"No," he told me, climbing up on the bed, getting onto his back, tapping his chest. "Come here," he told me, voice far away, but not because it was cold, just lost in some emotion he wasn't sharing with me.
Maybe I should have been more mature, stronger, more stubborn, demanded explanations for his behavior.,
But I was young. I was unsure. I was all-too-willing to let him lead.
So I climbed into bed, rested on his chest, felt his fingers sift through my hair.
It was the first night we were together since the night in the potato cellars that he didn't kiss me, that he didn't run his hands over me, drive me up, push me over.
He just stroked my hair.
He just held me.
And we just slept.
The next morning, I let myself into my uncle's office, finding the file with the right name in the drawer along with his personal ledger, something that didn't strike me as odd because I had no reason to distrust Mikhail.
I tucked it into my purse, went about my day, all but forgot about it until the ding of my cell phone let me know that it was time to take lunch.
I met Mikhail outside where he was always hidden off to the side, reaching into my purse, handing him the file, watching as his eyes looked at it for a long moment before his hand rose, took it, dropped his arm down at his side as though the contents were too heavy to hold up.
Then his forehead pressed to mine for a long moment.
I couldn't have known.
There was no way to have known.
That I had all but signed my own death warrant that afternoon.SEVENRoanShoving West out of the way, my hand reached into the old, forgotten corner of the back bar, past all the bottles of whiskey and vodka The Henchmen drank by the case, fingers curling around a bottle dusty from disuse.
It was fitting, I felt, to reach for bourbon, to drown myself the same way I had so many years ago over this woman.
"The fuck is up your ass?" Pagan asked as I moved past him, already twisting off the top of the bottle, raising it up, gulping down the liquid fire.
"That's a familiar look," Renny's voice observed as I made my way to the hall. "Someone is having women troubles," he added as I rounded the corner, charged down the basement stairs, capping the bottle, then tucking it under my arm as I made my way up the ladder, once so familiar, but I hadn't been up since the night I got a slug in my thigh. And, if I was honest, one right in the chest too. And I had been leaking blood since, little bits of me splattered all around.
"Fuck," I hissed, kicking the chair I had sat in so many nights, knowing something was in the air, something was not right, but having no fucking clue that she was the storm that would blow into town.
Fifteen fucking years.
Thinking she was dead.
Having that ghost right behind me, having that guilt pressing down on me, having lost a vital part of myself.
And she was alive.
Alive.
Pissed, but alive.
"Fuck," I growled, slamming my forehead into the glass, finding a bit of relief in the pain.
There was a shuffling sound below, then the unmistakable sound of someone coming up the ladder.
"I'm not in the fucking mood," I yelled down, whacking my head again, feeling the pain knock some of the clinging thoughts loose.
But whoever was below was determined.
Something that, for some reason, I thought meant it was one of the women, even though I hadn't noticed any of them on my way in. Then again, I hadn't been seeing right either.
Feet hit the landing, making me turn, jaw clamped tight enough for my teeth to hurt.
"I said..." I started, but didn't find the girls, or Pagan or Renny bent on rubbing salt in open wounds.
No.
Cam was standing there.
Of all people.
His gaze held mine for a second as he reached into his back pockets, pulling out rocks glasses, holding them out toward me, inclining his chin.
He didn't speak, of course, pretty much as a rule, though word was he did speak to his girls - Livvy and Astrid - though only sparingly. For reasons only they knew.
That said, he did still manage to get his point across somehow. Even the guys who weren't the most observant, who weren't trained to read bodies and pick up on subtle signals seemed to know what he wanted and what he thought.
On a sigh, I twisted off the cap, poured the glasses, mine a couple fingers deeper than his as I grabbed the chair, moved it back into position, let him take it as I moved toward the glass again, resting my forehead there.
"I have no right to be upset," I told him - and myself. "No fucking right at all. Not after what I had done to her. If she wanted to cuff me to a chair and have fun testing out all five forms of torture on me, I'd deserve all that shit too."