Chapter 18 Johnny
JOHNNY
My heart is a hammer, threatening to crack my ribs.
The air is too hot, too wet, too heavy. The shower keeps running, beating against the back of my neck, my shoulders, the tile, the floor, and none of it can wash away the cold that just split me open down the middle.
My father promised me to one of them.
The sentence will not stop replaying. Each pass strips another layer off whatever I thought was happening between us thirty seconds ago, when my mouth was on her throat and the word mine was the truest thing I’d ever said.
And she knew.
The whole time, she knew there was already something else waiting outside this room. Another man. Another future. Some arrangement with his name tied to hers in ways I don’t understand yet. She knew, and she still stood here with me, still let me touch her like none of it existed.
The feeling that tears through me is instant and ugly.
Hurt first, sharp enough to make my chest feel caved in.
Then jealousy right behind it, hot and irrational and mean.
Some faceless man I have never met is suddenly in the room with us, crowding every inch of air, and the animal part of my brain wants to put my fist through the wall until it stops being true.
For one sick second I’m angry at her.
For not telling me sooner. For letting me stand here naked with her with my heart cracked open while she had this waiting behind her teeth. For letting me say things I had no business saying when she knew there was already another future waiting for her.
That anger falters almost as fast as it comes.
Because she doesn’t look relieved now that she’s told me. She doesn’t look like a woman delivering news she’s made peace with. She looks like someone bracing for impact.
Her arms are folded tight across her body. Her chin is down. Her shoulders have curled inward in that way I’ve seen before.
She isn’t standing there like a woman confessing something she chose to hide.
She’s standing there like a woman showing me a wound.
So instead of saying the ten things trying to force their way out of my mouth, I make myself ask the one that matters.
“Did you want this?”
Her head lifts. Water runs down her temples and catches in her lashes and she blinks at me like I just spoke a language she doesn’t recognize.
“What?”
“The marriage. The arrangement. Whatever the fuck it is.” My voice is rougher now, the control in it costing me something. “Did you want it?”
A terrible little laugh leaves her. Broken at the edges, stripped of anything close to humor.
“I didn’t get a vote.”
“Nat.” I hear the edge in my own voice now and hate it. “That’s not what I asked.”
Her mouth tightens. Her arms pull harder across her chest like she can hold herself together by force if she just squeezes hard enough.
“No.”
The relief is instant and savage. She doesn’t want this. She didn’t choose this. This wasn’t some future she’s choosing over me. It was done to her.
That doesn’t fix a goddamn thing. But at least I know which direction to point the rage.
“Then why the fuck are you still going through with it?”
She looks away. “Wanting something else doesn’t change anything.”
“It changes what this is.”
Her brows draw together.
“If you wanted him, that would be one thing,” I say. “If you wanted that life, that would be one thing. But if you don’t, then this isn’t some choice I have to respect. It’s a cage.” I hold her eyes. “So what are they holding over you?”
Her nails press into her own arms hard enough to leave marks, and I have to stop myself from reaching over and pulling her hands apart.
“Anna is sick, Johnny.”
My stomach drops.
The warmth that filled her voice when she first told me about Anna is gone, replaced by something bleak.
“Alzheimer’s. My father pays for her care. Where she lives, what she needs, all of it.” She swallows once, hard. “And before he sent me here, he made it very clear that if I stop cooperating, that goes away.”
The shower keeps beating against the tile, against my neck, against her skin, but the whole room has gone cold.
Anton Kozlov found the softest part of his daughter and wrapped a fist around it.
For one vicious second all I can see is his hands on a leash. Around her throat. Around Anna’s life. Around choices that were never supposed to belong to him in the first place.
This is nothing more than blackmail dressed up as family duty.
I want to put him through a fucking wall.
Instead I make myself stay still. Make myself stay here.
“Okay.” I take one step into her, enough that the spray hits my shoulder instead of the space between us. “Then leave your father out of it for a minute. What do you want, Natalia?”
She sighs. “Johnny—”
“I’m not asking what your father wants,” I say. “Or what happens in two months. I know that part matters. I know Anna matters. But I’m asking about you.”
Her eyes drop.
For a second I think she’s going to keep deflecting. But then I see the shine gathering in her eyes, and whatever she was about to say seems to catch in her throat instead.
“It doesn’t matter.” Her voice is thinner now. Frayed at the edges. “What I want doesn’t change anything.”
“It matters to me.”
That lands. I see it land.
Her chin trembles once. Just once. Then she bites down on it, teeth catching her bottom lip like she can stop it from spreading.
“No one’s ever asked me that before.”
My jaw aches. I realize I’ve been clenching it so hard my teeth are grinding, and I have to consciously make myself stop.
Of course they haven’t. Not her father. Not that cartel fuck. Not any man making plans with her life like she’s a piece on a board instead of a woman with a will of her own.
“I’m asking,” I say.
She stills. She looks at my chest, not my face, and I watch her try to get there. Try to open her mouth and say the thing that’s sitting right behind her teeth.
She doesn’t make it.
Her eyes fill so fast I don’t think she saw it coming.
“I’m so tired, Johnny.”
It comes out cracked. Not an answer or a deflection. Just the thing underneath all of it finally breaking the surface, and it sounds like she’s been carrying it for years, not weeks.
I reach for her then, slow enough to give her time to pull away if she wants to. My hand settles against the side of her neck, slick skin warm beneath my palm, her heartbeat quick and hard under my thumb. And when she doesn’t pull back, I draw her in against me.
“I’m tired of being good for them.” Her voice is muffled against my chest. “I’m tired of smiling and nodding and acting like it doesn’t matter what they do with me as long as everybody else gets what they want. I’m tired of pretending this isn’t killing pieces of me.”
I shut my eyes, my cheek against her hair, and feel it move through her body where she’s pressed to mine. Not just sadness. Exhaustion. The bone-deep kind. The kind that comes from being bent into the shape other people need for too long.
“You don’t have to pretend with me,” I murmur.
She goes very still in my arms. The water keeps running over us, but for a second the only thing that registers is the hitch in her breathing where it lands against my skin.
“That’s all I know how to do,” she says bluntly. Like it’s just a fact. Like it’s normal.
My arms tighten. Because no. Fuck that.
I ease back just enough to look at her. Hair plastered dark against her cheeks. Lashes spiked. Mouth trembling at the corners in a way she’d probably hate if she knew I saw it.
“That’s what you’ve been telling yourself.” My thumb drags once along her cheekbone. “But it’s not what I’ve been seeing.”
Her brows pull together.
“You’re studying medicine, taking courses you may never get to use just because something in you still reaches for it anyway.
You let yourself try boxing just because it was something you wanted.
” My hand slides to the back of her neck.
“And you got in the ocean with me when you could’ve stayed on shore. ”
Her mouth opens. Just barely.
Her weight shifts toward me. Half an inch, maybe less. But I feel it.
“That’s not pretending, Nat.” My voice roughens, but I keep it even. “That’s you finding places they can’t reach. Small ones, maybe. But yours all the same.”
She swallows. Her fists loosen against my ribs, one finger at a time, like she forgot they were clenched and is only now feeling it.
“That’s only possible because I’m here,” she says at last. “Because my father isn’t standing over me every second like usual.”
“He’s not keeping tabs on you?” I ask.
Her chin lifts a fraction. “He’s only sent Nikolai the one time.
He doesn’t have to have eyes on me. He knows the Anna thing is enough to keep me in line.
” Her voice goes flat around the edges, but there’s a thread of something harder under it now too.
“That’s the whole point. He doesn’t need reports on every class I take or where I spend an hour in the middle of the day.
He knows what leash he put on me. He expects that to be enough. It’s always been enough.”
She goes quiet after that.
The water keeps running over both of us, but the room has shrunk to the few inches between her palm on my chest and my hand on the back of her neck.
“He doesn’t know,” she says finally, more to herself than to me.
I don’t speak.
Her fingers spread a little wider against my skin. “About the courses. Or the boxing. He doesn’t know what I do here day to day.”
She swallows. “He just assumes I’ll stay in line.”
She lifts her head, and what’s in her face isn’t fear anymore. It’s the look of a person who just found a crack in a wall they’ve been staring at for years.
“And nothing happened,” she says softly. “Anna is still safe. He still thinks I’m doing exactly what he sent me here to do.”
She looks at me then. “So why would he have to know about this?”
My pulse slams once, hard, in the base of my throat.