She was so damn brave. I still remember how thin and cold and bony her hand felt in mine when we sat together waiting for her chemo treatments. How she’d let me distract her and make her smile to pretend none of it was happening. The way she trembled when we finally talked about the end.
That was when I promised her I’d never love another. Never replace her. She was my first, and she’d be my last.
She had to face death at seventeen-seventeen! It’s not too much for me to keep the promise I made to her.
I hear movement upstairs. Natasha is awake.
I washed my clothes last night, and now I leave my clean boxer shorts on the kitchen counter with the chocolate. I won’t survive Natasha running around bare-assed, and so help me, if she lets Nikolai see her that way, I will have to kill him.
Or something.
I head into the office to return to the only thing that has ever made sense to me-cyber-stalking and hacking.
Behind a screen, I am still God. Even if I don’t know my head from ass in this cabin.
I listen to Natasha. I hear her speaking softly to Nikolai, the sweet healer, checking in on her patient first. Then I hear sounds from the kitchen. The pop of the toaster oven. The opening and closing of the refrigerator.
I try not to picture the way she looked last night, standing on her tiptoes, that short shirt pulled up above her waist showing me the full moon of her pale ass.
That pale ass I turned red.
Fuck. Did I force her? There was something harsh and punitive to what went down, but it was consensual…. Wasn’t it? I was sure last night, but after barely sleeping because I couldn’t stop replaying what happened, it all feels fuzzy now.
She’s overly agreeable. The type you could easily take advantage of.
I mean, I know I got her off. She was sopping wet. She came around my fingers over and over again.
But is she sorry today? Does she feel used? Taken advantage of? Forced?
For once, the screen holds no answers for me. I can’t cyberstalk her to get an answer to this question. To make sure she’s okay.
Dammit.
I push back from my chair and get up.
I find her sitting at the long farm table. She’s still in the fishing t-shirt-braless, of course, because heaven holds no mercy on me. I can’t tell whether she’s wearing my boxers or not, but a quick glance at the counter shows me they’re gone.
“Thanks for the chocolates.” Her gaze is warm and soft on me.
I shrug, not taking a seat. “I didn’t know what kind you like, so I bought them all.”
Her lips twitch in amusement. “That was good thinking. I would’ve hit anything last night, but I’ll start with the Heath bar. I’ll eat them all, for sure. The Hershey bar will probably be low on my list. I’m actually a chocolate snob. I go for the gourmet eighty-five percent dark chocolate kind of bars.”
“Gourmet bars first, then Heath. Got it.” Dammit, what am I doing? I’m not her boyfriend. I won’t be buying her more chocolates. “I didn’t know you had a thing for chocolate.”
“You don’t know a lot of things about me.”
Not true.
At least, I probably know far more than she thinks. But I hadn’t gone so far as to stalk her grocery choices.
“It’s my stress go-to, and, um, this is stressful.” She lifts her hands with a wry scrunch of her nose. It’s adorable.
For some reason, my heart beats like it’s pumping blood for two people right now. “Natasha, I just, ah…”
She lays her slice of buttered toast down on her plate and looks up at me expectantly.
“Are you okay? After last night? I mean…” Blyad’. I plow a hand through my hair. “Did you feel forced?”
“Well, I think that was kind of the game we were playing, right?”
Bozhe moi, this girl. So calm and cool about it. So freaking mature.
Relief washes over me. Then my brain goes into overdrive. Is that a game she knows? One she’s played before? Fuck, I don’t even want to know the answer because I want to kill any guy who got rough with her in the past. And I was rough. I probably left marks on her ass spanking her with that spoon.
“Yeah. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Her gaze drops, and she starts scraping at the polish on her fingernail-her nervous tell.
My stomach bottoms out like I’m on the dip of a rollercoaster. I will karate chop my own throat if I traumatized this girl.
“I’m good. I mean, I liked it.” My relief is short-lived because she goes on, “I’m less okay with you calling it a mistake every time. That makes me kind of queasy.”
Queasy. Dammit. That sounds like shame. Or humiliation. Nothing she deserves. I have to fix this fuck-up.
I stride over to her and pull the chair beside her out. She makes eye contact when I sink into it. “Natasha…”
I don’t know what to say. How do I explain without betraying Alyona?
“I, uh, I liked it, too. I like you… a lot. But I can’t be in a relationship. So I don’t want to lead you on that way. That’s the only reason I said it was a mistake.”
She nods slowly, studying me like she’s examining my story for cracks.
“I may think it was a mistake, but I’m also not sorry,” I admit.
She works to swallow and turns her face back to her plate, picking up her toast.
I take the hint and get up. As I walk toward the office, I hear her say softly, “I’m not sorry, either.”
Her words fall over my head and shoulders like one of those nets that drops from the trees. It’s light, seemingly harmless, but when it closes around me, it traps me into new thoughts.
Thoughts of more.
Wondering if it could happen again without the giant ship of my entire identity sinking to the bottom of the ocean.