Page 26 of Cruel Demands

Petyr stops beside the table. He looks at Taylor first. Then at me. Wrong order. “Taylor,” he says. “Anya is worried. She asked me to check on you.”

Taylor’s mouth tightens. “No, she didn’t.”

Petyr flushes. I almost admire the girl. She doesn’t let even gentle lies stand unchallenged. “This is not a good idea,” he says, dropping his voice.

Taylor’s eyes harden. There is the knife again. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”

“I’m not deciding. I’m telling you.” His gaze cuts to me, and whatever he sees there makes his anger sharpen into something closer to fear. He knows enough to be afraid, then. Not who I am perhaps, but what kind of man. Local instinct. Useful. “You should come back to the table,” Petyr says.

Taylor stands. For one second, I think she’s going to obey him. Instead, she sits next to me. I could do the childish thing and put my arm around her, look smug. But I don’t. I do nothing. I press my lips together and look at my drink.

“I’m fine,” she says.

Petyr’s hand twitches, like he almost reaches for her. I set my glass down. Softly. The boy freezes, and Taylor notices.

I look at him for the first time. “She said she is fine.”

His throat works. “This is between us.”

“No,” I say. “It was between you when you asked. It ended when she answered.”

Taylor looks at me then, and I cannot read her expression, but she does not tell me to stay out of it, and she does not move away from me. Her body is still near me, our knees almost touching.

“Fine,” he says, though there’s nothing fine in him now. “Do what you want.”

“I was planning to,” Taylor says. He turns and walks away. Her shoulders stay high until he reaches the table, and then she exhales. “You enjoyed that,” she says.

“No.”

“Liar.” She drinks again. Too much this time. I reach across the table and take the glass from her hand. Her fingers tighten. “Excuse me.”

“You should slow down.”

“You just ordered it for me.”

“To nurse. You are not nursing it. So now I’m telling you to slow down.”

Her mouth opens, and I expect anger, but she laughs. A bright, startled laugh. “You’re very confusing, you know.”

“No one has ever accused me of that. I’ve always been told I am direct.”

“Oh, that’s because they’re scared of you.”

She says it like a joke, and she’s drunk enough that I can’t see what’s behind her eyes anymore, if she means it. All I know is she is looking at me like I am a man.

“Are you scared of me?” I ask.

“Not yet,” she says, her tongue moving out of her mouth to reach for her straw. She remembers grownup drinks don’t come with straws, and her tongue retreats back inside her mouth.

Something dark and possessive opens in me. “Not yet.” No one has ever given me a more tempting answer.

I wonder what kind of trouble a girl like Taylor Hayes has found before me. Petty trouble, maybe. Academic. Romantic. Family. Money. The soft troubles of people who have never had to decide whether a man lives past dawn. People who have never put other people down like dogs. But with an answer like ‘not yet,’ I’m sure there’s been trouble, nonetheless.

The night stretches in front of us as she nurses the second drink and our conversation turns sloppy. I learn she came to Russia for study abroad. I learn she is a good student and an even better daughter. I learn she is someone who measures herself that way.

I learn she has a mother who worries and a father with a failing restaurant, though she tries to say it lightly and then scrunches her whole face up when it’s out, like a terrible secret she meant to keep in. I learn she is proud and guilty in equal measure. I learn she goes silent when she’s divulged too much.

She’s smart, and she knows it, but she’s conflated that with street smarts. She’s painfully naïve, settled in the back of this bar with me. I keep wanting to grab her and whisper into her ear to leave and never do anything like this again.