1. Daniil – Present #2
My feet stop because I can’t walk and ogle at the same time, and right now ogling is winning. Ugh. No one should be allowed to look that hot. It’s not fair to the rest of us.
Eight years.
Eight fucking years since I figured out I was in love with him. Eight years of looking away when he changes clothes, when he walks around shirtless, when he does this exact thing right here.
The realization that I liked men, or a specific one anyway, happened because of him.
The one person in the world I shouldn’t feel this way about.
Brothers don’t want each other like this because they’re not supposed to.
Also, our father’s a raging homophobe, so this fucked-up secret crush stays buried forever.
It took me a while to piece together that I’m demisexual, too, which explained why it was only ever him. Why I’ve never looked at anyone else this way.
I want to bite into those muscles so badly it’s embarrassing. I’m not stupid; I know it’s wrong, and I should stop feeling like this. But knowing something’s wrong and actually stopping are two different things, and I can’t make myself stop no matter how hard I try.
The worst part is he’s completely oblivious and has no idea what he does to me.
He wants to cuddle and hug me constantly, crawls into my bed at night, holds my hand under tables, pulls me against him whenever he feels like it.
Does all these things that blur every line we’re supposed to have and doesn’t realize what it does to me.
When I push him away, he gives me those sad puppy eyes, and it breaks me every time. Then I’m right back where I started, letting him wrap around me, pretending it’s something it’s not.
It’s torture.
Some girl walks up to Mikhail while he’s in the middle of jumping rope and starts talking to him. He throws the rope onto the floor, grabs his water bottle, and nods at whatever she’s saying, wiping his face with a towel. She moves closer, closing the distance between them, and my jaw tightens.
I’m already crossing the gym floor with my eyes locked on them.
She pulls out her phone, angling it toward him like she’s about to ask for his number, and I bump into her shoulder hard enough that the phone flies out of her hand and hits the floor with a satisfying crack.
Mikhail looks up, eyebrows raised. “Fuck, about time you’re here. Carlos has been trying to kill me.” He jerks his thumb at his trainer, who rolls his eyes and slaps Mikhail’s shoulder.
“You were being annoying. Glad he was late so I could torture you longer,” Carlos says and walks off.
The girl’s still standing there. So, I turn and stare at her until she clears her throat, picks up her phone, and leaves.
Mikhail blinks at me. “What’s your problem?”
“Nothing. It was an accident. Wasn’t paying attention,” I say, shrugging.
He rolls his shoulders, wincing. “I need a shower. Carlos kicked my ass.”
I give him a teasing look. “Your trainer kicked your ass? That’s embarrassing for you. Want to talk about it?”
“Shut up.” He grins, shoving my shoulder. “He’s been training fighters for twenty years. I’m allowed to get my ass beat by a professional.”
“Sure. That’s the excuse we’re going with.”
He throws his towel at my face, and I barely dodge it.
“I’m showering. Don’t leave without me.”
I scoff. “Wouldn’t dream of it. You’d probably hijack someone’s car and get arrested again.”
“That was one time!”
“Twice.”
He flips me off as he walks toward the locker room, still grinning.
Turning around, I walk back to the car garage and open the gym’s member portal on my phone to find her profile. Scanning the parking garage, I locate her car in the far corner and walk over casually, crouching down to tie my shoe, and do a quick check for cameras.
My hand dips into my pocket for the knife, and I sink it into her front tire before I stand up and head back to my car.
In the driver’s seat, I scroll through emails on my phone and wait. Ten minutes later, the passenger door flies open, and Mikhail drops into the seat beside me, fresh from the shower with damp hair and a clean shirt sticking to his skin. His body wash floods the entire car.
“I can’t even fit my legs in here.”
“You say that every single time,” I mutter, not looking up from my phone. “The car’s not the issue. Your height is.”
I hear him mumble something under his breath about the purple paint job being ugly, and my head snaps up so fast I nearly drop my phone.
“Stop talking shit about my car,” I snap.
He bites his cheek, looks out the window, trying not to laugh. I don’t know why all my brothers hate the color purple so much. It’s not even bright. It’s dark plum, sleek, sophisticated. Better than their boring black cars that all look identical.
“Can we stop for food? I’m starving.”
“You’re always starving. Every hour of every day,” I shoot back at him with a grin.
“That’s because I actually train hard instead of half-assing it. You’re getting better though. I’ll give you that.”
He ruffles my hair, and I lean into it, can’t help myself. His thumb drags across my scalp, and heat spreads through my chest. His blue eyes meet mine, and I hold his gaze. I could stare at them forever. They remind me of the ocean at the beach we always go to.
He complains about clingy people all the time, says it’s a big issue for him, and he can’t stand them. Meanwhile, he’s the clingiest person alive when it comes to me and has never once noticed the irony.
He clears his throat. “So how did it go?”
My stomach drops, and I look down and pick at my sleeves, fabric bunching between my fingers.
“It went fine, I guess.”
He brings his hand down to my jaw and forces my head to turn toward him. “I can’t wait to open the results with you, find out what they’re hiding.”
We’ve both tried asking our parents for information about who I was before, why I got taken into the family, and even our older brothers won’t tell us anything.
Everyone shuts down the second we bring it up, which means there’s something they’re protecting us from or protecting themselves from.
The only thing we managed to find out was that our mother had a miscarriage right before I got brought home.
What that means, I have no clue. Maybe I was a replacement for the baby she lost.
“What if it’s bad?” I ask quietly.
“Then it’s bad. We deal with it.” His thumb presses harder against my jaw. “Together. Like always.”
“It’s weird that nobody wants to tell us anything about it.”
He hums in agreement. “Yeah. Which means it’s probably something we’d actually want to know. Fuck them and their secrets, I’m glad we did this.”
“Easy for you to say. You love breaking rules.”
He raises his eyebrows. “You’re such a liar. Who kept loosening the cap on Father’s pen so it leaked on his shirts when we were ten? Who planned that?”
“You took credit for it.”
“Because I couldn’t let him know you did it when you can’t even talk back to defend yourself,” he says and grins. “And who hid Lev’s car keys the morning of that huge meeting with the O’Sheas?”
I roll my eyes. “Okay, stop.”
“And who had me tell Mother that Yulian needed her urgently, then hid in the closet laughing when she started yelling at him for wasting her time?”
“I get it.”
“Just making sure we’re clear on who the actual problem child is here.” He lets go of my jaw. “Come on, let’s grab Chinese and go home. Get high, watch something stupid.”
We’re probably the only reason that takeout place hasn’t closed down yet, showing up every day and sometimes twice when Mikhail’s extra hungry.
He’ll find something to complain about no matter what we order, saying there’s not enough food or the rice is overcooked or the chicken’s too bland. He still eats all of it every time.
We walk into our apartment, the penthouse that overlooks the whole city in every direction.
We bought this place specifically because of the jacuzzi on the balcony, which Mikhail saw during the tour and immediately decided this was the apartment, that no other options would do.
He hasn’t used that damn jacuzzi a single time since we’ve lived here. Not once.
The place has light wooden floors and floor-to-ceiling windows, with furniture I got to pick out for us.
I love colors, so I picked a lot of different colored furniture to fill the space.
Our couches are dark purple, and our walls have different-colored lime wash paint, making each room feel alive and vibrant instead of the sterile white box.
Mikhail’s holding his gym bag, and I’ve got the takeout as we both kick our shoes off by the door. He chucks the bag onto the floor without a second thought, already heading toward the kitchen.
My eye twitches. I’m not going to say anything, even though he does this every goddamn day. Leaves it there, forgets about it until it starts smelling like sweat and death, then whines that he has no clean clothes. It’s like he wants us to suffer.
I walk straight to the couch and drop the food on the sofa table, start pulling containers out one by one. Behind me comes a loud curse and the predictable sound of his toe finding the kitchen island… Again.
How does he still manage to hit the same corner every single time?
We’ve lived here for almost two years. He walks into everything because he doesn’t realize how much space he takes up, like his brain hasn’t caught up to the fact that he’s six foot four and built like he is.
He stomps over and launches himself over the back of the couch, landing next to me with all the grace of a freight train. One of the containers nearly goes flying.
I shoot him a look.
“Really?” I say, already annoyed.
“My bad,” he says, flashing that stupid grin that’s impossible to stay mad at.
Handing him his food, I grab the remote and flip through to find our show. We’re slowly working through Futurama again, somewhere in season two. Emphasis on slowly since his attention span lasts about ten minutes before he’s bouncing off the walls again.