by Megan Hart
Later.
Darkness. Mouth tasted like shit. Head pounding, he swam up from desperate dreams but couldn’t seem to wake. He was in the attic, his cheek pressed to the thin mattress of the army cot. A bucket by his head, though he still couldn’t seem to puke.
He heard them. Soft murmurs. The shuffle of blankets, a zipper, the creak of a mattress. He knew what was going on, but he couldn’t see anything. Still too drunk to react.
Later.
Ilya woke to the stab of morning light spearing him through the attic window. Niko snored in the sagging double bed, alone. When Ilya sat up to look around, everything came slamming back to him, everything that happened, and his stomach revolted. He retched into the trash can for what seemed like years and then fell back onto the cot with a groan.
His brother pressed a glass of clear, chilly water into Ilya’s hand. “Drink this.”
He did. Puked again. It hurt less this time, but the taste lingered long after. He tried to wash it away, but it wouldn’t go.
He looked up. “She’s gone, man. She’s really . . . gone.”
“I know.” Niko sat next to him. Shoulder to shoulder, his warmth welcome in the attic’s chill. “I know.”
Ilya cried, ashamed not of his tears but because if he’d let himself feel more earlier, he might not have felt this now. Niko put an arm around him. Only for a minute or so before he squeezed, hard, and sat back to let his brother grieve. He handed Ilya a box of tissues and waited patiently for him to finish.
They never spoke of it again.
Downstairs, the house was quiet and empty and trashed. All those people who came over to eat food, and none of them had bothered to help clean up. The smell of leftover pasta and sauce lingered in the kitchen, and his stomach crawled up his throat again as he leaned over the sink, heaving.
“You want some crackers?” The rustle of a package turned him. Theresa held a sleeve of saltines. Her glasses glinted in the light from the windows. “They’re good for a sick stomach.”
The thought of even nibbling a dry cracker had him doubling over again, hands braced on the sink, while he dry-heaved. An endless minute or two passed before he could control himself. Sweating, Ilya turned on the faucet to splash his face with cool water.
“Here.” Theresa took his wrist between her small hands and pressed a spot on the underside of his wrist. “Feel this? Squeeze it. You’ll feel better.”
He didn’t believe it would work, but after another few minutes sitting at the table with her squeezing his wrists, the churning in his stomach got knocked back a bit. He didn’t feel better, though. That would have been an impossible task.
“Where’d you learn that?” He asked her.
Theresa withdrew her hands and pushed her glasses up on her nose. Her hair was a wild tangle; her smile, hesitant and solemn. “My dad used to get pretty hungover.”
She’d revealed something to him that he didn’t know before; knowing it didn’t make him like Barry any better than he ever had. Right now, though, Ilya couldn’t find it within himself to sympathize with her or even muster the effort to fake it.
Theresa shrugged and looked away. “I’m sorry about Jennilynn. I know you and her—”
“Me and her weren’t anything,” Ilya cut in. “I mean, she lived across the street. That’s it. Me and her were nothing. That’s how she wanted it, so that’s how it was.”
“Sure. Of course. Sorry.”
His stomach turned again. “Can you do that thing to my wrists again?”
“Sure,” Theresa said quietly and took them both in her hands, her fingers finding the right spots to squeeze.
The pressure eased his nausea. They didn’t speak. Ilya closed his eyes and breathed, letting her touch relieve him.
The sound of footsteps in the hallway pulled Theresa away from him. She got up before Ilya could say anything, and disappeared into the dining room, leaving him at the table. His mother, bleary eyed, hair a mess, padded through the kitchen without saying a word to him and went out the sliding glass door with her cigarettes. Ilya watched the plume of smoke drift by the glass; then he stood.
If he was lucky, when he got upstairs to his bed, he would sleep. And, buried beneath his blankets, he did, but only after he pressed his fingers against his opposite wrist on the spot where Theresa had touched him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ilya hadn’t been in to the office all morning or afternoon but stopped by quickly on his way home to make sure the final details for the dive trip were in place. Allie was still at her computer, typing away, doing whatever she did all day to keep Go Deep running. She didn’t look up when he knocked lightly on the door frame.
“I thought you weren’t going to come back here,” she said.
Ilya stepped through the door to stand in front of her desk. “I wanted to be sure everything was set, since I’m leaving in a couple days.”
“Oh!” She turned, looking surprised. “It’s you.”
“Yeah, last time I checked.” He made a show of looking down at himself, then gave her a curious look. “Who’d you think it would be?”
“UPS delivery,” Allie answered smoothly.
Ilya eyed the pastry bag on her desk. “You went to the Donut Shack?”
“Grab one. And some coffee. I need to talk to you.” She got up before he could answer to make him a mug of coffee.
He opened the bag to look inside, snagging a chocolate frosted with sprinkles. The doughnuts might have been a bribe; the coffee was definitely one. “That sounds bad. What are you going to get on my case about this time?”
She glanced up at him while the coffeemaker hissed and spat. “Why do you always have to do that?”
“Do what?” Ilya shoved the doughnut in his mouth. Chewed. Swallowed.
“Make everything somehow my fault.” She handed him a mug of steaming coffee and took her place behind the desk again. “Like I’m some kind of harpy, incapable of being satisfied.”
His lip curled a little at her tone. “What’s up? Something with the trip? Look, Allie, you know that you can’t run the trips, and someone has to stay here to handle business. We can’t just close up for two weeks, and we can’t afford to cover your costs to go along.”
“It’s not about the trip, Ilya.” Alicia sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “It’s something else. I wish you’d sit so we can talk about it.”
He already knew what it was she meant to bring up. The plain white envelope on the desk told him. Theresa had said she’d talked with Allie about an offer from that real estate development corporation. Days ago. Maybe weeks at this point. She’d been holding out on him.
He didn’t sit. “Just hit me with it.”
“It’s about the quarry. And the shop.” She pushed the envelope toward him.
“Yeah. Theresa said something to me about it already.” He took grim satisfaction in the way he seemed to have surprised her. “You didn’t know that, huh? You thought you were going to sit on this and not talk to me about it?”
“Of course I was going to talk to you about it. I’m talking to you right now.”
Ah, there it was. The press of her lips together. The cross of her arms. Allie was getting pissed off at him now. In a few minutes, she’d turn cold and angry, but she’d leave him the hell alone. She’d punish him with the silent treatment, and if he was lucky, it would last until he got back from sunny Jamaica, when maybe he’d be better equipped to deal with all the bullshit that had been happening. Because right now, Ilya thought as he took a long, deliberate sip of coffee, he had emptied his pockets of any and all fucks he might have had to give.
“You waited long enough,” he said. “Theresa told me she’d presented you with an offer, like two weeks ago.”
Allie visibly took a breath before she spoke. “The two weeks you didn’t come in to work, you mean? The two weeks I handled everything here by myself? Not that it was that much different than any other time, I guess, since I handle most everything here by mys
elf, anyway.”
“What are they offering?” He ignored what she’d said so he could push her buttons a little more. Let her keep thinking she was the only one who kept this place running. “Whatever it is, it’s not enough.”
“It’s not enough,” she told him. “It will cover what we owe on the mortgage and pay off the outstanding debts for the shop supplies, all of that. But it won’t cover what we’ve put into Go Deep over the years. We won’t come out ahead on this deal. We just won’t be so far behind.”
He tossed the remains of his doughnut in the trash, no longer hungry. He put down the coffee, too, hard enough to slop it onto her desk. “So you want to take it?”
“I want to talk to you about it! Dammit, Ilya, wipe that up.”
She yanked one, two, three tissues from the box and started cleaning up the splatters before he even had a chance. The way she always did, stepping in when she thought he wasn’t capable of handling whatever it was she then got pissed off at him for not doing in the first place.
“I’m not selling the shop,” he said.
Allie made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a groan. She crumpled the stained tissues in her hand. “Ilya—”
“You can’t want to sell it. What are they going to do with it?” he demanded.
She pushed the envelope closer across the desk, sliding it through a splotch of coffee she’d missed. “It’s all in here. They have plans to develop this side—”
He flapped a hand at her and opened the envelope, curious about what Theresa and her bosses believed his life and dreams were worth. The numbers made him sneer and slide it back toward Allie. “You think this is the first time someone’s come up with some bright idea about how they’re going to develop the quarry?”
“It’s certainly the first time I’ve ever heard of anything. Have there been other offers?” She gave him an incredulous look.
“Yeah. Couple years ago.” He shrugged, determined to downplay it. “I turned it down, and it was more money than these guys are offering.”
“I can’t believe you got an offer to buy the quarry and you didn’t tell me. Ilya, we’ve been struggling for years! How could you not even discuss it with me?”
“I knew I wasn’t going to sell.”
She would have taken the money and left him behind, and he would have had nothing.
“It’s not only up to you, you know. I own half this business. More than, actually.” Allie’s mouth thinned. “Dammit, Ilya.”
“You want to sell it off? Really? Is that what you want?” He spat the words, wishing he hadn’t eaten that doughnut or drunk that coffee. His throat burned.
He’d been trying to push her into anger, but she was quiet for a few seconds. “I think maybe it’s time. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, you know. We could get out from under the debt. Move on with our lives. You’ll need some better credit if you’re going to buy a house.”
“Who says”—his voice dipped low and dangerous—“that I have to buy a house?”
Allie shook her head. He hated that disappointed look, no matter how many times she’d given it to him. No matter how often he’d deserved it.
He scowled. “My mother isn’t going to stick around forever. She says she’s back, but you know as well as I do that it never matters, with her. She’s going to finish up whatever messed-up thing she’s got going on in her head about fixing up the house, and she’ll end up leaving again. Probably with me staying behind to foot the bills.”
“All the more reason for you to get out from under this place,” Allie began, but he cut her off.
“This place,” said Ilya, “is mine. I built this place. You can tell yourself all you want that you’re the golden princess who waves her magic wand around here to make it happen, but nothing here would’ve happened if not for me. You’ve never even dived here. Have you even set one toe in this water?”
She shook her head, eyes glittering with tears, but he wasn’t going to feel sorry for her.
“No. Because you can’t get over it.” Ilya sneered. “She died twenty years ago, Allie. She doesn’t haunt anything. She’s just dead. And you’ve never gotten over it.”
It would not have been the first time he’d ever made her cry, and he was expecting tears now. Allie didn’t cry. She recoiled, briefly, with a small, tight shake of her head and a clench of her fists before she looked him in the eye with a gaze as solid and unyielding as he’d ever seen from her.
“Sometimes,” she told him, “you don’t get over it. You just get through it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“So, I’ve been thinking.” Niko said this into the phone while he stared up at the slanted attic ceiling and pondered once again how the hell he’d ended up back here in Quarrytown in a lumpy bed with crappy sheets and too many noises sifting up through the vents.
“Oh, brother.” Alicia’s low laugh sparked a tingle of heat through him. “About what? Global warming? The reasons why pepper makes you sneeze? The existence, or not, of Bigfoot?”
“Bigfoot totally exists,” Niko said, deadpan. “I saw him once in Oregon while I was on a backpacking trip.”
He loved the sound of her laughter. There’d been other women in his life. Of course there had. But very few had ever laughed with him the way Alicia did, and when you found someone who laughed with you that way, wasn’t that worth holding on to?
“I want to see you,” he said, before she could reply.
Alicia didn’t answer him for a second or so. “Of course you do.”
He stretched in the bed, pushing the blankets down to his ankles. He liked her answer. Confident. Sexy. She was different as a woman than she’d been as a girl, and Niko couldn’t get enough.
“I mean I want to see you now,” he said.
Again, she was quiet for a few seconds before answering. “You could come over here, you know. I live alone. But you’d have to be careful not to let Dina from next door see you. She’s always got an eye out.”
“Oh?” Her invitation had set his heart beating just a little faster, but he was going to pretend it hadn’t. “What about her?”
“She’s a stereotype. Unhappy housewife. Kids, dog, house, husband who travels.” Alicia paused. “I’m not sure, but I think she has a thing for Ilya.”
Niko grimaced. “Yikes.”
“Yeah. He’s never confirmed it with me. But . . . yeah.”
“So, I shouldn’t come over?” he asked.
She laughed again. “Nikolai, seriously. It’s almost one in the morning.”
“Dina won’t be watching,” he said, waiting to see if she’d invite him. Hoping.
“And I guess Galina and Ilya are sleeping?”
He thought for a moment. “I assume so. It’s quiet. He went to bed a few hours ago. She was out earlier. With friends, she said.”
“Is that hard to believe?”
“No. Maybe one of them can help her get a job,” he said.
Alicia chuckled. “That might help. Is money an issue again?”
“Not yet, and that’s the thing. I don’t know where she’s getting it,” Niko said, “but she seems to have enough, at least for now.”
A few beats of silence hung between them before she spoke again.
“What are you doing to me?” Alicia breathed. “What, Nikolai?”
“Whatever you want me to do to you,” he whispered in response. “What do you want?”
The sound of her breathing filled the phone. He waited, tense, already hard, for her to answer him. He wasn’t sure what he hoped she’d say.
“I want you to touch me.”
Six small words that made him shudder. He drew in a breath, his hand moving over his bare belly, feeling the ridges of muscle that would start disappearing soon if he didn’t start working out again. Lower, to the rising thickness of his erection. He gripped himself through his briefs.
“Where?” he asked.
“Everywhere.”
Niko arched a little into his own
touch. “That’s a good start.”
Alicia laughed again, softly. “It’s late. I have to be up early in the morning. The bus to the airport leaves at five.”
“Ilya should handle all that. It’s his trip.”
“He gets to go on the trip. I get to handle all the last-minute details. That’s how it works. And it does work,” she put in, but if she was trying to convince him or herself, Niko couldn’t tell.
“So you’re saying good night?”
She groaned. “Ugh. Yes. No. Yes, I am. If I’m going to be tired in the morning, it’s going to be for real, full-on sex. Not phone sex.”
“I see,” Nikolai said. “So you’re telling me you want to have sex with me.”
This time, her laugh included a snort he found so endearing it made him put a hand to his chest to press against the suddenly swifter beating of his heart. She didn’t answer right away. It wasn’t a question that needed a real answer.
“Go to sleep,” she told him finally. “We’ll talk about this later.”
She disconnected before he could say anything else. He stretched in the darkness, the light on his phone going out, but in the last few seconds before it went black, he glimpsed a shadow at the top of the attic stairs. Startled, Niko dropped his phone onto the bed and sat up, running his hands over the blankets to find it.
“Shit, Ilya?”
“Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I came to see if I could borrow that solar phone charger you showed me.” Ilya moved closer.
Niko’s eyes had adjusted enough so he could see. “Yeah, it’s on top of the dresser. You getting ready to head out soon?”
“Couple of hours. I’ll sleep on the bus. Can’t usually the night before a trip. Can I turn on the light?”
“Yeah, sure.”
The soft glow of the old dog-shaped lamp illuminated the top of the dresser. Ilya found the charger right away and held it up. “Thanks.”
“No problem. Hey, I wish I was heading off to Jamaica,” Niko joked.
