Chapter 29 - Karter | Two Months Later
Two Months Later
The silence after I hung up the call from my mother lasted four exits. At the fifth, as my mind went over the call, I forcibly peeled my fingers away from the leather steering wheel one by one. My mom hadn’t yelled or cried. The phone call had simply been short and guarded.
“How is the drive?” She had asked, her voice tight over the car speakers.
“It’s long,” I said. “Traffic isn’t bad.”
“And Elliot? Is he settling into his summer classes?”
“He’s fine, Mom. Keeping busy.”
We avoided the big things. She didn’t mention my dad. She didn’t talk about the last few months. But right before we ended the call, she paused.
“I was thinking,” she said, her tone softening. “I might come visit you at Ridge Cross in the fall. Just the two of us. Maybe we can get lunch.”
“I’d like that,” I told her.
The highway hum now replaced the dial tone and stayed there. With my father, silence used to mean I’d screwed something up, another mess I was supposed to untangle before it got worse.
Now there was nothing to untangle. Mom had called because she wanted to. A lunch in the fall, just the two of us. It wasn’t some grand apology, but it was more than I’d expected from her.
Small steps. I could work with small steps.
The remaining hours of the car drive blurred past. Trees thinned into industrial outskirts.
The GPS guided me off the highway and onto surface streets, past abandoned factories with broken windows and corner stores with barred fronts.
The sky shifted from blue to hazy gray as I navigated deeper into the city.
My SUV bumped over cracked pavement when I finally turned onto Aleksey’s street. Boarded-up windows and rusted chain-link fences lined the block. A few kids playing street hockey paused their game; the scrape of their hockey sticks cutting off as they turned to stare at my car.
I spotted him in the third-floor window before I’d even cut the engine.
His silhouette pulled back the instant I looked up, and by the time I lurched the car into park, the front door of the building swung open.
Aleksey walked out to meet me, hands shoved deep into his pockets, shoulders slouched forward.
His nervous posture caught me off guard. I’d never seen Aleksey slouch like that.
He stopped near my front fender, scanning the street before his gaze landed back on me. A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth, quick and crooked, there and gone.
I didn’t wait. I simply rounded the fender and closed the distance before he could say a word.
My arms hooked around his back, and I pulled him into a hard hug, my face pressed into the collar of his denim jacket.
He felt as solid as ever under my grip, the hard muscle of his back flexing as his arms locked around me.
Aleksey pulled back first, a brief kiss brushing the corner of my mouth before he checked the street again. And then his arm draped around my shoulders as he steered me toward the building. “The neighbors are gonna stare at that SUV all day.”
“Let them.”
“I’m serious. Someone’s probably already taking bets on which rims get stolen first.”
“Then you better get me inside before I have to fight a twelve-year-old for my hubcaps.”
“The twelve-year-olds around here?” Aleksey snorted. “You’d lose.”
Moments later, the front door swung shut behind us with a metallic thud, sealing us in the dim stairwell where a single bulb buzzed overhead, casting low light over peeling paint.
But I barely registered the sound, because the second we were alone, I grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him in.
The kiss hit hard, his mouth opening under mine as his hands found my waist. His fingers dug into my sides, gripping tight like I might vanish. I backed him against the wall, and he made a low sound in the back of his throat that I felt in my teeth.
When I finally leaned back, both of us breathing hard, I kept my hand locked on his neck and pressed my forehead to his.
“Okay,” I said. “Now that’s what I call a warm welcome.”
Aleksey’s laugh was low and rough against my mouth. “Shut up.”
“Make me.”
His fingers tightened on my waist, and for a second I thought he might actually take me up on it, but the rattle of footsteps on the floor above killed the moment. Someone was moving around up there. Aleksey exhaled through his nose and loosened his grip, his forehead still pressed to mine.
“Come on,” he said. “Mama’s been cooking all day.”
He didn’t drop his arm from my shoulders as we climbed the narrow stairs, causing the heat of him to press into my side with every step.
The apartment door swung open onto chaos.
Cardboard boxes were stacked against the walls, half-taped and leaning, the late afternoon sun cutting through a single window to light up the dust hanging in the air.
The space was tiny, cluttered with a life being packed into boxes, but the linoleum floors had been scrubbed to a dull shine and the counters held nothing but a pot bubbling on a stove too small for it.
A woman stood in the middle of it, wiping her hands on a dish towel as she turned toward the door. She had the same dark brown eyes as Aleksey, and they watched me with the kind of stillness that seemed to come from decades of learning to read people fast.
“Mama,” Aleksey said, his arm still resting across my shoulders. “This is Karter.”
She set the towel down. “So you are the Karter I have heard so much about.” Her accent curled around the words, warm but careful.
“It’s really nice to meet you, Mrs. Zotova.”
She waved me off. “No, call me Alya.” She didn’t step forward for a hug. Instead, her gaze tracked from my face to my hands to the way I stood in her doorway, and whatever she was looking for, she hadn’t decided if I had it yet.
A half-taped box sat on the floor beside a tape dispenser.
I could stand there and let her keep sizing me up, or I could make myself useful.
Aleksey had already moved past me, hauling a crate onto the counter, his forearms flexing under the weight.
So, I grabbed the dispenser and ran a strip of tape across the cardboard seam.
Alya’s hand stilled on the dish towel. “You don’t have to do that. You’re a guest.”
“He doesn’t know how to sit still,” Aleksey said, not turning around. “Trust me, I’ve tried.”
“Pretty sure you gave up after ten minutes.” I picked up the box and scanned the stack by the door. “Where does this one go?”
“Next to the door,” Alya said, but the purse of her lips had loosened. A beat passed while she watched me set the box down and straighten back up. Then she waved the dish towel toward the kitchen table. “Enough. The food is ready. Both of you, wash your hands.”
We sat at a small table crammed into the corner of the kitchen.
Alya ladled out three bowls of stew, steam curling up between us.
The broth was deep red, rich with paprika and tender chunks of beef that had been simmering long enough to fall apart under my spoon.
I didn’t realize how hungry I was until the first bite hit my tongue.
“This is incredible,” I said, and meant it.
Alya paused, her spoon halfway to her mouth. A flicker of surprise crossed her face before she smoothed it away, but the faint flush at her collar gave her away. “It’s just stew. Old recipe.”
“Best stew I’ve had in months. The dining hall food they served back at Ridge Cross is practically a war crime.”
Aleksey snorted into his bowl. “He’s not wrong.”
She waved a hand at both of us, but the corner of her mouth twitched. “Eat more. You two talk too much.”
I took another spoonful, letting the heat settle. Alya paused to give me another once-over, then aimed her spoon at me. “So, Karter. Your parents. They know you’re here in Detroit?”
“My mom does.” I tore a piece of bread in half, the crust cracking under my fingers. “We talked on the drive up. She wants to visit me this fall. Just the two of us.”
Alya’s spoon paused midair. Something flickered in her expression, approval maybe, before she aimed it again. “And your father?”
Aleksey’s knee bumped mine under the table, a quiet check-in. I kept my eyes on my bowl.
“He isn’t talking to me.”
Alya waited, her spoon still raised. The silence stretched until I looked up.
“Why?” she asked.
I shrugged, the motion tight. “Because I didn’t do what he wanted. And because I’m sitting here with Aleksey.”
Aleksey’s hand shifted on the table, his fingers brushing the edge of my bowl before he pulled back. Alya set her spoon down with a deliberate clink and reached across the table, covering my hand with hers.
“Well then, your father is a fool.” She said it the same final way she’d said the stew was just an old recipe. “Family is not a name. It is who shows up.” She squeezed once. “You showed up here. So that makes you family.”
The words hit harder than anything I’d been bracing for. I stared at her hand over mine, and the steam curling up from the bowls blurred at the edges. I had to look away, fixing my gaze on the table until I could trust my voice.
“Thank you,” I said. It came out quieter than I wanted.
Alya released my hand and picked up her spoon again as if she hadn’t just upended years of me measuring myself against a standard I’d never meet. “Now eat. You drove too long to let good food get cold.”
I stared at my bowl. Nineteen years of me bending myself into whatever shape might finally satisfy my father, and this woman had watched me tape a box and decided I belonged. My throat locked up hard. I couldn’t have spoken if I’d wanted to.
Aleksey’s knee pressed against mine under the table and stayed there. He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t need to.
Alya’s spoon scraped the bottom of her bowl. When she stood, she collected my plate before I could stop her.
“I can get those.” I started to rise.