his face twisted up with rage at my sheer audacity at breaking into his home to get my own belongings.
“I learned when I was young. That is not standard Russian education,” he jokes. He looks around the kitchen. “Grab your wallet, keys, and cello. And important papers.”
I take a deep, shaky breath, but as the seconds pass, I force myself to relax. It makes no sense to think he’ll show up. I left my phone at Ilya’s so he couldn’t track it, he has no security system, and even if the neighbors call him, I have time to get in and out.
I hope.
I hurry to the bedroom, grabbing my wallet and keys and stuffing them into my pockets.
Ilya follows me, and I step around him so I can go to the spare room.
Right as I step through the door, I realize my mistake.
My cello isn’t the only thing in here.
One of the walls has several hooks on it, where different BDSM paraphernalia are hanging from them — a leash and collar, a flogger, a whip — and the spanking bench is in one corner.
My cheeks burn.
A man like him has to have more experience than I do. He’ll know what all of it is, and he’ll know what all of it means.
I gesture to my cello. “Right there,” I say, trying to ignore the rest even though part of me wants to go and reclaim the collar that Adam had given me when things had been good.
When he had loved me as much as I love him.
Ilya stares at the walls. His eyes track from one item to the next, and his brow furrows deeper and deeper.
“This mudak, he hurts you with this?” he growls, pointing at the whip.
I startle, giving a quick shake of my head. “It doesn’t hurt,” I tell him. Some of these are things I tolerate because Adam likes them, not because I enjoy them, but I like others. “It’s just… lifestyle things.”
“Lifestyle?” Ilya repeats. “What lifestyle?”
I fidget, briefly looking down at the floor before risking a glance at Ilya. “BDSM,” I whisper. “I do like it. It makes me feel good.”
Confusion flickers across Ilya’s face. “BDSM. I know it. You enjoy getting hurt?” He walks over to the wall with the floggers. He puts on a pair of leather gloves, then runs his gloved fingers along the length of the whip. “Do you want me to hit you with this?”
I hesitate. If I say yes, he’ll try to do it for me. If I say no, he’ll get angry at Adam for having done it anyway.
He might get angry at me for allowing it.
He might think less of me, too.
“The whip isn’t my favorite,” I finally say. “I don’t mind it, but I can’t take very many from it. I don’t go into subspace with it, not really.”
“You don’t mind it.” Ilya presses his lips into a thin line. “Which one do you like the most?”
The conversation is making me uncomfortable, but I want Ilya to know what I do like. “I like the… the flogger,” I whisper. “I don’t like the whip very much.” And the spanking used to feel good, but now it feels too close, too much like punishment instead of pleasure.
Ilya points to the flogger. “This one?” After I nod, he holds up his phone to take a photo. “I will buy one,” he says. “I’ll learn to use it.”
I blink at him. “You will?” I ask dumbly. “Why?”
“Because you like it,” Ilya says. He tucks his phone away and walks over to the cello. I watch as he picks up the case. “Let’s go.”
I glance once more at the wall, and my eyes linger on the collar again.
It had meant something once.
I shake my head and hurry after Ilya, feeling the weight in the pit of my stomach.
“It needs to be something you like, too,” I tell him as we cross into the living room.
“If it makes you feel good, I’ll like it,” Ilya insists. Then he smiles gently. “But if I don’t like it, we’ll find something we both enjoy.”
He’s already acting as though I’m his, and I don’t know what to make of it.
I should be relieved because it makes this farce easier. But instead, I feel guilty because he’s seeing me as something I’m not.
We make sure the doors are locked as we leave, and I watch with apprehension as he sets the cello into the trunk of the car. He handles it with care, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
He opens my door again, and I shake my head slightly even though a smile plays across my lips. “You don’t have to do that,” I tell him.
“But I like to do it,” Ilya says. He smiles back. “But if it bothers you, I’ll do it less.”
I shake my head. “It doesn’t bother me. I’m not used to it, that’s all.”
It’s sweet, and I’m not used to sweet anymore.
He leans in, and I tense up right before he presses a kiss to my lips.
“Then I’ll do it more,” Ilya promises. “I’ll take care of you, Micah.”
I’m too dazed by the kiss to do anything but nod.
I don’t understand why.
There’s a voice in my head taunting me that all I do is go from one man to the next, seeking out something I can’t ever have. It tells me that it starts out this way, but they always turn into something else before long.
Charles had, and so had Adam.
Ilya will, too.
But I want to enjoy this as long as I can.