Adrian
I arrange Kat on the cot with her head in the proper direction and lie down beside her.
Her words, keep me, bounce around in my head.
I want to keep her. To take her back to Chicago and fall madly in love with her while doing bad things to that hot little body of hers.
“Why were you living in England, Kat?”
“I already told you. My father sent me away.”
“But after prep school. Was it your choice to stay in England?”
She rolls into me, resting her head on my shoulder, sliding her hand up my t-shirt to run her nails through the hair on my chest. “Yes.”
“Why? You said you don’t have friends there.”
She doesn’t answer, which makes me suspect there is an actual reason.
My heart thuds with an unpleasant notion. “Was it for a guy?”
Her light laughter relieves the jealous choke-hold on my throat. “No. I stayed for pottery.”
“What?”
“My last year of prep school they got a new art teacher. She talked them into buying a pottery wheel and a kiln, and she taught us all how to throw pots. I fell in love.”
“You love pottery.” I don’t know why I find that so satisfying. I guess I’m just happy that she has something. Something she loves. Something to work for. To believe in.
That’s all any of us really need, isn’t it?
For the past year, mine has been finding Nadia and then revenge. The ideas consumed me. Changed me. Made me into a hard, brutal man.
What if I’d found something so sweet and simple and perfect as pottery? Some art form that trained me into a meditative flow. Something that allowed me to get quiet without brooding. To make beauty with my hands instead of enact violence?
Maybe that’s what Nadia needs to heal herself.
Kat lifts her head to look at me. “Are you laughing?”
“Never,” I promise. “Why would I laugh? I love that for you.”
She lets out a muffled giggle. “You do?” Her smile is so sweet and pretty it hurts. It makes me stupid and reckless. To think things I have no business thinking.
“Absolutely. It’s the best thing I’ve heard in a long time. What do you like about it?”
She considers, nibbling on the inside of her lower lip. “In order to throw a pot, you have to really get centered. I mean, your thumb has to be centered in the clay, but that means you have to center, as well.”
“Are we talking spiritually? Or Physically?”
She lights up, like she’s pleased I asked. “Both. That’s the thing!” She leans up on one hand and looks down at me. “I feel like I’ve been unbalanced my whole life. Like I don’t know what center to orbit around. I was clay plopped on the wrong place on the wheel.”
I brush my thumb over her nipple because her breasts are too beautiful to ignore, especially when one is in my face.
“And now you’ve found your center?”
“Well, no, not exactly. But I’m trying to figure it out. Clay showed me what I was missingthat I was off my axis. Why I always felt out of control and searching for something.”
“So how do you center now, Kateryna?”
She draws in a breath. “I don’t know. But I feel closest when I’m working with clay. Like getting it centered helps me to do the same.”
I try to push back the desire to become her center. To provide the axis she orbits around. To never let her flounder or falter again. She needs to find that for herself. It’s selfish and foolish to think I could ever be that for anyone. Still, I want to be it for her.
“If I got to keep you, Kateryna, I would build you an art studio,” I murmur. “And I’d install a kiln right in the building for you. I wouldn’t ever care that you were covered in clay dust every time I got you naked.”
She traces her fingernail around my flat nipple, returning the favor. “You would?”
“Would it be enough?”
“Enough for what?”
“To keep you happy? Mean sex and a pottery studio.”
She picks up the pillow beside my head and smacks my face with it. “We don’t have mean sex.” The goofy smile on her face makes my stomach squirm. She has moon eyes. Beautiful blue night sky against the moon eyes. “Yes. It would be enough.”
She looks like she’s in love.
I want her to be in love.
Which is horrible and cruel of me. Because I’m going to break her heart to savage pieces. Grind it to a pulp.
“What do you do, Adrian? When you’re not out seeking revenge against my father?”
“I am engineer,” I tell her. “I was trained as mechanical engineer and worked on a ship in Russia until my sister” I look past her, swallowing the rest of my words.
“Tell me,” she urges. “I should know. If you’re going to kill my father over it, I should really know.”
“No,” I tell her. “You don’t need to know. And I don’t want to even try to justify my actions to you. You don’t need to try to forgive me. Okay? You don’t need to forgive it.”
She blinks rapidly and swallows. “So, you’re an engineer,” she says softly, going back to the only part of the conversation that’s palatable.
“I work as a structural engineer now. For construction projects.” That was how Ravil put me to work remodeling his building floor by floor. I indulge in the fantasy for a moment. That Ravil gave me a space in the building to turn into Kat’s pottery studio.
“I would only eat from pottery you made,” I say aloud. “If I kept you. No other dishes.”
She gives me the moon eyes again. “My stuff sucks. It’s all irregular and too thick.”
“I don’t care. I would only eat off your plates.”
She chuckles and traces one of my eyebrows with the pad of her index finger.
“I might” I stop. Am I really going to say this? No. Once those words leave my mouth, I can’t take them back. I can’t tell her that there might be another way. That I might forego killing Leon Poval if I have enough proof and his location to send him to jail instead. Now that I know this ship was probably used to transport slaves to the U. S., I might be able to get something solid on him. And Ravil has a connection with the FBI now. A son of a bratva member. But it’s such a long shot.
“What?”
I shake my head. “Nyet. Nothing.”
“I think he killed my mother,” she blurts.
Aw, fuck. She’s trying to figure out how to forgive me. It can’t be done. Shouldn’t be done. She should hate me for the rest of her life. It’s what I deserve.
“I know, malyshka.”
Her eyes shine with tears. Her fingers flutter to her braids, and she twitches them nervously. “You know? Like, for sure?”
I shake my head. “I could tell you thought so. And…you’re probably right. I’m so sorry.”
She erupts into a hollow sob and drops her head down onto my chest. I pull her into my body and rub her back, holding her tightly.
How can I possibly consider going on? Tearing apart this girl who is already so broken?
This won’t make Nadia whole.
All it does is dim another girl’s light.
I kiss her head, my heart trampled and bleeding right along with hers.