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“I wouldn’t call it boring,” I tell him. “Overwrought, perhaps. More depressing than anything else.”
“Didn’t take you for the wallowing kind, Fletch.” Iakov takes a sip of his drink and reaches over to pat the Cerberus that’s lying nearest to him. “Bad break-up, huh?”
“Can’t break what’s already broken.”
“Zach said it looked like you and your girl might actually be made for each other,” Iakov says, casting me a look from the corner of his eyes, his big hand rubbing Cerberus’s neck. “You managed to find the only woman in the world who could match your crazy. How the fuck did you fumble that?”
I slap my book closed and toss it aside. “Women leave, Kav. It’s their prerogative.”
“Mine didn’t,” Kav says, mouth curving into a smirk.
Cocky bastard. Where’s all that self-hate and quiet despair I always liked about him? Happiness really changes a man.
“That’s because you follow yours around like a fucking dog,” I remind him.
“Like you wouldn’t do the same if you could. It’s the high and mighty fuckers like you who fall the hardest, Fletch. Bet you’d let that girl put a collar on your neck and drag you around on all fours if you could.”
It doesn’t take much for my starving mind to conjure the image Iakov is painting. If the only way I could have Willow Lynch back was with me on my hands and knees at her feet, would I not take that deal in a heartbeat? Would I not beg and bark if she so commanded it?
I’m not better than Iakov Kavinski, following his girl around like a kicked puppy, I’m not even better than Evan Knight and his pathetic devotion to Sophie Sutton, a girl who despised him so much she would sooner have kissed a slavering beast than his stupid American face.
“I’m sure you’ve not just come here to gloat.” Sitting up, I push back my sleeves and lean forward, elbows resting on my legs. “What is it I can do for you, Kav?”
He shrugs, drains his glass. “Nothing.” He sits back, looks around, jabs his chin at my TV. “You have any video games on this thing?”
“I’m not fifteen years old.” My lip curls in disdain. “You’ve not come all the way here to play video games, Kav, nor for the pleasure of my company. What do you need? I’m in the mood to give it to you just so you can fuck off.”
“I have everything I need already.”
I grimace at his words; he really doesn’t need to be rubbing it in.
“Then why are you here?”
“What do you think, dickhead?” he grunts. “To check on you.”
“Do I look like I need you to check on me?”
“You look like your girl dumped you and now you’re wasting away in your cave like a wounded animal.”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, fuck off, Kav. It’s like youwantme to hurt you.”
“Come on, get up.” Kav stands, rounds the table and kicks my shoulder with his boot in a way that immediately makes me think of Willow. “Let’s go for a swim or something. Heard you got a lake somewhere in all this land you’re hoarding.”
“You don’t want to go near any large bodies of water with me right now, Kav.”
“You’re not gonna drown yourself. Too much of a narcissist for suicide.”
“It’s notmeI’m thinking of drowning.”
Iakov lets out a low laugh, growling and wolfish. “I’d love to see you try, mate.”
Tempting words—and maybe that’s the reason I agree, in the end, to take the dogs and some towels and go to the lake withIakov. When we get there, he kicks off his boots and steps barefoot on the grass bank before stripping out of his clothes.
He’s covered with so many tattoos he barely seems naked, but the combination of tattoos and scars etched on his skin just make me think of Willow once more. Her scars and her tattoos and her skin and her poison eyes and that grinning, deadly mouth of hers.
Jaw clenched and throat tight, I strip and follow Iakov into the lake. The water is a shock of cold, but once my body has adapted to it, it feels almost warm. I swim out into the middle of the lake and float there for a moment, the water cold at my back, the front of my body bathed in sunlight.
I should have brought Willow here. I should’ve taken her swimming and chased her through the water and kissed her wet mouth and fucked her right on the grassy bank, covered in nothing but pondweed and sedges, golden stars of marsh marigolds caught in the witchy tangle of her black hair.
