Chapter 41
ACHILLES
Lochlan frowns as he takes a sip of his beer, then clears his throat as he glances across the poker table at me and lifts a brow.
“You wanna talk about it?”
I’d rather shove fire ants up my urethra.
Not because I don’t want to talk about the “everything is shit” cataclysm of Yelena having used her safe word last night. But because I don’t even know how or where to start.
There’s not going to be some earth-shattering moment of self-realization over beers with my cousins where I “suddenly understand the error of my ways.”
There’s not going to be a cartoon lightbulb winking on over my head as it occurs to me that stalking someone—hacking their computer, their life, and their darkest most private secrets—is wrong.
I’m perfectly aware it's wrong. I’m fully cognizant that what I did concerning Yelena is, objectively speaking, bad.
The problem is, I don’t care.
I'm not saying I don’t care that I hurt her. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the fact that I did hurt her is fucking eating me alive right now.
But the stalking?
Not one single spark of regret.
And that might be part of the problem.
I obviously feel like absolute shit for hurting her. For the way I mishandled the whole thing to the point where she said her fucking safe word last night and in doing so walked away from all that we had, and all that we were.
Have. Are.
Fuck. This is confusing.
Yelena being hurt at all breaks me. Knowing it's because of me shatters me into a million pieces.
And yet I still don’t, and won’t, apologize for what I did.
Not for stalking her. Not for prying into her darkest secrets. I’m not rethinking the ways I inserted myself into her life.
I’ll never regret any of that.
So, to answer Lochlan’s question…no.
No, I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about the cold sensation of drowning from the inside out when I watched Yelena walk away from me and get into that car last night.
I’ve since pictured, several times, the ways I could have made that go differently.
Grabbing her. Telling her I refuse to let her go and that her safe word actually means fuck all.
Maybe tying her up and throwing her over my shoulder before bringing her to my room and locking us in there for, I don’t know, a month or so.
Murdering Laz Kislev for having the audacity to butt in on my life.
Sending Wren home before going back into that club, murdering every last greasy motherfucker who was eye-fucking Yelena when I first walked into that shithole, and then fucking her in a giant puddle of their blood to remind her whose she is.
You know, just basic, perfectly normal hindsight fantasies.
“Achilles…”
I scowl as I look up at Lochlan over the poker game the three of us abandoned half an hour ago.
“Nope,” I grunt. “Why, you want to talk about your thing?”
He frowns. “What thing?”
I eye him. “The thing that probably has to do with you throwing Galina Nikitin over your shoulder and walking out of the bar last night like she was your personal hand luggage?”
My cousin shoots me a glare. “Nope.”
Selene snorts and I turn to grin at her before I look back at Lochie.
“Nope as in you don’t want to talk about the very obvious thing happening there, or nope as in you’re trying to convince me…and failing, I might add…that I don’t have eyes and didn’t see what I saw—”
“You didn't see shit except Yelena dancing with that fucker,” he grunts. “Should we talk about the fact that you got home at four in the morning covered in dirt?”
“Oh, smooth subject change,” Selene grins. Then her brow furrows as she glances at me. “Wait, is that true?”
I shrug. “I was doing some soul-searching.”
By which I mean, when I went back to check, Travis, whose real name is—was—Mike, and who wasn’t actually a pre-med student at Yale, was in fact very dead from the lethal dose of his own date rape drug that I forced him to swallow.
I couldn’t exactly leave him just lying there with bruises the exact size and shape of my fists all over his face and throat.
Hawthorne Hollow has enough foul-play-assumed bodies in its morgue. There doesn’t need to be another one from the next town over.
So, Mike the serial rapist from Worcester, Massachusetts, who likes “hunting” along the Connecticut shoreline for college girls, is now buried a few feet under a cleared area in Danbury where they’ll be pouring the cement footings on Monday for—fittingly—a sewage treatment plant.
Do I feel extra satisfied knowing that I was justified in killing a man for daring to touch her?
Definitely.
Did I get a little hard while dumping his body into that shallow grave, knowing his last moments on this Earth were spent watching me claim Yelena, and realizing how fucking mine she is?
Fucking yes I did.
Lochlan rolls his eyes. “Soul-searching. What kind of—”
“The burying a body kind.”
He shrugs. “Ah. Fair.”
Selene sighs. “I don’t get it. Your parents are lovely, well-adjusted humans, and you both were given heaps of love and support growing up. So how the fuck did you both turn out to be such psychos?”
Lochlan snickers. “You think my dad and Uncle Ares are well-adjusted?”
Selene’s brow furrows. “Y…yes?”
Lochie and I both laugh loudly.
Selene rolls her eyes and takes a sip of her beer. “It’s so shocking the two of you are sitting here stewing, having self-sabotaged your own relationships.”
Lochlan scowls. “I didn’t self-sabotage my relationship.”
I grin savagely. “So you’re admitting there is a relationship.”
“Was,” Selene corrects me, grinning. “There was a—”
“You know what?” Lochie growls at her. “I was going to let you be Switzerland over there. But you just dragged yourself into the fray.” He stabs a finger at her.
“Let’s quit the hilarious narrative that it’s just Achilles and me sitting here on a Saturday night with our thumbs up our asses over relationship issues. ”
I clear my throat. “Again, you're admitting there is a relationship—”
“Dude, shut the fuck up,” he snaps at me. “We're redirecting this shit at her now.” He turns back to Selene. “Tell me: which one is it.”
I frown as a red stain spreads over Selene’s cheeks. “You mean which one with her?” I replay the scene from a few weeks ago, when I found Selene near tears and Jude Nikolayev stalking away from her.
…And then immediately went after him and punched him in the eye.
I cock a brow at Selene. “I assume whatever was going on between you and Jude—”
“Is over?” she snaps. “After you, oh, I dunno, punched him in the face?”
My brow furrows deeply.
The fuck is it with people wanting me to apologize for shit I am never going to apologize for?
“You were near tears, Selene,” I mutter. “And it was clearly because of that motherfucker.”
“So you decided to assault him?” she snaps.
I roll my eyes. “I talked to him. It’s not my fault he's so fucking punchable when he wants to be.”
Selene groans and buries her face in her hands.
“Can we just start playing poker again?” she asks.
“Only after you or Lochie tells me what the fuck he means by which one.”
Lochlan smirks. “Our dear cousin here seems to have two gallant suitors fighting over her.”
Selene shoots him a murderous glare. “No one is fighting over me,” she mutters.
Lochlan looks up and sees I'm still confused.
“Kirill,” he shrugs.
My gaze whips back to Selene. “Fucking excuse me?”
Her lips twist. “So not your business. But thanks for sticking your nose into it.”
“I thought he was gay,” Lochlan adds, taking a sip of his beer.
“He’s bi,” Selene sighs. “Why is that such a hard concept for guys to wrap their heads around?”
Lochlan frowns. “Maybe because men tend to be singular when they choose someone?”
Selene dramatically rolls her eyes. “Ahh yes, men. Notorious for wanting to fuck as few people as possible and crushing the hopes of womankind throughout history by fastidiously denying them their penises.”
Lochlan chuckles. “I don’t mean it like that. Yes, men, like women, can, and do, pick or date or however you want to phrase it, multiple people. But when guys CHOOSE that person who is unquestionably theirs, it’s typically just one.”
Selene gives him an “are you stupid” look. “Are you saying that bisexual people can’t have monogamous relationships and are incapable of choosing a person simply because they’re attracted to more than one gender?”
Lochlan groans and looks at me. “Help, please.”
I snort. “Nope. You sailed yourself right into these waters, pal.”
“What’s to stop a completely straight person from picking two people?” Selene counters.
“Nothing!” Lochlan holds up his hands in surrender. “Okay, point taken. I stand corrected.”
“Glad I could educate you. I’m sure Galina will appreciate your newfound understanding of sexual orientation being different from relationship orientation.”
Lochlan shoots her a glare. “Careful.”
She grins widely.
“So…wait…” Lochie looks at me, then back to her. “Is this your way of coming out to us?”
She frowns. “What, me? No. I’m completely straight.”
I cock a brow over the rim of my beer. “But you do have two guys pursuing you? One straight, one bi.”
“Oh my God,” she groans. “Surely you both have more important shit to worry about right now.”
“Such as?” Lochlan frowns.
Selene sighs heavily. “Such as you fucking things up with Galina,” she snaps, jabbing a finger at him.
“There’s nothing going on with me and—”
“Yeah, okay,” she drawls as she flips her attention to me and points a sharp finger at my chest. “And you fucking things up with Yelena. For the record, I love you both and you’re my blood and all that shit, but both of those chicks deserve so much better than—”
“Thank you as always for your insight, Selene,” I mutter. “And for the record, I didn’t fuck anything up.”
Selene looks around, frowning. She glances under the poker table, then under Lochlan’s chair.
“The fuck are you doing?” I grunt.
“Just…hmmm…” She sits back up and plants her hands on her hips. “I was just looking for Yelena, but, weird, I can’t find her anywhere. Go figure.”