4. Cass
CASS
Adrenaline.
Shock.
Fear.
Attraction.
Awe.
I mean, c’mon now. It’s too much.
I’m very grateful to the Blue-Eyed Bastard for saving me.
But frankly, it’s a little rude of him to make me go through so many emotions at once.
A girl has limits, you know? Emotional circuits have a maximum capacity, and mine are without a doubt overloaded.
Any second now, I’m going to implode into a puddle of drooling, stuttering goo, and the B.E.B. will be at fault.
This whole night has been cursed from the start, really. From the millisecond I pulled up in front of Khaza, I should’ve known it was always destined to end up like this.
I keep jumping out of one frying pan and into another one that is somehow hotter. Now, I’ve finally found the heart of the flame.
Guess I should’ve realized that the hottest parts of the fire always burn blue .
I look up again to realize that the hand is still waiting for me. There’s a bit of blood smeared on the fingertip. As I watch, it wells up and falls to the ground.
With a gulp, I reach up to take it.
What else am I going to do? Sit here in a puddle of alley runoff and wait for the next horror to wander along? No thank you. I’ve met my quota of nightmare fuel for the evening.
His grip is so firm and warm and steadying that I almost want to cry. That’s annoying. I don’t cry. Not anymore. I cried for a long time after Giana’s funeral, and then I decided I was done with that particular bodily function.
Tears are for people who haven’t yet accepted that the world is a meat grinder and we’re all just waiting our turn. I accepted it a long time ago.
But God, his hand is so warm .
He pulls me to my feet. My knee screams in protest. When I glance down, I see that the skin is torn open. Black grime mingles with red blood. It’s oddly pretty, the sight of those colors on my bare skin.
“Can you walk?” B.E.B. asks.
“Yes,” I declare, although my knee vehemently disagrees.
I thrust my chin high in the air and take one step. Nice work, Cass. It’s almost like you’ve been doing this since the day you were born.
Then, without further ado, my leg buckles completely, ligaments blaring Code Red , and the ground rushes up at my face. I’m about to add “traumatic brain injury” to tonight’s growing list of accolades when an arm hooks around my waist and hauls me back from the brink.
“That’s what I thought,” B.E.B. murmurs.
He doesn’t put me back on my feet. Instead, he reaches behind me with his free hand and drags a slab of flattened cardboard from where it’s been leaning against the dumpster. He folds it once to expose a clean spot, lays it across a dry patch of concrete, and lowers me onto it gently.
“There,” he says. “Sit. Stay.”
“Do you always talk to women like they’re dogs?” I wheeze, even as I accept the seat gratefully.
“Only the disobedient ones,” he fires back.
He drops down next to me on the cardboard, back against the brick alley wall, long legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed.
Despite his nice suit, he doesn’t so much as glance at the filth he’s sitting in.
Either this man has zero regard for what I’m guessing is a very expensive ensemble, or he’s so far past caring about material things that it doesn’t even register. Must be nice to be that wealthy.
We sit in silence for a moment while I try to reorient myself to which way is up and which way is down. Back along the alley, one of the three amigos groans. I freeze, but the groaner doesn’t move or make a noise again beyond that single pitiful whine.
“So,” I say once I’ve got my bearings back a bit. “What now?”
The B.E.B. tilts his head back against the dumpster and looks at me sideways. Those ocean-rinsed eyes are impossible to read in the low light. “That depends,” he says.
“On?”
“On whether you’re done being reckless for the evening, or whether I should clear my schedule.”
Against my better judgment, I laugh. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself in my thirty years on this planet, it’s that I am a never-ending supply of bad choices.”
He scrutinizes me for a moment. My cheeks flush under the heat of his gaze. He’s got this calm, unblinking way of looking that makes me feel like a butterfly pinned up on some creepy bug scientist’s wall. “You’re handling attempted rape remarkably well,” he observes.
I laugh again. “‘Handling’? No. ‘Dissociating,’ maybe.” I snap my fingers in front of his eyes, then in front of mine.
“Are you even real? Am I? Is any of this? Am I caught in some dream? Have I fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole?
It’s like licking to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop: The world may never know. ”
“I take it back,” he drawls sarcastically. “You’re not handling it well at all.”
“Definitely not,” I admit. “But what else is a girl to do?” I pull my coat tighter around myself and squint at him. “Anyway. Enough about my coping mechanisms. You didn’t answer my question: Are you real?”
He shrugs. “Remains to be seen.”
“Well, do you have a name, Mr. Apparition? Or should I just keep calling you ‘Blue-Eyed Bastard’ in my head?”
“I suppose I’ve been called worse.” His brow lifts in mild amusement. “Matvei is a little easier to say, though.”
“Matvei,” I repeat, testing the feel of it in my mouth. “I’m Cassandra. Cass to my friends.” I stick my hand out. “Nice to formally meet you. Even if it’s under these incredibly fucked-up circumstances.”
He looks at my hand for a beat, then takes it.
His fingers close around mine. That’s three times now he’s touched me tonight.
Bad things come in threes, or so my mother used to say.
Then again, my mother also used to say that God has a plan for everyone, and look how that turned out for Giana and me.
I go to shift my weight as I pull my hand back, and as I do, my knee lights up. I suck air through my teeth at the sudden rush of pain.
Matvei notices. His eyes drop to my leg. Without a word, he reaches into his jacket and produces a white handkerchief.
He folds it into a neat square and presses it against the torn skin of my knee. It’s bizarre how soft his touch is. I just watched him pulverize three very scary dudes, but here he is tending to my wounds, tender as an Eskimo kiss.
I was joking a second ago, but now, I’m really starting to wonder if I am in fact hallucinating this entire event.
“Are you this nice to all the damsels in distress you rescue?” I ask.
“You’re the first of your kind, actually. I don’t usually bother,” Matvei replies. “Generally, I find they’ve brought the distress upon themselves.”
“And yet here you are. Dabbing my knee with a monogrammed hankie like some kind of Victorian gentleman.”
“No one’s ever accused me of being that before.”
I glance down the alley at the dark, ominous stack of bodies that Matvei just so courteously arranged for me. “Yeah, I guess not.”
I feel the tendrils of fear starting to snake in around my heart and my throat the longer I look at them. It might’ve choked me out altogether if it weren’t for two light points of pressure on the side of my jaw.
“Hey. Hey. Look at me,” Matvei whispers as he turns my face back toward his with a pair of fingertips. “Not at them. Forget about them.”
The eye contact lingers for a moment. His irises are huge and blue, like two alien moons that no one but me has ever seen before. I gulp, then turn away and shrug off his touch.
“They don’t bother me,” I lie shamelessly. “I’ve seen worse.”
That’s not true. Giana’s coffin lid was closed. But I’ve certainly imagined worse.
Like the gentleman he claims he isn’t, Matvei lets me get away with that blatant untruth. He’s in no hurry to fill in the silence, though. I get the feeling that he’s perfectly comfortable with strange tensions.
“So,” I say after a moment, because while he may be comfortable dwelling in awkward silences, I definitely am not, “do you come here often?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Just my lucky night, then.”
He glances down at my skinned knee. “I’d say the exact opposite. But to each their own.”
I take the chance to inspect his bruised knuckles where they’re lying in his lap. “Yeah, maybe not. What about you? Does this count as a good night or a bad one?”
He bobs a shoulder noncommittally. “Par for the course.”
I have to bite my cheek to stop from grinning.
There’s something about the effortlessness he exudes that makes me wild and green with envy.
He’s, like, made of Teflon or something.
Just cruising through life with zero friction.
Even in the middle of that savage fight, it hardly looked like he was trying.
Here, with me, he’s perfectly at ease, as if this is neither the first nor the thousandth time he’s done this.
Sometimes, God gives with both hands— that was another of my mom’s favorite expressions. They sure know how to coin a phrase in the Georgia backwoods where she grew up. In the case of Matvei here, I’d say that God gave with both hands and a shovel.
Because he’s gorgeous, obviously rich, fearless, strong, capable, perceptive, clever… the list goes on and on.
Like he can hear me heaping praise on him in my mind, Matvei smirks. “Something on your mind you’d care to share with the class?”
I shake my head. “No. Nothing worth two cents, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No, I suppose not. I figured your thoughts were worth more like fifty grand, give or take.”
My jaw hits the floor as I realize what he’s saying. “Wait—hold the hell up. How did you…?”
“Just a guess,” he says, smirking again. “But a good one, it seems.”
“Were you eavesdropping on me?!” I ask incredulously.
He frowns. “It’s hardly eavesdropping when you announce your intentions to the entire bar. People in there are always listening, Cassandra. You really ought to work on your inside voice.”