Chapter 15 #2
“Why do you think I’m the one who needs protecting?
” I nearly yell, liquor churning in my stomach as I push away from her warm embrace.
“Because I’m so delicate? So fragile? Big, strong Emily needs to come save me from something she doesn’t even understand?
Maybe you’re the one who needs protecting, did you ever think about that? ”
The fire in my chest, fueled by alcohol and grief and rage and contrition, grows out of my control.
I down the last of my drink quickly, forgoing the straw in favor of getting as much numbing elixir into my system as efficiently as I can.
I push off the stool, nearly falling as my feet drop to the floor.
Emily’s hand steadies me, but I shake her off and start to stalk out of the dark bar, leaving a wad of cash that I don’t count on the counter. Gen will tell me if I owe her.
“Alis–Alice, wait,” Emily calls after me, and my heart hammers in my chest even harder than before. It was almost as if she…
Her footsteps grow louder behind me as I stumble out of the bar. It’s twilight, but the moon is high, giving me enough light to avoid tripping over the cracks and rifts in the sidewalk if I watch my feet very carefully. “There’s a lot you don’t understand, let me explain…”
“Oh, so I’m both weak and stupid now, is that it?” I scream. I don’t stop walking, even though I can feel her right behind me. I can’t look at her, can’t have her see the truth in my eyes. That the thing she needed to protect herself from was me, and I never gave her the chance.
“Pecas, that’s not what I meant,” she says, her tone begging again. “There’s a lot I haven’t told you. Please give me the chance to explain.”
“No,” I reply, the sense of finality I was trying to imbue less intense than I intended. “I don’t need your explanation or your protection. I can’t leave, and I don’t need your protection.”
“But you do,” she insists, bringing my boiling blood to record temperatures. “Please, let me explain.”
“Enough,” I demand, stopping in my tracks and whipping around toward her, the world spinning with the movement.
I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths, trying to will the ground to stabilize beneath me.
“I am not this brittle shell of a woman who needs your protection, and I refuse to be treated like I am. If you refuse to accept that, you need to leave.”
“Pecas…” she says again, grabbing my elbow.
“Медуза.”
Finally, the world is still. The silence surrounding Emily and I is deafening. Leaves skitter on the asphalt, my heart thumps in my chest. But it’s all muffled, like I’m under water again.
Медуза. To her ears, medusa. Jellyfish, the word we agreed to say if we wanted to stop. Because I needed her to stop.
Except not in English. In Russian.
The words are similar in Russian and Estonian. Медуза versus meduus. Emily doesn’t know either language. It shouldn’t matter. She shouldn’t notice. She shouldn’t even know I’ve said our safe word.
But I see it in her eyes. The recognition of my mistake.
All this time, I was consumed by the lies I told Emily, all the ways I manipulated her. I never once stopped to think that she could be doing the same to me.
There’s a lot I haven’t told you.
I take a single step back, and Emily stands perfectly still. She doesn’t reach out, doesn’t try to grab me again.
She wants to. I can see that in her eyes too. But she doesn’t.
“Okay, I’m stopping,” she says softly, her hands hovering in the air in front of her, frozen in their reach for me.
I should run. She could be anyone. She could be working for my father or Ilya.
The adrenaline rushing through my veins clears the immediate impacts of the alcohol, though I know that won’t last long.
I have to find a way out of this. I never expected my father to send anyone but Ilya.
They’re both too prideful to pass this on to a random gun for hire.
I’ve watched both of them kill dozens of traitors and spies with their own hands.
Ilya would want to be the exactor of his own revenge.
And he certainly wouldn’t have a hired hand spend weeks with me in some elaborate ruse. I’m not that human to him. I’m a cracked gem, a faulty toy, a damaged piece of art. All meant to be thrown away and replaced with something new.
“Do I need protection from you?” I ask. She could lie. She has been lying for weeks, and I haven’t noticed. There’s no way I could know the truth.
“No.” She says it like a promise.
I can feel the bourbon swimming to the surface of my mind again, and I try to fight the impact as I take another step backwards. Emily doesn’t flinch, doesn't move a centimeter.
Perhaps I’m suicidal. Or the knowledge that I’ve been living on borrowed time for years has made me value my life less and less every day. But even though I know she’s lying to me, somewhere deep within whatever is left of my soul, I’m desperate to believe she won’t hurt me.
“I am not fragile,” I say, taking two more steps toward my apartment. Not that the locks I’ve installed could keep her out, if she really was a part of my father’s empire.
“I know,” she agrees, and she’s either being truthful, or this is the most earnest lie she’s told.
“I can’t trust you.” I want to, is what I don’t say, even though it’s true.
“I know,” she repeats, this time her expression consumed by regret.
I formulate a drunken plan in my mind, something equally fueled by fear and desire, betrayal and guilt.
“I’m going home, and you are not going to follow me,” I direct, and Emily nods her head ever so slightly. “If you want to explain, and you want me to trust whatever you tell me, you’ll meet me at the docks tomorrow night at ten. And you will prove to me that you know I am not fragile.”
I walk backwards for a few more steps, ensuring Emily stays still before turning and rushing back to my apartment.
I don’t hear her steps behind me, don’t feel her eyes on my skin after I turn up the rough-paved road toward my tiny apartment complex.
I secure every lock the moment I get inside, and try to quiet the small voice inside me that reads her compliance as trustworthiness.
Tomorrow morning I might regret this plan.
But I can run, if I need to. Hitchhike to northern California, or east into the fields and plains of Idaho.
I’ll miss the ocean, but now it won’t only remind me of my mother.
It’ll remind me of the woman who taught me to be vulnerable while I taught her to be brave.
And the lies we told along the way.