Former priest.
Well, yes, but—he hasn’t shown any romantic interest in you, has he? And you don’t believe he will. So maybe it’s time—
Not today. Not when it’s only just been a year.
My conversation with my therapist turns over and over in my head as I leave the tall building in downtown Manhattan, heading out into the warm summer air. I suck in a lungful of it as I leave, even though it’s heavily perfumed with sweaty bodies and alley trash and roasting hot dogs and other street food, because I always prefer that over the clinical, air-conditioned smell of offices.
I know what my therapist would say aboutthat. She’d say that a multi-hour flight on a cargo plane from Russia to New York, stuffed with other terrified, crying women, followed by days kept in a warehouse waiting for my sale to an unknown man, had made me leery of confined spaces. She’d say that my desire to be outside more often than not, despite the fact that I was literally picked up on the street, comes from those days of confinement that led up to the one night that changed my life forever.
Heavy, meaty hands. Unlocking the door, reaching for me. Promising me things. Freedom. I knew he couldn’t give it to me, but it didn’t matter. He was only pretending to bargain with me. He was going to have what he wanted regardless.
Sometimes I think the worst part of it isn’t just that my only experience with a man, myfirst time, was forced, but that it was with someone so completely and utterly stupid. A man who thought, despite the fact that he was nothing, that he could steal from a man like Viktor Andreyev.
I stuff my hands into the pockets of my jeans, picking up my pace as I walk down the street toward my favorite coffee shop. Caterina insists that I take the whole day off on the days that I have my therapy appointments—with one of the most well-recommended in New York, of course, maybe even the entire country, all paid for by Viktor. The man who was once my captor, and now my employer.
My therapist likes to talk a lot of shit about Viktor, but she’s more than happy to take his money.
Because of those days off, I’ve formed a little routine around my therapy days. My appointments are usually in the morning, and afterward, I go down to the coffee shop a few blocks away and get a coffee and a pastry. I sit in one of the soft velvet chairs by the window, look out at the people walking by, and reflect.
In so many ways, my life is so much better than it was. In Russia, I’d been a foster child who aged out of the system, on the streets begging. I’d spent my nights in a shelter where I’d been lucky not to have lost my virginity by force long before the man with the white-blond hair and piercing blue eyes approached me on the street and asked me if I wanted a chance to change my life. I’d spent my days hungry, afraid, unsure of what my next hours would bring, and how I might get out of the situation that life seemed to have forced me into.
I’d been terrified, of course, when black-gloved hands had grabbed me from behind as the blond man talked to me, as I’d been taken to a warehouse, then an airplane hangar, crammed onto a plane. I hadn’t known why I’d been taken or where. Even when the blond man approached me in the hangar, touched my strawberry hair and petite face, and said with a smile,Viktor is going to be so pleased with the price you fetch,I hadn’t fully grasped what fate I was being sent to. I’d only felt that it couldn’t be worse than what was already happening to me.
I’d been wrong, of course. But that parthadn’tbeen Viktor’s fault. And I’ll always be grateful that he let me watch as he put a bullet through the head of the man who’d hurt me.
Because his property was touched. Not because he cared about you,my therapist has said in the past. But I don’t entirely believe that. For all his moral failings, I believe that Viktor was truly angry that anyone would have done something so violent, soviolating, who worked for him.
Now, instead of begging on the streets, I’m sitting in a Victorian-themed coffee shop, drinking a six-dollar latte with a chocolate croissant, in jeans and a ruffled sleeveless chiffon shirt and leather flats that would have bought me food for a year when I was homeless. I have a bank account, a debit card, and acredit card.I have a good job. I havestability. There’s a driver that takes me anywhere I want to go.
I also have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, chronic nightmares, and often, crushing guilt. So the other thing I do on these days, sitting in my favorite café, is wonder—was it worth it? Am I better off? And am I wrong if I think I am?
Even after a year, my therapist can’t seem to help me answer these questions.
Oh—and I also have an inappropriate, unrequited crush on a former priest. Which my therapist has hadplentyto say about.
I finish my croissant and half of my coffee and consider texting the driver to take me back home. It’s notmyhome, not exactly. Still, the cozy mansion where Viktor and Caterina live and have given me a place to stay is the closest thing I’ve ever had, and it feels like home to me. I have a room, privacy, my rent and board, all provided for me in exchange for helping to nanny their four children, and a generous salary besides.
Was it worth it? Am I better off?
I’m not quite ready to go back today yet, though, so I take my coffee and start down the street again. There are a number of places I like to stop on days when I decide to wander through the city—a favorite used bookshop where I pick up a couple of titles I haven’t read before, a vintage clothing store where I found the blouse I’m wearing today, a jeweler. I never buy jewelry, something about buying a piece for myself feels strange, but I like browsing through the cases. I always stop at the engagement rings, looking down at the twinkling diamonds in a staggering array of cuts and sizes, and try to imagine a man sliding one of those on my finger.
I can’t, of course. As beautiful as I find them, and as much as I’d like to have one of my own, I can’t picture anyone on the other end of the hand holding it out to me. I can’t even imagine myself on adate, despite how hard my therapist has pushed for me to do just that. And when I do actually manage to picture myself out at some restaurant, someone sitting in the booth across from me, it’s the one man that I absolutely will never be able to have.
My therapist has also had plenty to say about my fixation on the one person with whom a relationship is impossible.A defense mechanism, she called it.A trauma bond.
Max was there for me in some of my darkest hours, it’s true. And even he has only heard the barest of details, because I didn’t want the man I had a crush on, no matter how impossible, to hear all the sordid details of what happened to me. But I don’t think how I feel about him is the mental block designed by my damaged psyche to try to shield me from other men that my therapist thinks it is.
Eventually, I end up walking past St. Patrick’s. I pause at the huge doors and find myself walking up the steps, pushing the door open, and stepping into the dim, incense-scented entryway. There’s no Mass being held right now, so the church is quiet, and I walk in the rest of the way, dipping my fingers in the basin of water and making the sign of the cross out of habit. I’m not religious, but my childhood was spent in the Russian Orthodox church. Now, I often go with Caterina and Viktor, to help with the children.
When I come here, it’s less out of a desire to actually be in church than to feel close to Max, because I’m missing him. A childhood spent in dubious foster homes and organizations means that the scent of incense and wooden pews, the gestures and rituals, all of it, doesn’t give me the sense of peace that I know it provides Max. For me, it looks like a show, a grandiose façade. I never say that to him, of course. We all find our peace in different ways. For me, it’s in imagining the handsome, dark-haired man who has slowly worked his way into all my fantasies.
He’s in Boston for another week, and I haven’t seen him in a while—not since Isabella and Niall’s second wedding. I hadn’t gotten to talk to him much that day, all of it was a whirlwind, but I remember catching his eye as I’d chased Yelena across the dance floor that had been set up, trying not to trip on the hem of my blue satin dress.
He’d looked especially handsome in a charcoal suit, illuminated by the fairy lights strung through the trees and around the pavilion that had been erected for the reception. His hazel eyes had caught mine, and I’d felt my heart flutter.
I don’t know what the look of real desire in a man’s eyes looks like—but I can’t help but think I saw it that night. And that’s not the only time.
I know I shouldn’t nurture the crush that I have on him. I don’t need to pay a therapist an outrageous sum to know that. I know it’s never going to go anywhere, that I’m living in a fantasy every time I imagine his hands on me, his mouth on me, every time I picture a life in which he and I share our days. I know that I’m making up a future that can’t ever exist.