Protecting Sasha

by Natasha L. Black

  Both eyes burst open. "SHE WHAT?"

  He leaped out of bed and raced out of the room, then stopped. Wheeling around to face me, his face livid, he said, "Where is my sister?"

  I could feel the guilt settling in my chest, like the weight of a fifty-pound barbell.

  "She left last night," I said. "I tried to follow her, but the security guard wouldn’t let me take another car. You were passed out cold, and he would only leave with your permission."

  Adrian got out his phone. He began stabbing at it, then paused.

  Squinting, he read the message aloud, "Don't worry about me. I'm fine. Going somewhere Aleksi won't find me."

  He heaved a big faux sigh of relief. “Oh, she says she’s fine – that took a load off."

  He stormed down the stairs.

  "Where are you going?" I said.

  "There's no more point of us being here, is there?" he asked. He shook his phone in frustration. "Anyway, I know a guy who might be able to trace the text. It's a long shot but..." His face fell. He shrugged, miserably. "Shit. It's all we got right now."

  That much was true.

  It took us a few more minutes to rouse Tatiana, who was just as dismayed that Sasha was gone as we were. We packed up our stuff, and all clambered into the cars with the security guards, then rushed back to the city.

  There, Adrian and I went to his techie friend, a bald guy with a goatee named Albert. He delivered us some more lackluster news.

  "It'll take a couple of days to trace that, at least," he said, cracking a regretful smile. "Don't have the best technology. Just got hand-me-downs from the police that I’m not supposed to have." He winked.

  The rest of that day, I tried to focus at work, although it was no use.

  I kept trying to wrack my brain for anything Sasha had said about places she'd want to go. But there was nothing, probably because it had been a spur of the moment decision, brought on by yours truly.

  If she'd only stuck around a few more minutes, just long enough for me to have put my thoughts together. I would have told her that even though I didn’t think relationships worked in general, I wanted to try to prove myself wrong with her.

  Anyway, none of that mattered now. The only thing that did was finding her and keeping her safe before Aleksi reared his ugly head.

  --

  That night, I called her up for what must have been the hundredth time. The only difference was, this time she actually picked up.

  "I told Adrian," she said. "I'm in a safe place. I had the security guard, Clive, drop me off at the bus station and then I went from there. Please don't get mad at him. And don't worry. No one knows I'm here."

  "That's the problem," I said. "How are we even going to know if Aleksi and his guys come for you? They probably have more resources and contacts than we do. How do you know they won't find you before we do?"

  "Please don't look for me," she said in a tired voice. "I just want a chance to start over; to live life on my terms, not controlled by Aleksi or Adrian or fear. What was the point of leaving Moscow if I was just going to live the same way here, in New York?"

  "This is temporary," I argued. "Just until we can get the police to nab Aleksi and his boys. Ship his ass back to Russia where he belongs."

  Sasha let out a sad exhale. "You don't know them like I do. Nothing sticks to them. They have too many contacts, too many people they can threaten. They're willing to do too much. If I stay in New York, this isn't temporary. They’d find me, and hurt me, and probably hurt you too."

  "So what then?" I said angrily. "This is better? Isolating yourself, and just hiding out until they find you? That's better?"

  "They won't find me," she said.

  "Sasha. I never got to tell you," I said.

  "Yeah?" she said softly.

  "Forget it," I said, dejected. "You've made your decision. But Adrian and I are going to find you."

  "Goodbye Pierce," she said, and hung up.

  40

  Sasha

  I smiled at the T-shirt I was tie-dyeing purple and blue. The days had slipped by quickly because I’d genuinely been enjoying myself. I had just focused on working, completing orders from months ago. I'd been exploring too. Claircreek actually had a lot to do. There was a funny little church with figurines that looked like life-sized dolls. There was a park with two willow trees and a fat stray mutt that liked hot dogs. There was an even a cool vintage store, with fabrics I could use for some of my projects.

  What Pierce had said was still banging around my mind. What had he wanted to say? Had it been what I'd been so hopeful for? That he really did have feelings for me, and, like me, even though all evidence pointed to the contrary, actually thought we might work?

  I shook my head, putting the T-shirt on some newspapers so it wouldn't stain anything as it dried. It didn't matter now. I’d made my choice. I really did want to start over.

  And if that meant not seeing Pierce, then maybe it was for the best. He’d said that himself at one point.

  Shortly after I went to bed, I fell fast asleep. I woke up to strong hands around my wrists.

  "Got you," a horribly taunting voice said.

  I opened my mouth to scream, but a large hand clamped over it.

  "None of that now," Aleksi growled. "Wouldn't want to have to kill the neighbors for seeing something they shouldn't have."

  "You," I croaked.

  Aleksi's hand went down to my throat and squeezed. "Yes, me."

  My eyes shot open, and I clutched myself, shaking.

  Right then, the only thing I wanted was Pierce. In his arms, I'd never had a nightmare. Maybe it was because instinctively I knew that nothing bad could happen to me as long as he was there.

  I got up and got myself a glass of water, staring at my gloomy reflection in the bathroom mirror.

  I was being stupid. Even if Pierce had something to say during our last phone call, I had heard what he had said in the hot tub. The truth I forced him to tell. He didn't think relationships worked. He thought they were outdated. Anything he said after that, was just damage control.

  My arms shivered. That was another thing. I had just gotten out of a horrible relationship. I was in no way in a place to start anything new. Especially one that was as risky as this would've been. What I needed right now, was to heal.

  I went over to my bed and sat down. I hadn't even noticed I'd been clutching my phone the whole time as if having a link to Pierce was better than nothing at all.

  Pierce…

  Half asleep, my finger mindlessly trailed over our text conversation and clicked on it.

  What was the first message he sent me? I started scrolling. Then smiled at the blandness of it.

  “Hey.”

  That was our first message. The little nothing that started the big everything. Who would've thought?

  My finger scrolled down as I read the other messages. A lot of them were him asking to see me or apologizing. God, how much of us being together had been one or both of us denying what we had? Apologizing for what we’d done?

  My finger clicked down and swiped across the screen, and I stared, horrified.

  I’d just sent Pierce a smiley.

  41

  Pierce

  Damn insomnia.

  I thought the melatonin pills would've cured it, but not these past few nights.

  Though I knew why I wasn't going to think about it.

  Sasha had made her decision, and that was that. I had to respect it. Sure, I was still going to try and help Adrian find her, but I wasn't going to try and start things up again. She’d made it perfectly clear that she didn’t want anything to do with me. And I couldn’t blame her. I’d blown it big time.

  My phone beeped. Half expecting some drunken, angry or mopey rant from Adrian, I was surprised to find Sasha's name at the top of the screen.

  A smiley face appeared.

  I scowled. What was she thinking?

  I tucked my phone away, although the thoughts reared up.

/>   So much for wanting to be left alone. Why the hell would she do that? Is she drunk somewhere? In danger?

  I exhaled. No, Sasha was smarter than that. Maybe she was just tired and lonely like I was.

  But I couldn’t deny that the smiley made me feel better than anything I'd done in the past three days.

  I'd even tried going out with Adrian one night, tried picking up our old routine. But there was nothing in it for me anymore. Nothing but an ironic sense that, even though I had never believed in relationships, I wanted one with Sasha more than anything in the world.

  The next morning, when I called her up, she picked up on the third ring.

  "About the text," she said, "It was a mistake. I'm sorry."

  Well, there we had it; all my hopes dashed within the first sentence.

  "Maybe," I said, "Maybe not. The point is, I want to see you."

  She said nothing.

  "Pierce."

  "Just hear me out," I said. "You don't have to tell me where you're staying. We don't have to meet there. We can meet wherever you want. I just want to see that you’re ok with my own eyes."

  An even longer silence followed that time. Finally, she said, "Fine. On one condition."

  "Yes?"

  "If I decide I don’t want to see you anymore, you leave me alone, for good. You and Adrian stop searching for me, and you leave this thing between us alone, whatever it is. You let it go."

  "Agreed," I said. To leaving this thing between us alone. I can't agree not to try and find and protect you."

  She considered it.

  "Fine," she said. "Guess that’s the best I’m going to get. So, we’ll meet at the bus station?"

  “Ok. We can meet up tomorrow if that works for you."

  "All right. See you tomorrow."

  As soon as I hung up the phone, the nerves that I thought would've gone down, only got bigger.

  What the hell was I going to do with Sasha, anyway? I wanted a chance to show her I could be what she needed.

  I got on my phone and started scrolling. It turned out Google had about a thousand pages filled with date ideas in New York City. None of them were really what I had in mind though. Sasha and I didn't need to go for a drink together; I wanted us to spend actual quality time together. Enough to make her see that we could be good together.

  42

  Sasha

  We met the next day at the bus station, and I was once again struck by how handsome Pierce was.

  "Hey!" he said when he saw me, excitement clear on his face.

  He was not going to make it easy to walk away.

  "Hey," I said in return.

  He looked me up and down, for far too long.

  "You look great," he murmured, slipping his hand in mine.

  I stared at it for a moment before letting it be.

  "What exactly are we doing today?" I asked as we started walking down the city streets.

  "We're going to my car," he said easily.

  "Oh," I said with faux-enthusiasm, "You're kidnapping me. Why didn't you just tell me? I could've turned you down over the phone."

  Pierce turned to me with a sardonic smile. He squeezed my hand and shook his head. "I'm not kidnapping you. I'm taking you somewhere awesome. One of my most favorite places."

  Tatiana's words echoed in my head: "Of course, you don't know how he feels. The only way you'll find out is by giving it a real go."

  “Okay,” I said.

  His hand strayed to my necklace as he fingered the simple golden pendant that hung there. "You wore it."

  I wasn’t about to admit that I'd been wearing it nonstop since I'd gotten to Claircreek. Instead, I just said, "Yes."

  It was only when we got in the car that we started talking a bit more. Apparently, Pierce hadn't told Adrian about meeting with me, for a good reason.

  "He’s barely forgiven me," Pierce explained, "And this way, he’d demand to see you, I’d say no, then he’d want to beat me up all over again."

  "You'll be fine," I said. "Adrian will come around fully, and things will go back to normal."

  "I hope so," Pierce said, "I hate the strain between us now. It’s still there, even though he tries to say it’s not."

  “Trust me; it’ll smooth over soon enough. Adrian cares too much about you,” I reassured him again.

  He nodded. “So, tell me about you. Are you missing any friends back home?”

  "Nope," I said a bit bitterly. "No friends. Aleksi took care of that. Guess it was my fault too. I had a best friend, Maranda, but she was single and partied too much. Aleksi made me stop hanging out with her."

  “He sounds like a real peach,” Pierce said.

  I shook my head. “He wasn’t always like that. And by the time he changed, we’d been together so long I didn’t want to see it at first.”

  “I can understand that,” Pierce said, though his tone said he really didn’t.

  Sensing I didn’t want to talk about the subject further, he changed direction.

  “Did you always know you wanted to be a clothing designer?”

  I shook my head. "No. When I was little, I wanted to be a dancer."

  Before he could ask or comment anymore, I said quickly, "And what about you? Did you want to own a rock-climbing gym when you were a kid?"

  He smirked. "That reminds me. I have to take you some time. But yeah, kinda. I kind of fell into it."

  He didn't elaborate, and I didn't ask him to. The truth was, I did really want to know more about Pierce. But not if it meant that I had to tell him more about myself. That was venturing into more dangerous territory I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with yet.

  By the time we pulled up to the park, I already had a good idea of where we were going.

  "Disappointed it's not a fancy restaurant?" Pierce asked with a sweeping gaze my way.

  I frowned. "You really think I'm that one-dimensional; that I just like fancy dresses and fancy restaurants?"

  He frowned as well. "No, it's just…" He shook his head. "I don't know what I was thinking, saying that. Forget it."

  "Gladly," I said coolly.

  When we rolled into the national park, there was almost no one around. Pierce got out and took something out of the trunk, which I soon saw was a picnic basket.

  I stopped in my tracks and eyed him carefully. "No. No way."

  "What?" he asked.

  I couldn't take my eyes off the woven thing. "You do not own a picnic basket."

  Pierce scowled. "So what if I do?"

  I grinned. "Nothing. I just didn’t picture you as a picnic basket owner."

  “Well, stick with me, and you’ll find out all kinds of surprises,” he answered.

  I nodded and helped him spread a blanket on a patch of grass nearby. Once Pierce had everything laid out in front of us, my mouth was watering in anticipation.

  "How did you know I like chocolate-covered strawberries?" I asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

  "Your brother mentioned it. We were supposed to pick them up for you before we picked you up in Moscow," Pierce explained. "But then Adrian decided getting there fast was more important."

  "Great," I said, "My brother is giving away all my secrets."

  As we sat down, Pierce eyed me knowingly. "Oh, I bet your brother doesn't know half of them."

  I said nothing. Instead, I undid the top of a container. I didn't want Pierce knowing just how right he was. That was the thing about my secrets; they were mine.

  We munched and chatted about the food until I found myself coming back to our earlier conversation.

  "About rock climbing," I said. "You never told me how you got into it."

  His mouth full of baguette, Pierce chewed, swallowed, then smiled. "When I was a kid, I wanted to run away from home. My dad was a shithead. Anyway, there was this giant tree right beside my window, so one day I opened it, and, as any self-respecting boy of nine-years-old would do, climbed onto the tree."

  My hand flew to my mouth. "You didn't."

 
Pierce's grin broadened. "I did. Anyway, somehow my dad got wind of it and ran out, yelling at me. Although I took my time getting down, I realized something more important that day than the fact that running away wasn't a good idea. I realized I loved climbing. Just the feel of being up so high, choosing your next move. It’s exhilarating."

  "And dangerous," I said.

  Pierce shook his head. "It doesn't have to be if you have the correct training and equipment. Here, look."

  He got up and walked away to a nearby rocky bank I hadn't even noticed.

  "Pierce," I said.

  He paused, only to throw me an expectant look. "You coming?”

  "Why not?" I said. "I’m a marked woman already."

  Pierce stopped walking and instinctively grabbed my hand. "Don't say that."

  I stared into his eyes. "Why not? It's true."

  That close, the intensity of his stare was overpowering, but I keep my head.

  "No," Pierce said slowly. "Do you really think that Aleksi would actually hurt you? You said he loved you."

  I pulled my hand from his, turned away. "I don't know. Part of me wants to believe he couldn’t be that cruel, but I just don't know anymore."

  Pierce's arms closed around me, and I sank into them. God, he was so strong, so warm, so reassuring. Wrapped in his embrace, if I close my eyes and breathed in deeply, for a minute I almost believed that I was safe.

  "We can go back," Pierce said, "We don't have to do the climbing thing."

  I broke free of his grasp. "No, I want to. Show me."

  I was tired of being scared.

  Pierce was grinning, almost like a boy again. "Okay."

  We walked over to the rocky wall and Pierce gestured at it. "First things first is choosing the starting point, where I'm going to launch off from. That's important because if I can't get a good toehold, then I'm going to be supporting myself with just my arm strength and that won't last long."

  I ran my fingers along his bulging bicep, admiringly. "You sure about that?"

  Pierce tapped my nose. "Yep."

  For a minute, I thought he was going to kiss me, but then his foot shot out and caught on the rocky wall. Next thing I knew, my face was level with his amazingly sculpted ass as he ascended the rock face.