by Megan Hart
Nikolai’s hands were in her hair.
His mouth was on her mouth.
His tongue, oh God, his tongue was sweeping inside with practiced strokes that drew a moan out of her from the very tips of her toes. He shook a little at the sound of it; she noticed that. Also the way his fingers dug deeper into the fall of her hair to tug her head back a little so he could plunder her mouth just a little harder. A little deeper.
She wasn’t sure who’d started the kiss, but she was sure who ended it. With a short, sharp gasp, Alicia stepped backward. One step. She was still within reach, if he wanted to grab her, and oh, shit, oh, damn, did she want him to?
The answer, she discovered when she looked at his wet, open mouth, was yes.
The second kiss was softer. Lingering. His hands moved to her hips and settled there, drawing her closer so their bodies pressed against each other. There was no bumping of noses or clashing of teeth. He moved, and she moved with him, in perfect sync.
Both breathing hard, they let the kiss ease away at the same time. She didn’t move out of his embrace this time. She looked up into his face.
“But you . . . you don’t even like me,” she said.
Nikolai smiled in the same lopsided, smart-ass way he always had. “I think it’s pretty obvious, Allie. I do like you. At least a little.”
“Maybe more than a little bit,” she whispered, but when she moved to kiss him again, Nikolai turned his face away just enough to stop her.
“Right.” Alicia cleared her throat. Awkward.
“It’s been a long day. A long week,” Nikolai added. “We’re both tired.”
She nodded and took a couple of steps back. “Yeah. Sure. We wouldn’t want to do anything stupid.”
They stared at each other again. His eyes gleamed, and she felt the answering burn in her own gaze. When she licked her bottom lip, she watched the way his eyes followed the motion of her tongue.
“Allie . . .” Her name slipped out of him on a little moan.
That’s how he would sound if she took him into her mouth, she thought suddenly, stupidly, something like a fever rising within her. A scorching chill swept all the way through her, and Alicia crossed her arms to keep herself from shivering. She couldn’t look away from his eyes.
“I should go,” he said.
She nodded again, trying to keep her voice steady when she replied. She didn’t quite manage to erase the tremor. “You should go.”
With another groan, this one sounding more frustrated, Nikolai ran a hand through his hair again, scrubbing at his scalp as he turned away from her to pace. He threw out his hands, gesturing, speaking without looking at her. “This is crazy.”
“Totally crazy,” she agreed.
“Insane,” he muttered. He touched the drips of water plinking steadily out of the faucet. “You need a new washer.”
“Ilya promised to fix it, but . . .” She shrugged.
“He still takes care of things for you.” It sounded like an accusation.
Allie frowned. “Sometimes. Sometimes he only promises to.”
“Right.” Niko opened her cupboard and pulled out a glass to fill with water.
The fact he knew without hesitation where she kept her glasses sent a pang of memory through her. Oh, to go back to the days of juice boxes and bags of chips parceled out during long summer days, when their parents were all working, and Babulya had shooed them all out of the house to find whatever amusements they could. She drew in a small, hitching breath.
“You never used to knock,” she said.
Nikolai tipped the water glass to his lips and gulped, then put the glass on the counter. He put his hands on it, shoulders hunched, still not looking at her. “Huh?”
“You knocked,” Alicia pointed out. “You never used to. None of us did. “
He twisted his head to show her his profile. “Yeah. I remember.”
“You knocked this time,” she continued. “Like we were strangers.”
Nikolai turned, finally. The corners of his mouth turned down. “We’re not strangers. We could never be strangers.”
“You think so? I don’t know, Nikolai. It feels like maybe we are.” She lifted her chin and closed her mouth tight to keep her lips from trembling. For what felt like the hundredth time today, she felt very, very close to tears.
Something shifted and cracked in his expression; she hated the sight of him agreeing with her, but what could she expect? That he would stride across the room and take her in his arms and kiss her breathless again? That she would take him upstairs to her bedroom and let him undress her?
Is that what she really wanted?
“No. Never strangers. Family,” Nikolai said after a moment. Then, in a lower voice: “I should get back over there. Ilya’s probably shitfaced by now. And Galina . . .”
“Your mother hasn’t changed.” Those words came more easily. Lighter. Alicia shook off the lingering heat and gave him a smile. “It’s good she’s here, though.”
It was Nikolai’s turn to answer with a nod. He headed for the back door, and Alicia noted with a mixture of amusement and dismay that he took the long way around, keeping the kitchen table between them so he didn’t come close to touching her. He paused in the doorway.
“Thanks. For everything. It means a lot,” he said.
Alicia gave him a grim, polite smile. “She was my grandma, too, you know.”
“Right, right.” Nikolai’s gaze slid away from hers, and he shut the door behind him.
When he’d gone, Alicia put her hand to her mouth, feeling the place where only minutes ago his lips had pressed hers. Then the tears came, burning and hateful and repulsive, knowing that she should cry over this when she’d been unable to weep for the true loss. Still, she shook with them until she was exhausted, spent, her eyes swollen and throat raw. When her grief eased, she was able to go upstairs to sleep.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Then
This was not real. It couldn’t be. Just a few days ago, Jennilynn was yelling at Alicia about wearing her favorite sweater, the new one she’d gotten for Christmas, and now she was dead.
She would never come back.
Their parents were almost comatose with grief. Her father managed to get up and around, at least enough to make some arrangements, but her mother . . . she couldn’t even get out of bed. Alicia had looked in on her this morning. The room stank of sour breath and sweat and something darker underlying all that.
Her mother made it to the funeral. There was that. It would’ve been easier if she hadn’t. If Alicia could spend the rest of her life without ever again hearing sounds like the ones that had come from her mother’s throat, she would be grateful. The rasping, keening wails had made Alicia want to clap her hands over her ears. Her mother had embarrassed her with the full-on force of her unmitigated grief.
Alicia would never forget it or get over it. Never be able to look at her mother the same way, not after seeing her as a person who could shatter into such tiny shards. Alicia didn’t think she could ever forgive her mother for not being able to make all this disappear, the way she’d done with nightmares and scraped knees and fevers. For becoming so lost in her own sorrow that she couldn’t help anyone else with theirs.
There should’ve been a meal at the church catering hall, but neither of Alicia’s parents had arranged it. Babulya was hosting people across the street at the Sterns’. She was cooking, and everyone else was bringing potluck. Babulya sat with Alicia’s mother for a long, long time that morning and probably was the reason she was able to get out of the room at all—Alicia thought she wouldn’t be able to forgive her mother for that, either. That she could rally for the sake of the neighbor, but not her own child. The one who was still left.
Babulya hadn’t been able to convince Alicia’s mother to go across the street, though. Her father was there for an hour or so before he came home, hollow eyed but clean shaven, his tie still tight at his throat. He disappeared into the den, where he sat in front o
f the television, watching game shows with the volume turned down so low he couldn’t possibly hear them.
Nobody had cooked a meal in the Harrison house since the news came that Jennilynn’s body had been found on the rocks in the quarry, in the spot where they’d always done their swimming. The fridge was empty. Alicia was hungry.
She didn’t want to be wearing the black corduroy dress with the stupid white Peter Pan collar and cuffs, the narrow red-velvet tie at the throat. It was the only black dress she had. She wanted to slip into jeans and her Converses and a sweatshirt and dive into a bowl of corn chips and sour-cream dip and another of ice cream with hot fudge, or a greasy burger and fries. She wanted to eat herself into oblivion and then roll herself into a cocoon of blankets and sleep until all of this went away.
Instead, she wore that black dress to go across the street and fill a plate with homemade lasagna, a turkey sandwich on a deli roll, a handful of chips. People looked at her, but most murmured as she passed and didn’t actually stop to talk to her. Alicia was glad for that. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She wanted to stuff her face.
Too many people downstairs. She sought the refuge of the upper floor and found the attic, which was quiet and smelled faintly of burnt candles and old sweat socks. Her plate balanced in one hand, she gripped the rail with the other as she climbed the stairs. The last thing she needed was to fall down and break her neck.
Did she know she wouldn’t be alone? She hadn’t seen either Ilya or Nikolai downstairs with the adults, so it made sense that at least one of them would be up here.
“Hi,” she said.
Nikolai looked up from the comic book he was flipping through. He put it down. Swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Hey.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Alicia pointed at a snoring Ilya, curled up on the army cot beneath the eaves.
“Drunk.”
“Shit.” She eyed him. “You’d better put a bucket by his head, unless you want to clean up after him.”
She watched as Niko pulled the garbage can from beneath the small desk and settled it by his brother’s head. She made a place for herself on the folding chair, plate balanced on her lap, and stared at the food she’d piled on it. She’d been starving. Now she didn’t want it.
“I can’t eat this.” Her voice was hollow and distant. She sounded like someone pretending to be Alicia.
Nikolai took the plate from her and put it on the desk. “You don’t have to.”
They stared at each other for a few long minutes. Night was falling outside, an early dark that was more because of the storm clouds that had been hanging low and threatening all day rather than the hour. Alicia looked out the window. Maybe everything from now on would always seem too dark.
“How are your parents?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Shitty. What do you think?”
“We all are,” Nikolai said.
“We aren’t all getting drunk and punching someone in the eye,” Alicia snapped with a wide-flung gesture at Ilya. “Yeah, I know what happened at the funeral parlor. Everyone knows. Everyone was talking about it.”
“Just one more thing for them to talk about,” Nikolai retorted. “Along with everything else about us, like they always do. Those fatherless Stern boys, the one with the crazy mother.”
She was across the room with the front of his shirt in her fists before she could stop herself. She shook him. Tears slid in burning tracks down her cheeks.
“You think it’s about you? It’s not about you! Or him! It should be about her, about Jenni—”
He didn’t try to wriggle out of her grip, but he put his hands on her wrists to hold her still. His lip curled. “Or about you, maybe? Is that why you’re mad? That you’re still not the one anyone talks about? Now that she’s gone, what, you think you can step in and take over as the popular one?”
Alicia jerked her hand from his grip. The slap rocked him. The imprint of her hand on his cheek was first white, then pink and slowly red as he put his own hand up to cover it. His eyes narrowed. Nikolai grabbed her wrist again.
“Go ahead.” She tipped her face up. Taunting. “Punch me in the face the way you did your brother at my sister’s funeral, making asses of yourselves. Go ahead. You want to hit me, Nikolai? I’m right here. Go ahead! Do it!”
She tried to scream, but her breath came out in wispy, whistling gasps. She flailed and tried to smack him again, because why, why did Nikolai Stern always have to be such an asshole to her? He caught her wrist, holding both again. He didn’t hit her.
He kissed her.
It was what she wanted, all along. It was what she’d been thinking about since the night of the party back in October, all these long months when they’d both pretended it never happened. It was all she ever thought about when she looked at him. The smell and taste of him, the pressure of his mouth on hers. The slide of his fingers in her hair.
Nikolai kissed her with an open mouth. Sliding tongues. Still holding her wrists, although she was no longer trying to hit him, he stepped back toward the bed until they both fell onto it, bouncing on the saggy, old mattress.
Alicia had thought about this, too. Of the sleekness of his skin. The weight of him on top of her. They moved together like they’d always known how. How easily she gave this up to him, this thing she’d imagined she would save for a night of candlelight and blowing curtains and someone who loved her.
But who else could it have ever been other than Nikolai? There was pain she’d been told to expect and fear, the sting that was hardly anything at all compared to the pleasure. Who other than him? Because it was love.
It might not be forever, but right then, it was love.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Niko and Allie?
Two shadowy silhouettes behind the sheer curtains of Allie’s kitchen door, embracing. Theresa stepped back and away from the window, well aware that if she could see in, the pair of them could see out. And she didn’t want them to see her watching them like she was some kind of voyeur, which she definitely was not, even though she’d taken another chance and peeked again to make sure she hadn’t imagined what she’d seen. The curtain had blurred the details, but not enough that she could pretend they were doing anything else.
Without knocking, Theresa carefully took a backward step down off the porch and turned toward the house across the street. She’d momentarily allowed herself the luxury of the somewhat melancholy indulgence of memory. If she drew in a breath, closed her eyes, she could probably manage to convince herself she was fifteen again, just running next door to watch late-night TV and eat snacks with Allie and Jenni. The time she’d spent living with the Sterns was no more than a blink in the long, hard stare of her life. Why, then, did that period of time affect her so much to this day?
That was a question deeper than she wanted to go, at least today. With a backward glance at Allie’s house, Theresa mentally tucked away the secret she’d stumbled across and headed across the street, where once inside she navigated the crowd of mourners in search of Ilya, who’d been looking for Niko.
“I didn’t find him.” She eyed him. His hand hadn’t been empty of a bottle for the past few hours. “Have you eaten something?”
“Not hungry.” He lifted the bottle to his lips and made a face when it was empty. “Where is he? He should be here, dammit. He needs to deal with her.”
Theresa took the bottle from him and tossed it in the trash, then followed the lift of his chin across the room to where his mother sat in one of the dining-room chairs like it was a throne. “What’s she doing?”
“She’s talking to people.” Ilya’s mouth twisted. “Like she knows any damn thing about shit.”
“Her mother died, Ilya.” Theresa surprised herself with her defense of the other woman, who certainly had never done anything to earn Theresa’s loyalty.
Ilya fixed her with a hard look. He wasn’t as drunk as he was acting, she thought. Which made her wonder why, exactly, he was faking being hammered
when he wasn’t. What was it he meant to say that he could later pretend he hadn’t meant?
“You’re the last person I thought would take her side,” he said.
Theresa looked again. Galina wasn’t crying. Theresa hadn’t seen a single tear out of her, as a matter of fact, but that didn’t mean anything. People grieved in different ways.
“I don’t hate your mother.” It wasn’t a lie, but that didn’t quite make it the truth, either. She sealed her lips, thinking there was more to say. There always was. But now wasn’t the time, and here wasn’t the place.
“Ilya. Hi.” A slight woman with pale-blonde hair pulled into a tight ponytail nudged Theresa to the side. “I’m so sorry about what happened.”
“Dina.” Ilya gave her a small nod but no smile. “Where are Bill and the kids?”
Dina coughed into her fist. “They’re at home. I ran over to pay my respects, that’s all. Maybe we can go somewhere and talk?”
“Sorry, can’t. I promised Theresa I’d eat something.” He reached for Theresa’s sleeve, tugging her closer. “Thanks for coming, Dina.”
With that, he pushed Theresa toward the dining room. Bemused, she shot a glance over her shoulder at the other woman, who was scowling, her arms crossed over her chest. Ilya went straight to the dining-room table, which was overloaded with platters and casseroles and a heaping basket of dinner rolls. He grabbed a paper plate from the stack and started loading it up.
Sloppy, not caring if he dripped sauces or splashed, Ilya layered his plate with slices of deli turkey, pasta salad, olives, and some horrifying concoction of Jell-O and fruit. He piled on enough food for three men twice his size. He balanced a thick sugar cookie laden with icing on top of everything else and swiped another from the plate. He shoved the second cookie in his mouth, chewing loudly.
People were starting to pay attention, and in that way Theresa had learned from painful experience would lead to whispers and the shaking of heads. Gossip grew quickly from seeds into vast, tangling jungles of strangling vines and carnivorous flowers. You could spend years trying to hack your way out of that poisoned garden.