Chapter 12 - Raya
Selene calls first. “Yakov spoke to Simon,” she says, and the relief in her voice is loud enough to echo through the receiver.
“Thank God. I was getting interrogated at family dinner and was fast running out of ways to say everything was fine without them all doing the whole macho ‘we’ll go get her and bring her home, she should be here with her family.’ They calmed down after Sofie piped up and told them she’d spoken to you and you were perfectly fine. ”
“I think Matvei’s struggling with the whole not being in control thing.”
“You don’t say?” She laughs. “So… we’ll be seeing you soon?”
“Two weeks, apparently.”
“And how are you feeling, really?”
I look up at the ceiling. How am I really? I am tangled up in a web of feelings I am not ready to say out loud to anyone—least of all Selene at the moment. She’s not exactly going to want to hear about the mind-blowing sex I had with her brother, is she?
“I’m fine,” I tell her. “Really. Better than I probably should be.”
There’s a pause on the line that tells me she hears everything I’m leaving unsaid. “Good,” she says carefully. “I don’t know how you’re going to handle the... other situation. When you come back.”
“What other situation?”
“Er… The fact that you two are, technically, legally married.”
“We’ll work it out, but until we’re back, I don’t want them to know. That puts you in a crappy position, and I’m sorry, but I need you to hold the line for me anyway.”
Selene lets out a breathless laugh. “You’re lucky I love you.”
“I know. I really am.”
We hang up. Ten minutes later, Sofie blows up my phone.
“Okay, so Simon told Selene, who told me that you’re coming back soon, thank god, because I never realized how knackering all these nieces and nephews were until you weren’t here to pick up the slack.”
“Ah, it’s nice to be recognized finally.”
“You should have heard Matvei doing bedtime stories on Tuesday; it was hilarious. The kids told him he made a really good troll, and I tried not to choke. You should have seen his face; he didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.
He leaves a lot to be desired as a princess, though. To quote the kids, “you suck!”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it—the first easy one in what feels like weeks.
“So, how are you holding up? Has it been safe? No word from his family, nobody’s tried anything since—”
“It’s been quiet. Yakov’s careful. We haven’t had any trouble.”
“Good. That’s—good.” Sofie exhales, and for a second she sounds so much older than nineteen that it catches me off guard. “I hate this, by the way. I hate that you’re out there and we can’t just sit in the kitchen drinking wine and gossiping.”
“I know. Me too.”
“Two weeks, though.”
“Two weeks,” I agree. “Love you, speak soon”
“Love you too!”
We hang up, and I sit there, staring at the blank screen for a few minutes.
I need to do something with my hands before I lose my mind, so I head into the kitchen to start making dinner.
I’m barely thirty seconds into hunting for a chopping board when Yakov appears in the doorway.
He takes in the scene, walks inside, and starts helping without a word of discussion, moving around the tight space, finding the garlic, setting out a knife, and falling into perfect rhythm alongside me.
There is something about being side-by-side, both staring down at a chopping board, that makes talking so much easier.
“Can I ask you something?” I say, somewhere between the onions and the garlic.
“You can ask me anything.”
“That’s not the same as promising you’ll answer.”
“No,” he agrees. “But ask anyway.”
I keep my focus on the knife, chopping rhythmically. “Did you always want this? The lifestyle, and everything?”
“It’s not like I had a lot of choice about the life, after all; it’s something we’re born into,” he says, his jaw tightening slightly. “But the network—the data, the leverage—what I’ve been building on the side. That was a choice.”
“What would you think you’d have done? If you’d been born into a normal family, a normal life?”
He considers it seriously, rather than giving a fast, flippant answer. “I don’t know. Something that required patience. Something where what you built actually lasted.” He glances down at me. “An architect or something, maybe? What about you? What did you want to be when you were growing up?”
I look back at the board. Here it is. The one secret I have never told a single soul, because in our world, what’s the point of even wishing for it?
“A daycare,” I tell him, the admission almost lost over the sound of the blade hitting wood. “I wanted to run a daycare.”
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t laugh, which I had secretly braced myself for.
“I love kids; they’re so funny and honest. I’ve always been good with them.
It’s...” I pause, the knife freezing for a split second before I force it to move again.
“What happens to the children in my care if something goes wrong because of who my family is? You can’t put innocent kids in the crosshairs of this thing we exist in.
It’s too dangerous.” I shrug, trying to sound casual.
“But I have my nieces and nephews. It’s enough. ”
For several years, not being able to do the thing I really wanted was like a gaping wound.
I felt angry and bitter about the constraints of having the type of family I did, but it’s not something I grieve anymore.
It is what it is. I keep my eyes glued to the vegetables because the silence stretching between us feels heavy.
I know that if I look up and meet his eyes right now, it will probably tip me over whatever edge this is I’m balancing on.
And then, because I’m distracted thinking about him, the knife slips.
The blade catches my index finger. It’s deep enough to split the skin, causing a sharp gasp to escape my throat before I can stop it. My brain hasn’t even processed the pain, but Yakov has dropped his knife, gripped my wrist, and popped my bleeding finger inside his mouth before I’ve even blinked.
My entire world slams to a halt.
The heat of his mouth against my skin sends a shockwave straight down my spine.
I can feel the movement of his tongue, sucking gently to stall the bleeding, his dark brows furrowed in concentration.
He removes my finger from his lips slowly, but he doesn’t let go of my hand.
His grip around my wrist remains possessively tight.
He looks down at the neat red line on my skin, tracking the rising blood with a terrifyingly sharp intensity.
“We wouldn’t want you bleeding all over dinner,” he murmurs, holding me captive with nothing but his stare, watching me look at him.
I can feel my heart pulsing in my ears. The cut on my finger throbs in time with it, as he traces a slow arc against the inside of my wrist with his thumb where my pulse hammers hardest. What the fuck is happening to me right now?
It’s like some weird sensory overload that’s making my brain go haywire.
“Yakov,” I whisper, and I don’t know what I’m asking for. I have no idea if I want him to let go or pull me closer.
He blinks slowly, like he’s surfacing from deep water, then releases my wrist. He turns to the cabinet above the sink, reaching for the first aid kit. “Sit,” he says.
“It’s okay, I can do it myself.”
“I know.” He opens the kit, finds antiseptic and a bandage, and turns back to me. “Let me anyway.”
He picks me up like I weigh nothing and sits me on the countertop, my legs dangling, and I feel weirdly young and exposed in a way I haven’t since I was a girl.
He steps between my knees, close enough that I can smell the soap on his skin and the faint trace of the cologne he wears.
He takes my hand again, gently this time, and cleans the cut.
“The daycare.” he says, “you never told anyone that?”
“No.”
“Why me?”
Because I’m terrified of this whole situation, and where it’s going to end up, and still I trust you anyway. I have no clue how those two things can exist in the same space, but they do.
“Because you’re here,” I say instead, and it comes out sounding like an accusation and a confession all at once.
He finishes the bandage, pressing the adhesive strip into place gently. But he doesn’t step back; his palms flatten against the counter on either side of my hips, caging me without touching me, and he bows his head until his forehead nearly rests against mine.
“I am here,” he says, and his breath ghosts across my lips. “Whether that’s a comfort or a threat to you, Raya, I am here.”
I should push him away. I should slide off this counter and put three feet of kitchen between us and remember who we are and what this can never be.
We’d never even met before any of this happened.
A few weeks ago, he was a name I associated with danger, not a man who knows how I take my coffee.
All this is a legal document. We’re from two opposing families who want each other dead, for crying out loud.
Even if he isn’t the same as the rest of them.
Even if he does make me feel safe. It can’t be. Can it?
I don’t move.
“Both,” I whisper. “It’s both.”
He makes a low sound, and for one endless second I think he’s going to close the distance. I can feel the heat radiating from him, the barely leashed thing that lives under his careful control. My lips part. My eyes flutter shut.
He doesn’t kiss me.
He presses his mouth to my forehead, a brand of heat and restraint that somehow undoes me more than any kiss could have, and stays there, breathing hard against my skin.
“Don’t bleed on my dinner,” he says roughly. It’s a joke, and it’s not, and we both know it.
He picks up his knife and carries on chopping vegetables as if nothing happened.
I sit on the counter, my bandaged finger throbbing, my heart beating faster than it should be for something so minor, and I watch him work.
The kitchen slowly fills with the sizzle of oil in a pan, the ordinary sounds of two people making a meal together.
But my skin still burns where his mouth touched me, and I know, with a certainty that frightens me, that I am in far deeper trouble than I ever imagined.