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JUNE: Hey Genny, as it turns out, we can see each other a little sooner than expected. Kolya told me last night after you left that we had invites to the exact same party.
JUNE: So I’ll see you there. It was really nice talking with you by the way. That conversation was long overdue.
I read both my texts a few times over. They feel stilted and awkward, but I press Send before I can talk myself out of it. Swiping out to my text message inbox, something catches my eye. I scroll down, getting more and more worked up as I go, until I can’t help but turn and glare at Kolya.
“You bastard.”
He sighs. “What now?”
“You had someone impersonate me and text everyone I know!”
He doesn’t even bother pretending to be apologetic. “I did you a favor. Would you rather have just dropped off the face of the planet without a word to your landlord or the people you work with?”
“Don’t pretend you did this for me,” I spit at him. “You did this so that no one would sound the alarm and call the cops on your ass.”
He seems to find that amusing. “You say that like the police would be able to do a goddamn thing to a man like me.”
I can’t help but shiver at the audacity in his tone. He really believes that he’s untouchable. And who knows? Maybe he is.
“That job meant something to me,” I say coldly. “I enjoyed it.”
“Did you?”
I pull back. “I—yes. I mean, yeah, of course.”
At last, he puts his phone down and turns his full attention on me. It’s what I’ve been after since the moment we got in the car, but now that I have it, I’m not so sure I want it after all. It’s overwhelming. The way those eyes suck me in and drown me. The way that sharp chin frightens me. The way those hands, lying carefully in his lap, look so dangerous without having to do anything at all.
“You’re one of a handful of barely-paid administrative grunts slaving away for the dance theater you used to perform in,” he says. “You stayed because it was the closest you could get to the thing without actually being allowed to have it anymore. Life took dancing from you, and you’rebeggingfor it back with everything but your words. Pleading. Crying at the doorstep, asking for fifteen more minutes onstage, pretty please with a cherry on top.”
Thud. Thud. Thud.Every sentence lands like a slap across my face. I open my mouth and close it a dozen times without so much as a single word coming out. What can you say to a savage, unvarnished truth like that?
Ouch,I guess.
Before I can get myself together, Kolya glances out of the black tinted windows. “We’re here.” He climbs out without bothering to ask if I’m ready.
I sit there by myself for a few moments. Long enough that my door is opened by the chauffeur. He helps me out by my elbow. I squint into the sun for a minute before the blurriness resolves itself and I realize I’m looking across an ocean of tarmac at a sleek private jet, humming in wait for us.
The chauffeur bows and disappears. When he whisks the car away, he reveals Kolya towering there, eyes ice-cold.
“This way,” he says with a thin ripple of sarcasm as he jerks his chin toward the only plane in sight. “That one’s ours.”
Again, he doesn’t wait for me. He just charges off impatiently, like I’m the inconvenience in his life instead of the other way around.
I follow in his footsteps, but when I get to the staircase, I pause. I wring my hands with uncertainty. My leg is mostly healed from my fall the other day, though I still get the odd twinge of pain if I move too fast.
That’s not what’s slowing me, though. It’s my knee—the old knee, the first hurt. It’s aching in a way that’s almost more than physical. More than bone-deep. Like the next step I’m taking is meaningful in a way that I need to stop and recognize.
It hurt that same way when I knelt at Adrian’s gravestone.
“Are you okay?” Kolya asks from the top of the staircase.
“Fine.”
I’m hoping he just leaves it there. But then his outstretched hand materializes in front of my face. I stare at the calluses lined along his pink palm, and I wonder how he earned each one.
Without thinking, I slip my hand into his—and just like that, the pain recedes. I mount the first step, leaning on him more than I need to. Another step. Another. He helps me up the rest of the flight of stairs and into the belly of the plane.
He guides me down the aisle, the air surging with the scent of jasmine and leather, then coaxes me into one seat and takes the seat opposite. The window beckons, huge and inviting, but Kolya keeps his eyes fixed on me.
