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“I stopped sending you letters but I wrote to you. Like a fucking idiot I wrote you throughout college.” Under the surface of her self-deprecating statement there’s resentment and mistrust.
The image of Ana writing letters that she wouldn’t send—because she thought I didn’t care enough to read them—makes my chest squeeze. A wave of sullen despair threatens to pull me under.
“I burned them all before I left for Moscow,” she mumbles grimly.
“I went to California to see you for your graduation,” I admit, as if my futile efforts would make a difference now. “At the time, I was already starting something in Phoenix with Tristan. I was making something of myself.”
“I didn’t go to my graduation ceremony.”
“I know.”
Did I really think I could simply pop back into Ana’s life once I made a man of myself? What a fool.
“It’s useless to talk about the past.” Ana walks away from me and fiddles with a picture frame. “You added to my alarm system and it’s wasteful to undo the work,” she says in a businesslike voice. “But we’re done turning my home into a fortress. No more.”
“OK, no more,” I say.
She nods but doesn’t look at me. Staring into the distance, she announces, “Tell Kina goodnight for me. I won’t be downstairs for dinner.”
When her door slams, my heart breaks for Ana for the hundredth time.
There’s a sound down a long hallway. A rhythmic thudding that makes the air shake. It calls to me, propelling me forward into a cavernous room where a man is in a fighting stance. His back is to me. I see every ripple of muscle and every trickle of sweat when he hits the punching bag. With each strike, the bag swings and a thud echoes.
“Stop fighting,” I address him, although he’s remained disinterested in my entrance.
“I can’t,” the man grunts while continuing to swing with bare knuckles.
“Look at me. Stop fighting and look at me,” I beg over the sound of his heavy breathing.
Some part of me believes that if I can touch him, he’ll listen. That I’m the only one who can make him stop punching even if, somehow, I understand I’m the reason he’s fighting in the first place.
I step forward and reach out, but he easily evades my advances. The rhythmic cadence of fists hitting the swinging bag is the soundtrack to my frustration.
Then, suddenly, he turns. His eyes, bright indigo with specks of silver, sear through the darkness and arrest me in place.
He stalks like a lion relishing its prey before tearing into pliant flesh. Proud and hungry.
He’s close. So close. I’m surrounded by an earthy aroma, herbal and musky. He crowds me so I can finally, finally, touch him…
I wake up with a startled gasp. Hot and disoriented, I force myself to swallow big gulps of oxygen.
It isn’t the first time I’ve had this disturbing dream, but it’s the first time the fighter has faced me and confirmed what I’ve always suspected. No matter how far I am from him or how much time has passed, Bryce MacElroy is under my skin and deep in my subconscious.
The clock on my bedside reads two in the morning. I go to the bathroom to splash my face with water and clean the sweat pooling between my breasts.
I forgot to drink water before heading to bed. Parched, I descend dark, familiar steps.
In the fridge is a plate of sliced chicken breast and roasted vegetables, neatly cellophaned with a sticky note over the plastic. My name is scribbled on the note. The cold Fuji water lowers my body temperature and clears my head. Wiggling my fingers under the cover to grab a piece of chicken, I pop it in my mouth.
“Good?” His voice is low and surprisingly close.
“Creep up on people much?” I respond, turning to him.
Bryce’s lips twitch upward while his eyes lower, taking in my tank top and tiny sleep shorts.
“Why are you here?” I ask, fighting the urge to cover my body. The only person who should be covered up is the man wearing nothing except low-slung jeans.
“You told me not to add any sensors, remember?”
