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Hana leans back in her chair, eying me like I’m a moron. “Idunno, dummy. The fact that she staggered out of your house anhour and a half after walking in, bow-legged and wearing one of your hoodies instead of the clothes she wore going in? The fact that she had this ‘just been fucked’ look on her face?—”
“Jesus, Hana,” I scowl.
She snickers. “More importantly, I’d say it was the slightly crestfallen, sad look on her face.”
God, I hate the stabbing feeling I get in my chest when she says that part.
“Huh,” I grunt.
“Exactly.Huh,” Hana throws back. “So what the fuck happened? I don’t think you smacked her around, butsomethinghappened to make her look that upset.”
The truth is, Idon’tknow what happened with Freya last night. One moment, I was having—bar none—the most explosive, hardcore, fuckinginsanesex of my life with a very, very willing partner. A partner who was completely aware of my emotional limitations and knew what last night was.
The next moment, it was over, I could barely walk or think, and Freya was asking for a sweatshirt. I gave her mine, then went to get us water, and when I got back, she was gone.
The confusing thing is, I might have implied at the start of it all that leaving afterward was expected.
But once shehadgone, I wanted her to come back.
I’d wanted her to stay.
And Ihatedthat she’d walked out.
Hana sighs, her frustration palpable. “You don’t have to keep pushing everyone away, you know. Freya’s not the enemy.”
I turn away from her, my jaw set. “It’s…complicated.”
“Probably isn’t,” Hana tosses back. She gets up from her chair, her voice softer. “Mal, why do you keep thinking you have something to prove to this family? You’re in it. You’re a Mori. You don’t have to prove shit to us.”
The words hit harder than I’d like to admit, but I keep my face neutral. Hana’s always been perceptive, always seen inside my head in ways no one else can. But she doesn’t know the half of it.
She doesn’t know the full truth about what haunts me.
“Look,” she says, grabbing her coat from the back of the chair. “If you’re this twisted up about Freya, maybe it’s because you, I don’t know,actuallycare about her.”
Fuck.
She could be right.
And that’s the most dangerous truth of all.
The house is too stillafter Hana leaves. The quiet only amplifies one particular memory I’ve been trying to bury. But the dream—thenightmare—has dragged it back to the surface.
I close my eyes, letting the images flicker to life again. The night my family was murdered is burned into my mind, seared so deep it’s a scar I’ll never shake. The fire, the blood, the cold water enveloping me in the pool.
And then,him.
It was after I’d found them all dead and spent hours circling the burning house, stepping over blood and bodies, trying to find a way to fix it all.
That’s when I saw him—a figure with dark hair, dressed in black, standing on the edge of the chaos by the far fence of our property, watching unblinkingly.
For years, I thought it was a hallucination. A ghost or a demon conjured up by my fractured mind, desperate for someone—anyone—to be there. There was a time in my early teens when I dabbled with religion, and wondered if who I’d seen had been the Devil himself.
I know better now.
It was Kir Nikolayev.
I just don’t know why he was there.
