In those dreams, I’m dancing, performing in front of my tormentor like a professional ballerina. I’m dressed as one too, in a light yellow dress with stiff, feathery wings in the back. As I twirl and fly across the stage, I feel lighter than fog, more graceful than a wisp of smoke. But inside, I burn with passion. My movements come from deep within my soul, my body speaking through dance with the raw honesty of beauty.
I miss you, this plié says. I want you, that pirouette confirms. I say with my body what I can’t say through words, and he watches me, his face dark and enigmatic. Red droplets decorate his hands, and I know without asking that it’s blood, that he took another life today. It should disgust me, but all I care about is whether he wants me, whether he feels the heat that devours me from within.
Please, I beg with my movements, hinging in a graceful arc in front of him. Please give me this. I need the truth. Please tell me.
But he doesn’t say anything. He just watches me, and I know there’s nothing I can do, no way I can convince him. So I dance closer, pulled by a dark attraction, and when I’m within his reach, he lifts his arms, his blood-splattered hands closing around my shoulders.
“Peter…” I sway toward him, that terrible longing twisting my insides, but his eyes are cold, so cold they burn.
He doesn’t want me anymore. I know it. I see it.
Still, I reach for him, my hand lifting to his hard-edged face. I want him—I need him—so much. But before I can touch him, he murmurs, “Goodbye, ptichka,” and shoves me away.
I tumble backward, falling off the stage. My dress flutters in the air for a brief second, and then my wings crumple as I hit the floor. Even before the shock of the impact reverberates through me, I know that this is it.
My body is broken, and so is my soul.
“Peter,” I moan with my last breath, but it’s too late.
He’s gone for good.
I wake up with my face wet with tears and my heart heavy with grief. It’s pitch black in the room, and in the darkness, it doesn’t matter that I can’t rationally miss a man I hate. The dream is so vivid in my mind it feels as if I truly lost him… as if I died from the rejection at his hands. I know what I’m grieving must be my real losses—George and the life we were supposed to have—but with my bed empty and my body aching for a hard, warm embrace, it feels like I miss him.
Peter.
The man I have every reason to despise.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I roll up into a small ball under the blanket and hug a pillow to myself. I don’t need Dr. Evans to tell me that what I’m feeling can’t possibly be real, that at best, it’s a bizarre version of Stockholm Syndrome. One does not fall for one’s stalker; it simply doesn’t happen. I haven’t even known Peter Sokolov that long. He’s been in my life for what? A week? Two? The days since the club outing have felt like years, but in reality, hardly any time has passed.
Of course, he’s been in my nightmares for much longer.
For the first time, I allow myself to really think about my tormentor—to wonder about him as a man. What had he been like with his family? It should’ve been difficult to imagine such a ruthless killer in a domestic setting, but for some reason, I have no problem picturing him playing with a child or making dinner with his wife. Maybe it’s the gentle way he took care of me, but I feel like there’s something within him that transcends the monstrous things he’s done, something vulnerable and deeply human.
He must’ve loved his family, to dedicate himself to vengeance so completely.
The pictures on his phone surface in my mind, making my chest squeeze with pain. False information, that’s what Peter blamed for those atrocities. Is it possible that George had been the one to provide that information? That my handsome, peaceful husband, who loved barbecues and reading the newspaper in bed, had really been a spy who’d made such a terrible error? It seems unbelievable, yet there must’ve been a reason Peter came after George, why he went to such lengths to murder him.
Unless Peter made a huge error himself, George hadn’t been what he seemed.
Tightening my grip on the pillow, I process that realization, letting the knowledge fully settle in. Over the past week and a half, I’ve avoided thinking of my stalker’s revelations, but I can no longer push the truth away.
Between the FBI protection that came out of nowhere and the growing distance between me and George after our marriage, it’s entirely possible that my husband had fooled me—that he’d lied to me and everyone else for the better part of a decade.