by Renee Rose
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he tells him. “You’re going to stay in that cockpit until we’ve dealt with whatever went down in the cabin. Then I’m going to let you know it’s time to come out, we’ll pay you for your time, and you can go home to Sarah Jean and your sweet kids, Thomas and Flora on Andaluz Lane.”
The pilot draws a sharp breath at hearing that Maxim already knows his family’s details.
“You flew this plane for Dr. Armor—is that what you said his name was?”
“Yes, D-Dr. Armor,” the pilot stammers.
“Dr. Armor changed his mind about going back to the Florida Keys and asked you to turn the plane around. When you got here, he got off and told you he was staying for a while and wouldn’t need your services. He asked you to take a commercial flight back home. That was the last you heard from him. Understand?”
“Got it,” the pilot says quickly. “Absolutely.”
“You never saw anyone else on the plane.”
“Never.”
“Okay, stay where you are. If you move before I come for you, our arrangement will need to be reworked. Are we clear?”
“Crystal.”
The pilot shoots me a quick, frightened look.
“Oleg, we’re outside. Let us in.”
I go to the cabin to open the doors, and my brothers come in. Maxim does a quick sweep of the place, assessing, then gives orders. Pavel and Adrian get Skal’pel’s body out. Maxim and Ravil question the two thugs who are conscious. Like the pilot, they claim to know very little about Dr. Armor or his business, other than being his personal bodyguards.
“Story’s waiting in your Denali,” Nikolai says, handing me the keys.
“Go ahead,” Ravil says. “We’ll take care of this.”
I’m not a demonstrative guy. I don’t try to communicate often. But I stop and clasp the hand of each of my brothers and look into their eyes to show them how much it means to me that they have my back.
They are my family. I held myself back from them these last two years because of the wounds inflicted by Skal’pel’. The emotional ones, not the physical. But I’m done with that. I won’t give my loyalty where it isn’t deserved again. My future is with Story, and my family is here with me now.
“Mudak,” Dima mutters when I clasp his hand. “Story was out of her mind with grief. You may not give a shit about your life, but the rest of us do.”
I circle my fist over my chest in the sign I learned for sorry.
“Yeah, you better go tell that to your girl.” He tips his head in the direction of the tarmac.
I climb down the stairs and jog to the vehicle. Story looks small and lost in the back seat.
Lonely.
I throw the door open and gather her up. She clings like a koala, wrapping her legs around my waist, her arms around my neck. She makes a broken whimpering sound, but she doesn’t speak.
Story, my beautiful lastochka.
She still says nothing and won’t loosen her grip on my neck, so I can see her face. I just hold her, breathing in her sweet scent, kissing her neck. Still, she says nothing. We’re getting soaked in the sleet, so I walk around to put her in the front seat, passenger side where I can see her face.
There’s so much pain in her gaze. Almost like it hurts her to look at me.
It slices a gash right across my chest. I put that pain there. I hurt her—the one person I was trying so hard to protect.
How could I have done this?
I sign sorry, but she looks away, blinking back tears.
I cup her face and bring my forehead to hers. She doesn’t move. I try the sign again.
She swallows. “I’m glad you’re alive.” Her voice is choked.
Sorry, I sign again. It’s all I really know how to say. I see Dima left my iPad on the driver’s seat for me, but I don’t pick it up. Even if I could speak, I wouldn’t have the words. I don’t even know how to navigate when Story’s clammed up, herself.
I guess I’m getting a taste of my own medicine, and it’s a fucking bitter one.
Story pulls her legs into the vehicle and pushes me away. “You’re getting wet,” she says.
Fuck.
I shut the door, walk around to the driver’s side, and get in, picking up the iPad to at least try. Dima called me an asshole for what I did. I’m sorry I caused so much grief.
Story shakes her head. “You weren’t an asshole.” Her voice sounds so fucking heavy. Exhausted. She reaches out and squeezes my forearm. “You were being you. Trying to protect me and do it all by yourself without reaching out for help from anyone else.”
Her words strike home.
I nod. Da. She’s right. I could have played it so differently. I could have gone to Ravil, and he and Maxim would’ve come up with a better option. But instead I played straight into Skal’pel’s fucking plan for me. Forsaking Story and my brothers in my effort to protect them.
“Oleg… did you go to him to die?”
I suck in a breath and nod.
She sags and looks away from me, out the window.
Fuck, I’m losing her. Frantic, I type on the iPad. I went to die, but as soon I arrived, I realized I’d made the wrong choice. It wasn’t right to sacrifice myself and surrender, it was time to fight.
For you.
She gives me a searching look then looks straight ahead at the jet on the tarmac. “I have to play at Rue’s tonight.”
Gospodi. I forgot. It’s Saturday night.
I start the Denali up and put it in gear, turning it around. I don’t know where the fuck we are, so I turn on the map function on my phone to get us back, checking the clock. Enough time to get home and get Story’s guitar from the Kremlin before we head over.
I point at Story and give the sign for hungry, raising my brows, the way we learned.
“Am I hungry? Yeah, actually I could eat. You?”
I nod. We hit the first drive-thru we see—a Wendy’s. I use the iPad to order, which makes Story laugh, lightening the mood a little.
We eat as I drive, and then she drops the bomb on me.
“Oleg, I can’t move in with you.”
Somehow I keep the Denali from crashing into the guy in front of me.
She doesn’t go on, which makes it a million times worse.
I make the sign for why? by pulsing my middle finger by my forehead, brows down.
“I thought I could do this. I care about you. I really do. But I have so much drama in my life already. And your life is really intense. I mean, you’re in the Russian mafiya, and you’re getting shot at, and I’m getting shot at, and then I thought you were going to die, and it’s just too much.”
I want to argue with her. I reach for the iPad, but realize I can’t type and drive at the same time.
Fuck.
I pick up her hand instead and shake my head.
She pulls away, gutting me. “I can’t. I need you to accept this. Please don’t make this harder than it already is.”
Blyad'. I grip the steering wheel. Part of me refuses to believe it. I want to fight for her. But she just asked me not to, and I’m also not the guy who doesn’t understand no means no.
Story wants me out of her life.
The irony is too thick to swallow. I chose to live and fight because of her, and I lost her anyway.
I’d almost rather be dead.
Chapter 15
Story
I asked Oleg to drop me at Rue’s. I told him not to come in.
He honored my request.
I was half-afraid he wouldn’t. I mean, I know the guy’s stubborn. Dogmatic in his devotion to me.
Somehow I made it through the night. I actually don’t think anyone even noticed anything was off with me, which made it all the worse.
Because that anxiety that was brewing, the sense of everything being wrong—it didn’t go away when I broke up with Oleg.
In fact, it got worse.
Now, as I stand outside Rue’s to catch an Uber home, I practic
ally want to crawl out of my own skin. The buzzing in my ears isn’t just from the amps. It’s noise. Noise that makes it impossible to think through the slightest problem, like how to open the app and check for my ride.
A familiar white Denali pulls up in front of me.
Oleg.
Tears instantly pop into my eyes. Of course he’s still here. He probably sat in the parking lot for the entire show, waiting to make sure I got home safely.
I pull open the door. “You can’t be here!” Tears clog my throat.
“Let me take you home,” the Australian-accented voice from the iPad says.
My shoulders sag. “I called an Uber.” I already know I’m going to get in the Denali.
Oleg is my ride, even if I don’t want him to be.
He rubs an open hand over his head. Please.
I blink back the tears. “Fine.” I get in. “But this is it. This is our goodbye. Please don’t come back here again.”
He nods his agreement.
Except when we get to my place, he parks and opens his door.
I want to protest, but I don’t. Maybe part of me wants to drag out our goodbye, too. He carries my guitar and walks me to the door, taking my keys from me to open the front door then following me up the stairs.
He unlocks the door to my apartment and pushes it open.
And then he’s on me. His arm bands behind my back, his lips descend over mine with a bruising force.
I surrender. Completely.
I’m the girl who lives in the moment, and this is our moment.
I give him my tongue, loop my arms behind his neck, standing on my tiptoes to reach. He grips my ass, yanking my body up against his as he claims my mouth.
He backs me against the arm of the sofa and picks my leg up behind the knee to spread me open for him.
“Oleg.”
He cups my mons firmly, the warmth of his fingers searing through my panties. He slides his fingers beneath the fabric, rubbing over my entrance as our lips tangle. He sucks my lower lip and dips a finger inside me.
I reach for his jeans, opening them, desperate to get him inside me. He drags his mouth down my neck and nips me as I get his cock out and positioned at my entrance.
I teeter backward, my hips balanced on the stuffed arm of the sofa, but he loops a strong arm behind my back to hold me in place, at the same time he yanks my hips forward toward his.
Pushing the gusset of my panties to the side, he enters me, and we’re moving together from the first moment he’s inside.
We fuck like our lives depend on it.
We’re the last humans on Earth. It’s the last chance we’ll ever have for sex. We have to make it count for all of humanity.
He fucks me hard, thrusting in and up. Each stroke feels necessary. Satisfying. Life-affirming.
I cling to him, one hand around his neck to keep me suspended, my knees spread wide for his plunder. I love his wild passion. The way, once he starts, it’s like he can’t hold back with me. Like making me come is his life’s only pursuit.
Time suspends. Pleasure shimmers all around us, building, aching. Climbing.
I don’t even realize tears are leaking from my eyes. I’m not sad. It’s just necessary. The intensity meets the burning flame in my soul. My reason for living.
I’m unusually quiet. Other than that single utterance of his name when we began, I don’t beg, don’t moan, don’t cry out. It’s like this is too serious an occasion for the usual passion-chatter. Too significant. The heavy rasping of our breaths is the only music we dance to.
There’s no question we will climax as one. I feel the surge of his orgasm, and my own rises to meet it. He’s the first one to make a sound. An urgent vocalization. I return the call.
And then we both come. He arcs in deep and stays, shooting his wad. I suck on his neck, my internal muscles contracting around his cock, milking it for more. It goes on and on. A completion, not just of sex, but of us. Of our relationship.
One last momentous time together to remember each other by.
Oleg eases out of me and helps me back to my feet. Dark concern swirls in his brown eyes.
I put my hand on his face, memorizing his beloved features. “I love you.” It’s worth saying, even if we’re breaking up. And I say it as an ending. An Amen to the sacred space we gave to each other.
And Oleg does seem to understand we’re still breaking up because the words make his forehead crinkle as if he’s in pain.
My anxiety revs back up, starting to eat away at the endorphins released by the incredible sex.
I need to end this thing. Maybe that’s why I’m still anxious. Because he’s still here. It’s still going.
“Goodbye, Oleg,” I say firmly.
He flinches, visibly destroyed by my words.
I feel equally destroyed. I don’t know why the anxiety isn’t getting better.
He cups the back of my head and presses his lips to mine. This time the kiss isn’t brutal, it’s soft and sweet.
And then he turns and leaves without looking at me again.
I thought I’d cried all my tears out earlier thinking Oleg was dead, but it seems I still have an ocean left to cry. I mean to walk myself to the shower and put myself to bed, but instead I find myself on my knees, wracked with sobs.
Oleg
I don’t get out of bed other than to eat a little the next day. Or the day after.
Not even on the third day.
I can’t face what I lost. I had Story. She was mine for two short weeks. She let me hold her. Make love to her. Bring her home.
She was going to move in with me. For the first time in years, I had a reason to get up in the morning. Things felt possible again. I was willing to stretch myself. Start interacting with my environment. Join the living.
There was such a lightness around me. I didn’t hate my body for betraying me. I found new ways to communicate. But most importantly, I got to be around Story. My obsession. I had her to myself—all her minutes. All her hours. She sang and played her guitar in my bed. Stood in my shower. Let me love her.
Loved me back.
She said so.
But she didn’t choose us. She didn’t choose me. I caused her too much stress, and she opted out. I can’t blame her. Not for a second. I want to punch myself in my own face for hurting her. For making her cry. For causing her more trauma.
Wednesday morning, Nikolai and Dima come into my room without knocking. I’m on my back in the center of the bed. “So what the fuck happened?” Nikolai demands.
I ignore him, staring at the ceiling.
“This place stinks. You have to get up and take a shower, mudak. And come out and eat something.”
I keep ignoring him.
“I’m guessing Story broke up with you?”
I sit up, my hands curling into fists. I’m suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to punch my brothers—something I’ve never done.
Nikolai and Dima seem to realize it because they step back in unison. “I’m sorry.” Nikolai holds his hands up. They both know my fists are as lethal as any gun.
“I do not want to fuck with you, Oleg,” Nikolai says. “We just want to maybe talk it through. See if we can help.”
I shake my head. There is no help. Not for me and Story.
Despite my refusal of their offer to assist, they both sit down on the foot of the bed.
Now I really want to kill them.
“What scared her?” Dima asks. “The danger?”
I glare at him. He tosses the iPad over to me.
I growl, but suddenly the need to discuss Story becomes a fresh addiction. Like talking about her will bring here back.
The drama, I type.
Nikolai cocks his head. “Hmm.” He sounds doubtful, like he’s questioning my answer.
“Of course you know her way better than I do, but I’m not sure that fits. I mean, if she couldn’t handle the drama, she would’ve called the cops the minute she found you shot in the back of he
r van, right?”
“Da. To me, it almost seems the opposite,” Dima agrees. “What did she tell Sasha? She has a high tolerance for chaos. She didn’t even freak over getting shot at on the roof. I mean, the girl can really roll with things.” He says it appreciatively, and I’m partly pleased and partly infuriated with his admiration.
Panic starts to shiver deep in the pit of my stomach. Do I not even understand why she left me? Was it really me she couldn’t handle?
Nikolai seems to guess at my fear because he says, “There’s no question she loves you. I haven’t seen anyone that torn apart as when she thought you’d gone to your death.”
“Maybe Maxim when he thought Sasha was dead,” Dima counters, “But yeah. She was a hot mess.”
A hot mess.
“So, to me, it seems more like it was about you leaving. She absorbed all the rest of the crazy shit that went down without much of a complaint,” Nikolai says.
Me leaving. That strikes a chord somewhere.
Story had told me she couldn’t rely on the people in her life. That she’d had a lot of love from her family but no stability.
That must be why she said she always left relationships. Maybe she’s the type who leaves before she gets close. Before she can be abandoned or let down again.
She’d liked that I was steady. I showed up week after week. She could count on me.
And so by leaving, I did the one thing she was afraid of. I proved myself unreliable. As capable of wounding her as the other people closest to her.
I betrayed Story. Abandoned her.
Fuck.
I didn’t just poke her wound, I stabbed her in it. After she’d told me how scary it was to rely on someone.
Gospodi.
I thought I’d turned myself into Skal’pel’ for her and left her money for a new start, but was it any kind of gift worth receiving? A bag of cash and another abandonment?
It was no gift at all. Story’s the type who’d rather risk her own life and stay by my side. She’d already proven that to me. And I made her sacrifice mean nothing.
“What?” Nikolai demands.
I type, I abandoned her when she needed me to be her rock.
“Fuuuuuuck,” Dima says after he reads it.