Page 47 of Cruel Demands

“The point is—” She stops, looking down at the folded white fabric. Her fingers tighten in it. “I don’t know what the point is.”

Neither do I. I should take it back. Instead, I open the car door for her.

She gets in and looks up at me. The snow has stopped. Morning light catches in her hair. She looks tired. Young. Brave in the exact foolish way that made me want her in the first place.

“Am I going to see you again?” she asks.

There it is. The question I deserve. The question I cannot answer honestly without proving what I am.

No, I think. No, you will not. You will go to your new job. You will be late, but charming enough to survive it. You will call your worried friend. You will decide last night was a strange thing that happened in a foreign country with a man too old and too dark for you. You will keep my shirt in a drawer until it stops smelling like me. You will be safer because I let this end here.

“No,” I say. The word comes out colder than I intend.

Her face stills. “Oh.” It is one syllable.

I force myself not to soften it. “I think that is best,” I say.

Her pride returns instantly. I watch it slide into place. Chin up. Mouth firm. Eyes bright and a smile so brittle I can almost hear it crack. “Right,” she says. “Of course.”

I say nothing. If I speak, I may ruin the only useful cruelty I have managed all morning.

Pavel closes the door. Through the tinted window, I see only the faint outline of her face turned away from me. Good. The car pulls down the drive and through the gate. I stand there until it disappears into the gray morning and then go back inside to finish getting ready for work.

The house is quiet again. Properly quiet. The way it was before her. Mercifully, my mother is still asleep. I do not know that I could face her right now.

I should feel relief. Instead, I go upstairs, enter my bedroom, and find the room unbearable.

Her scent is still in the sheets. The water glass remains beside the bed. On the pillow, one strand of her golden hair catches the light.

10

TAYLOR

The driver does not speak to me.

Somehow, that makes it worse.

If he looked at me in the rearview mirror, if he smirked, if he asked for an address in a tone that suggested he knew exactly what kind of girl gets driven home from a stranger’s house at eight forty in the morning wearing yesterday’s dress and last night’s shame, I could hate him. I could build myself up around the insult. I could become sharp and indignant and American about it.

But he says nothing. Well, he says one thing. He says, “Your seat belt, miss,” and when I buckle up with a small laugh, he begins driving down Mikhail’s luxuriously long driveway. An iron gate opens, and I hazard a glance back, just one. I can make out his figure, still watching.

I close my eyes against the knife twist of him watching me and face forward again. The driver remains silent. I look out the window at Moscow, somehow quieter and stiller than usual, as if everyone in it has agreed I should be alone with my thoughts. Alone with the underwear in my purse and the dried mascara along my waterline.

My mind wanders to Mikhail’s room. His bed. His hand over mine, twice the size, a dusting of dark hair on his scarred knuckles, rings on his fingers. His lips near my ear, his voice graveled and deep, his accent thickening as the night went on, telling me to stay with him like I was in danger of floating away from my own body.

Nope. Absolutely not. We are not thinking about that in a stranger’s car.

Except I am. Of course I am.

I press my knees together so hard it hurts.

The driver turns down a familiar street, and the spell breaks all at once. My apartment building appears ahead of us, gray and square and aggressively normal. No gate. No marble. No men posted at the doors pretending not to be guards. Just the chipped front steps, the dirty snow along the curb, and the buzzer that only works if you hit it with the heel of your hand.

The car stops. Before I can reach for the handle, the driver is already outside, opening the door. I step onto the sidewalk.

“Thank you,” I tell him as he offers his hand. I take it, surprised by the chivalry and in need of it all at once, still shaky from dehydration or exhaustion or adrenaline.

He inclines his head. “Miss Hayes.”