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“What do you mean?”
She shrugs a slim shoulder and shakes her head. Unruly hair dances over her back and shoulders, and she swallows hard. “It’s just… I hate feeling like I’m out of control. Like someone else is managing my life for me, yet that’s exactly what happens when you boss me around and tell me what to do.”
I can’t risk taking my eyes off the view outside the hangar, so I scan again before I crouch down so I’m closer to her. The coast is clear. If we were at a regular airport, we’d be fucked, but luckily for us, we can do this kind of thing here.
I’m going to be married to Renata. It doesn’t matter. She’ll be mine whether she likes it or not.
“Ollie—”
I look at her. When her eyes meet mine, the guarded wall around my heart cracks. I feel it crumbling. A part of me wants to do everything in my power not just to protect her, not just to make her mine… but to make her fuckinghappy.
Jesus. I’m a goddamn pussy.
“What?” I snap, sharper than I mean to. I look away.
I can tell the moment she shuts down. Her eyes shutter, and her jaw clenches. She looks away as if she’s given me the taste of her vulnerability and needs to snatch it back now.
“Forget it.” She turns her face completely away from me.
I want to force her to look at me, to tell me what she’s really thinking.
“Stop playing fucking games with me, Renata. Tell me what you were going to say.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Jesus.
“I’m not fucking playing this game.” I want to shake her, but my need to get her to pay attention doesn’t outweigh my need to protect her. I keep my eyes in front of me, staring so I don’t miss a thing.
“Is this what you’ll expect me to do? Shut up and do what you tell me?”
I clench my jaw. “When your safety’s at risk? Fuck yeah.”
“This is gonna be one fun marriage, isn’t it?” The spark in her eyes is a warning sign, but I’ve never been one to heed those.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” A shadow moves to the left in front of me. I cock my gun, but a second later, a pigeon bobs its creepy head and walks along in front of us.
The wind outside the hangar is the only sound as seconds stretch into minutes.
“Nothing about this is easy, Renata. None of it. You know that.”
She hugs her legs tighter. “I know that. But you take a difficult situation and only make it harder.”
She’s not wrong. I’ve always done that. Not on purpose, I know, but I can’t help it. It’s who I am.
I remember the first time I came home after Mikhail and Aria’s wedding. She was forced into marrying him, and they were enemies at first. She was pregnant by the time I really got to spend any time with her, and Mikhail doted on her like she was made of spun glass. I still remember standing in my mother’s dining room, nursing a drink. Mikhail sat at the head of the table, having a heated discussion when Aria walked into the room.
Mikhail’s entire focus shifted to her. He held a finger up for Aleks to hold his thought. She walked to him and stood beside him. He rested his hand on the small of her back and inclined his ear to her so he could hear whatever it was she whispered to him.
Something hit my chest with the force of a freight train. Mikhail had changed. He’d met a woman who’d changed him, and he would never be the same.
Later, I talked to him about it. “What happened to you?” I asked. I couldn’t keep the bitter tone out of my voice. Mikhail was my idol, the one I looked up to, and seeing him cave to a woman felt like a form of betrayal. That wasn’t what we did. It wasn’t how we were taught. It wasn’t who we were.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
I shook my head and shoved my hands in my pockets. “She says ‘jump’, and you say ‘how high’. What the fuck, Mikhail?”
I half expected him to deck me or at least shake me down and tell me to mind my mouth or something shitty like that. The old Mikhail would have. Instead, he only half smiled. “One day, you’ll see. Until then, telling you won’t make much of a difference.”
