They were arguing over my head, but I was getting used to that.
“An island of women to fuck, and you watched television.”
“An island of women to fuck, and you fucked me!” Ilya snapped. “I am starting to think maybe you don’t like pussy at all. Maybe it’s all talk.”
“You’ve seen me fuck the woman.”
“Yes, yes, and you’ve had two wives, and now you have none. Why is that, Bron? Maybe it’s always been men that drew you?”
Bron’s fist shot out, aimed over me to get at Ilya, but Ilya had been expecting as much and deflected it.
“You wouldn’t be so upset if it wasn’t true.”
“What’s between us is different. It’s about you learning.”
“I see the way you watch me, Bron. It’s not all about teaching me.”
They were bumping up against me to shove at each other, and I tried to slide out from between them, but Bron was still squeezing the back of my neck and wouldn’t allow it.
“You see what you want to see. You’re too fanciful, and you’ll break your own heart.”
Bron steered me back toward the house, but he jerked, then let go of me and spun back.
“Did you throw dirt at me? Are you a child?”
“You’re the one stomping away from this conversation, and you kicked over my bucket of weeds.”
“I’ll kick more than that, you stupid cunt!”
Fuck this. If they were going to pound the shit out of each other, they could do it without a spectator.
I backed away, hoping they wouldn’t notice I was missing until I was long gone. They were toe to toe, shouting insults at each other, like a New York road rage incident posted to YouTube.
Realizing I was in the clear, I fucked off.
Verni perched in a tree not far off, watching the humans being absurd. I passed her tree and kept going.
I wandered into the forest, planning to go for a brisk walk to clear my head. There’d been no sign of the wolves I’d heard when the guys had hunted for me the one time, and I was starting to suspect it had been the two of them trying to freak me out.
There was no giant mythical wolf living out here, or I would have seen paw prints by now, and they’d at least have dogs or better pens to protect the goats and chickens.
For a long time, I could hear their raised voices. At some point, when they were sounding far away, they cut off suddenly. Knowing the two of them, Bron probably had Ilya pinned on the ground and was fucking him by now. It seemed to be how they sorted things out between them.
They didn’t need me—they needed a fucking therapist. Maybe a separate one for each of them. It was painfully obvious that as much as Ilya thought his love was unrequited, it wasn’t. But what Bron was bringing to the table was toxic as fuck.
Maybe for Bron it was only lust?
I walked for a long time, the lush green of the leaves and undergrowth smelling damp and chill now that I was away from the full strength of the sun. I shivered, wishing I’d brought a sweater. When I thought of Yana’s cozy room and a cup of tea, I regretted not going straight into the house instead of taking a walk.
They expected me to agree to the possibility of marrying Ilya. Of all the things men had done to me over the past few years, this one felt like a hard limit. Sure, it was transactional and didn’t need to mean anything, but even as a kid, I’d never thought about growing up and getting married. I’d already done enough traditional women’s work—cooked and cleaned and raised children. I looked forward to successfully launching my siblings into the world and avoiding anything that resembled being a wife.
My dream for the future had involved not having to worry about where the kids were or what they were doing, whether they’d done their homework, or what to make for their school lunches or supper.
Even when I was younger, marrying someone had seemed like agreeing to take on extra work—yet another person to look after. Forget a wedding and a party centered around me and my new spouse. I wanted to sit down after work and eat popcorn for supper and watch Netflix. Read books all weekend.
Although…a wedding to Ilya would be fake. Not the real thing. It wasn’t as though marrying a man who didn’t love me would ruin my dream, and Bron had mentioned extra money.
But what if it gave the two of them more power over me? What if I went through with it and Ilya refused to divorce me? I couldn’t afford a lawyer, let alone one who knew how to dissolve an international marriage.
Even if they let me go home, it would be like an invisible tether linking me back to them and this place.
Not that I hated it here.
Other than Bron stomping around occasionally, being Bron, I couldn’t remember ever being so relaxed in my life. Everything moved slower here. There was no Wi-Fi. The guys had phones they rarely touched that usually lived on the counter plugged into their chargers, since they had to go to the end of the dock to get a signal. The two of them worked their butts off in the garden and with the animals. There were fields of grain and other crops, too, but when they went out that far, they usually sent me back to the house to twiddle my thumbs.
Poor me.
Easiest money I’d ever fucking made.