The thought of spending the night alone in my apartment was hellish to say the least. I needed somebody with me so I didn’t just sit and worry the night away. Too bad Molly was at work.
Who was I kidding? I wanted to see Nik. Who cared if it was a bad idea, or if in the long run I’d only wind up hurt? I was a sucker for punishment. Plus, how long did I think I was going to be able to stay away from him anyway? He’d been on my mind almost every second since he came in yesterday. Right now, the horror of my brother’s intrusion into my life ranked higher on my list of stressors than Nik’s pending engagement anyway. Plus, I still owed him that cab fare. It was fate.
I looked around me before locking the front doors of the store, grateful not to spy my brother or Niles’s face among any of the people walking down Fifth Avenue. All I needed to do now was get to Nik’s building and I’d be safe. The thought of his smiling face lifted my spirits on the subway, and by the time I reached his building I was nearly calm.
It was going to be okay. Sure, some of Justin’s words today had triggered unpleasant feelings and memories, but I could deal with it. He was only trying to upset me. I wasn’t worthless. I had value, and the man I was going to see knew that.
I gave the doorman my name and he let me up without question, just like Nik said he would. My heart accelerated in anticipation. I bit my lip on the elevator ride up and the seconds dragged by.
Finally, I was at Nik’s front door. I smiled. I knocked.
Footsteps approached, and my stomach turned to liquid. Nik opened the door, looking somehow even more handsome than I remembered. The top button of his shirt was undone, revealing a tempting swathe of pale chest. His eyes widened in alarm when they met mine and panic laced my throat.
“Gemma,” he said in a quiet voice. “Now’s not a good time.”
Before I could answer, a woman’s voice called something to him in quick Russian. My heart shriveled into a dry husk.
I was about to turn on my heel and make a quick getaway before I made even more of a fool of myself, but the woman yanked the door open wider and glowered down at me.
I wished I could dissolve into a pile of sand, and I felt like the force of her glare was helping me along the way.
Valentina was beautiful. Hell, beautiful didn’t even cover it. She was regal. Gorgeous. Stunning. She stood nearly six feet tall with a silky curtain of blonde hair. Flawless skin. Huge silver eyes. Her sharp cheekbones and angular chin would have made her look harsh if not for the little button of a nose.
She switched to English, presumably for my benefit, but I wished she hadn’t.
“Is this why you will not have sex with me?” she asked in a sharp voice, like I wasn’t even there. “This tiny American?”
I scrambled to speak before Nik had a chance to answer. I didn’t want to hear what he had to say.
“Uh, I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Orlov.” I was amazed that my voice didn’t shake. Rustling in my pocket, I pulled out some cash, not even sure if it was the right amount. “Here’s that money I owe you. I’ll, uh, see you at the office.”
Barely a comprehensible sentence, but the lines on Valentina’s face relaxed a little so she must have bought it. Whether she questioned why somebody who worked for Nik would show up at his penthouse outside of office hours was up to her.
Before either of them could utter another syllable, I made my retreat. The elevator doors began to glide closed and I made the mistake of releasing a relieved breath. My hell was far from over.
Nik’s hand shot into the gap and the doors slid back open. I scowled and pressed the close door button again, but it was no use. He stepped into the elevator with me.
“Gemma...”
“Don’t!” I said. “I don’t want to hear it.”
The doors started to close again. I figured that with my luck, Valentina would be the next to impede my escape. Luckily, they shut and the elevator began to move.
Nik scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Just let me explain. Please.”
“What’s there to explain?” I couldn’t look at him. I looked everywhere but him. “We had fun but your fiancé is here now. I think you’ll find even I can understand concepts as complex as that.”
It was a long way to the ground floor, but thankfully it was a speedy elevator. I stared at the screen displaying the floor numbers, counting down the seconds in my head until I could make a break for it. There wasn’t enough air in the tight space. I couldn’t breathe.
“Gemma. Look at me.”
I couldn’t help but follow his command. My body hadn’t caught up to my mind yet and was still desperate to give him everything, be everything for him.
He looked older than I’d ever seen him, fine lines etching what looked like pain into his brow. Those coffee-colored eyes that I’d fallen into from the first second they found mine looked hollow now. And yet he was still terribly handsome. How was that fair?
“I don’t want things to end like this,” he whispered. His hand came up toward my face, and what little breath I could muster caught in my throat.
The door binged and began to slide open. The spell broke and I slapped his hand away, gritting my teeth.
“That’s too bad,” I said, and stormed out of the elevator.
I made it onto the street and gulped down a mouthful of fresh air. Nik didn’t follow me.
It was the kindest thing he’d ever done for me.
Chapter 17
Gemma
If I didn’t feel like being alone before, I couldn’t even fathom the thought now.
With nowhere else to go, I turned my feet in the direction of Helix and started walking. If nothing else, at least I could have a drink. Or ten. Maybe that would numb some of the pain, which was far greater than I’d expected.
My heart hurt. It ached. I could practically feel it bleeding, which was insane because there was no reason for me to be this heartbroken over Nik. I wanted to chalk it up to the stresses of the day—seeing my brother, Niles—but I knew that all that paled in comparison to the jagged teeth gnawing in my chest. It fucking sucked.
The worst part of it was that it was my fault. I was the one too stupid to hold back, too stupid to realize that of course this would happen.
What? Did I think he was going to give his fiancée and his entire life the heave-ho just to be with me? I was just as delusional as I was pathetic.
Pathetic. My brother had called me that only a few hours before, and like the idiot I was I’d gone and proved him right.
I was too bone-tired to cry. That was a good thing, at least. It was about the only thing I’d done right today, and I might’ve celebrated this minor victory if I didn’t feel so fucking stupid about everything else.
Why did I go there? Why couldn’t I just have left well alone? Now my last memory of Nik would just be of him with eyes brimming with pity. And the last thing I wanted from anybody—especially Dominik Orlov—was pity.
I pushed through Helix’s double doors and was glad to see the place practically deserted. Molly must’ve felt my presence or something because her eyes clapped on me right away, and she beckoned me toward the bar.
“What happened?” she asked, expression softening. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I laughed. It came out all bitter and wrong sounding, and Molly cringed. I pulled up a stool and a menu, pointing to the deadliest sounding cocktail on the list.
“Make me this, please.”
Molly started pouring ingredients into a cocktail shaker and I summoned the courage to tell her what had just happened, even though part of me reasoned I could just say I’d had a bad day. No, that was what the old Gemma would have done. The scared Gemma. I needed to remember that no matter how horrible I felt right now, I was working on being the me I wanted to be.
And that me told her best friend her problems.
“So my brother and Niles visited me at work today,” I said.
Molly stopped what she was doing. “No wonder you look like sh
it.”
I chuckled humorlessly. “That’s just the beginning. Strap in.”
Molly continued making the drink, though she watched me with concern as I recounted my horrible day.
“Justin and Niles did their best to be arrogant pricks when they saw me, trying to drag me down about working at Tiffany’s and being broke. It was obvious they were just trying to rile me up, but the worst part was it worked. I knew you were working and didn’t want to be alone so I decided to go over to Nik’s place.”
Molly started shaking my drink. “Uh oh.”
“Uh oh indeed. He had a guest.”
She stopped shaking, letting her hands drop at her side. “Oh, hon. I’m so sorry. What an asshole.”
Realizing she probably thought I meant he had an American guest, I quickly corrected her. Not that the truth was any better.
“It was his fiancée,” I said, reaching for a cocktail napkin and ripping it down the middle. “And she was sex on legs. Speaking of sex, I think they were about to have it just as I showed up.”
“What?” Molly poured the drink into a frosted glass and slid it over to me. “That’s crazy!”
I took a sip and cringed. Shit, it was strong. I took another sip. A bigger one.
“Yup. I mean, I knew this was going to happen, right?” I frowned and looked down at the napkin in my hands, ripping it into shreds. “I just didn’t realize it would feel like this.”
“How could you know?” She rested her hand over mine. “At least it’s over now. You can forget all about him.” A devious smile played on her lips. “And a group of ultra-hotties who I bet could help you do just that just walked in the door.”
I glanced behind me at the group of men in suits heading for the bar. There were at least two of them I found attractive, and I considered it for a second. One of them caught me looking and smiled. I turned away.
“That wouldn’t work,” I said. “If there’s anything I’ve learned these past few weeks, it’s that ignoring my pain doesn’t make it go away.”
Molly nodded understandingly. “I get that. Is there anything I can do?”
“Keep these coming until I’m ready to stagger home.” I forced a smile, and Molly smiled back at me before going to serve her next customer.
Molly’s company, the drinks, and the loud music helped distract me from my problems enough that I found myself smiling and laughing by the time I finished my second drink. The guy who smiled at me tried to come talk to me, ready to buy me another, but I politely declined. Molly offered to make me another, but I declined that offer too. I was ready to go home.
“Are you sure you don’t want to wait until I’m off?” Molly asked. “It’s not very responsible for me as a bartender to say this, but you could get rip-roaring drunk and I could carry you home.”
I laughed and shook my head. “I’m feeling a lot better now than when I first came in.”
And I was. I just didn’t know if the magic would last once I left Helix.
Molly’s mouth pinched but she nodded. “Just text me if you need anything. I’ve got my phone on me.”
She patted her boob, where she always kept her phone safely stowed while she worked.
“Thanks, Mol.”
I cautiously jumped down from the stool and swerved toward the exit, dreaming of food and my bed. I stopped at a convenience store on the way to the subway and grabbed a bottle of wine and a frozen pizza, and managed to jump on a train at the last second before the doors closed.
The illusion of cheer began to fade as I mounted the concrete steps toward the subway exit. Justin and Niles’s cruel words taunted me, and I struggled to remember why they weren’t true.
After everything that happened today, could I really claim not to be pathetic? Could I still pretend my life was any better than it would have been if I stayed at home? I had no influence, no prospects. Everything was fine for now, but where was I going to be in five years? Still at Tiffany’s, making barely above minimum wage?
I stomped up to my apartment and practically tore open the bottle of wine.
Sure. I was heartbroken about Nik and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about that, but that didn’t mean I had to fall into the pit of negativity Justin had dug for me. I was better than that. I was stronger than that. I could do my own goddamn laundry now, for crying out loud. I’d fought tooth and nail to get away from my family for a reason, plunging into a world I didn’t fully understand for reasons I couldn’t fully grasp until I got a little distance and realized my life was my own. It wasn’t currency for my family to spend.
I poured a giant glass of wine, shoved my pizza in the oven, and brought the bottle with me over the couch. Today was a hiccup. A big one, yeah, but a hiccup nonetheless. Back when I still cared what my family thought, a day like today would have ruined me, but I’d grown so much since then and I just needed to keep reminding myself of that fact.
For everything that had happened between us, Nik had believed in me. Just because things had ended in my embarrassment didn’t mean I had to forget every word he’d ever uttered in my direction, and it meant something to me that I wasn’t the only one on Team Gemma. I had Molly, and at least in some way I had Nik, and that was more than enough to motivate me.
I was halfway through the bottle of wine when the thought occurred to me. Molly was right. Since I was young I’d been wanting to teach, and it wasn’t too late. It might take me years of night classes to get certified, but I could do it. I knew I could.
I grabbed my laptop and settled back on the couch, peering at the glowing screen with hazy eyes. It took me a few tries to find what I was looking for, but soon enough I’d landed on the website of a university offering a part-time teaching certification. I clicked on the application button and it did nothing. I closed one of my eyes, realized I was about an inch off the application button, and tried again.
Somewhere in the back of my mind it registered that I should save my application until the morning, when I wasn’t drunk and hadn’t just finished eating my weight in pizza. I was just as likely to vomit on my computer as I was to write anything legible.
Lucky for me, I never made it that far. I fell asleep lying down on the couch, laptop balanced on my chest, a pizza crust dangling from my right hand.
Chapter 18
Dominik
The elevator started its ascent and I cursed. Then I cursed some more. I probably looked crazy, standing in an elevator by myself spitting out every swear word I knew, in Russian and English, but something inside of me had snapped.
Valentina’s arrival had made our ‘engagement’ real, but nothing could have made the pain more tangible than Gemma stumbling in on us. We hadn’t even been doing anything, but I still felt guilty. And mad. If Valentina had never come, or even if she just hadn’t been as much of a whiny princess, this never would have happened.
I knew I could fix things with Gemma, but seeing the hurt in her eyes was almost more than I could take. And I’d caused it. I hated Valentina and my father now more than I ever had. And I knew what I had to do.
I stomped back into my apartment and found Valentina standing in the kitchen with a fresh glass of vodka. Her clawed fingers gripped the glass so hard her knuckles turned bone white, and her eyes cut into me like daggers. I didn’t have a chance to open my mouth before she started laying into me.
“Who the fuck was that? Are you fucking one of your employees? Why will you have sex with her but not with your future wife?”
The questions came in the form of such rapid-fire Russian that it was almost too fast for me to understand. I put out my hands to signal her to stop, or at least slow down, but that only incensed Valentina more.
“Do you know how long I had to fly to get here? And for what—this shoe box of an apartment and a man who can’t even keep his affairs straight?” She shot back the vodka and swallowed with a snarl. “You’re supposed to take care of me. Me. Not some American termite who can’t even speak a proper sentence.”
&nbs
p; For everything I disliked about Valentina, I had to admit that she was fierce. And she could drink vodka like a champ. She had more in common with my father than she did with me, and ultimately that’s what would have killed us in the end. If the existence of Gemma hadn’t done that job already.
I waited for her to finish speaking, a sense of calm flooding over me. Then I pointed to the door. “Get out.”
Valentina’s nostrils flared. “What?”
“I said get out,” I repeated. “The engagement is off.”
“Off?”
I smiled. “Over. Finished. Dead. Kaput. I’m not marrying you.”
“I’m not good enough for you now?” She poured another glass of vodka and I wondered if I was ever going to get rid of her. For a woman who didn’t want to marry me in the first place, she seemed hard pressed to leave.
“Valentina, it’s not like that.” I shook my head. I just felt sorry for her now. “I can’t do this. It’s not you.”
Valentina shot back her next glass and threw it at the floor. It shattered and shards of glass skittered as far as the living room.
“You are not a man!” she screamed. “My father will hear of this.”
“I expect he will,” I muttered, stepping over broken glass on my way to the refrigerator.
Valentina stormed out of the kitchen and I heard the front door slam. I guessed I’d have to get her bags delivered.
I grabbed a beer and stepped into the living room, sinking down onto my couch and staring out the window at the New York skyline. The sun was hidden behind a tall building, but its rays ran like golden rivers down the streets and flooded the room with light. I took a sip of my beer and tried to decide what to do next.
Obviously, I was about to face a world of pain from my old man. The odd thing was I felt so numb I didn’t care. He could come at me with his worst and I couldn’t see myself doing anything other than shrugging and going on with my day.
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