You Are Here (25 page)

Lucie sat down on one of the kitchen stools and leaned forward onto the island. I had sat in that exact spot for nearly an hour while I waited for her, arguing with myself over whether I should have let myself in. It didn’t seem to matter to her, but then again, she’d seemed eager to deny any warning signs about me so far. Unfortunately, reality was about to dawn. And that bombshell would not be ignorable.

“Roman didn’t like it when I talked about my previews,” she said, breaking the quiet stalemate. “He called them a disease. I heard him say once that it was my father’s fault.”

I kept my mouth shut, antsy but grateful to let her talk.

“I’m not sure if I’ve always had them. I vaguely recall a couple of dreams when I was little, but my father was the only one who seemed to believe me. Regardless, I don’t think they were incredibly frequent.”

“Tell me about the attack.” My heart was already pumping fast, but it managed to speed up. I sucked in a fast, deep breath.

She slid off the stool and went to sit in the red chair.

“I can’t see his face.” It sounded as if her throat was constricting around the words. “The killer.”

My trigger finger twitched.

“How about his voice?” I could hardly hear for the rush of blood in my ears.

“Not really. It’s strange. Most of that memory feels like I’m underwater.”

I turned and watched her fidget from my spot in the kitchen. She performed outwardly what I had learned to hide internally. “What can you tell me about it?”

Huddled in her chair, she looked over her shoulder at me. There were questions circling her. Maybe even accusations. It unnerved me. It was also possible that my paranoia was exacerbated by stress.

Her cheek pressed into the red fabric of the chair, she was silent for a while. Unable to keep still any longer, I walked into the living room and sat on the sofa across from her. She started talking then and hardly stopped to take a breath.

“We all were gagged, hands bound behind our backs. The guy was tall. Dark hair.”

She glanced at me and quickly looked away. My stomach twisted as I felt sweat gather at the base of my hairline.

“He shot them point-blank as I watched,” she continued, her voice evening out as she numbed herself. “I remember throwing up and choking because of the gag in my mouth. And at some point, he taunted me saying things about my”—she gasped a difficult breath—“traitor of a father and how he was going to cut his heart out of his chest.”

My eyes burned. I couldn’t allow myself to blink.

“Your father?”

“Yeah, um, Roman and Jude worked for my mother’s family back in Moscow. Mama sent me to the States with them. She was supposed to follow us, but she never came. I don’t know why.”

Her mother’s family had money. What did she say the name was? Novikov? My teeth ground together. I tried to jog loose more information.

“What was your mother’s name? Her family. Do you remember?”

She huffed, irritated, but tried to answer anyway. “Um, I—” She looked up at me as if she couldn’t believe she’d retrieved the memory. “Magda. Her name was Magda Grigorovich.”

Fucking hell.

At one point in history, her family was the most powerful in the entirety of the goddamn Russian mafia.

Lucie

Rough

“Why does the past feel so heavy, so tiring?” I let the question spill out in the air between us. “There was some good stuff. It wasn’t all this attack.”

I listened to him inhale. “The good stuff weighs more,” he said with a heavy sigh and sad, dark eyes. “That’s why it’s easier to run away if you leave it behind. But we still waste ourselves trying to change the impossible, only to end up broken and worthless.”

His words were painful as they filtered through my skin and into my bones. “Grey, you are not—”

“Sorry,” he said too quickly for me to finish my chastisement. “We’re not talking about me. You probably need to rest and, ya know, sort through all this stuff.”

He jumped up from his seat and smoothed the wrinkles on his shirt as he walked toward the front hallway. Confused, it took me a moment before I jumped up and chased after him.

“Stay,” I nearly shouted. I grabbed the back of his shirt and tugged. “Please?”

He stopped but took too long to turn around. I skittered around him and pressed my back to the door as if blocking him.

“I really don’t want to be alone right now,” I said, sounding as desperate as he looked, though perhaps for different reasons. I couldn’t figure out the reason for the dark cloud surrounding him, but its presence pricked my skin. His chest rose and fell quickly as he took in my body with his eyes. When we finally locked eyes, the look in his made me feel like prey.

He slammed into me with his body and I gasped. When he took my lips, the kiss was overpowering and possessive but needy at the same time. I was taken aback, but even more so, it turned me on. Sex was the perfect distraction from my anxiety. And given the handful of experience I’d had with Grey, I knew it would be consuming.

I sucked along his pout, teasing with my teeth. Anything but the present moment was pushed out of mind. He made an almost whine-like sound, but it quickly slid into a hum. The vibrations shimmied down his throat into his chest, deepening the sound and reverberating into my limbs. His touch was, at once, everything.

I kissed him harder, again and again. I jumped up, wrapped my legs around his hips, and locked my feet at his back. I grasped his shoulders, unsatisfied. I didn’t feel close enough.

“I … fuck, I need …,” he said, and the words sounded like they were shredded by rage.

“I know, I know,” I mumbled, fraught with knowledge I wanted reburied. At least, temporarily. “Take it.”

“Lucie—”

“Take it!”

“Fuck, I …” His words were hot, spreading out against my cheeks.

I didn’t understand the torment in his voice. If I let myself think about it, I knew it would frighten me and I couldn’t handle that right now. Instead, I focused on the physical—the light scruff across his chin, slow ripples of muscles sliding under the skin beneath my fingers, teeth scraping my tongue as we kissed. Desperate hands slipped over my ass, holding me firm against him, and continued to climb until his fingers tangled in my hair. He gripped and tugged. An avalanche of tiny stings sprinkled along my scalp and I yelped. He kissed my chin and then my throat while the pads of each finger repented, kneading away the effect of their sin.

Even as I nipped his lips, Grey commanded the kiss, capturing every sound I made. He devoured me mercilessly, taking every inch of me with his palms, his skin, his teeth, his lips.

My heart sparked, unleashing a flood of emotion. Tears rushed silently over my cheeks, wetting his in turn. My skin burned as the world tilted and pitched.

My blouse was torn, shoes were dropped unceremoniously, buttons ripped from their hold to go ticking across the hardwood, and the soft thump of a belt buckle nestled in denim as it hit the floor. He lifted me, flinging one leg over his elbow as he pressed me back into the door. I blinked and was painfully filled with him.

I cried out, but he didn’t stop. His palms were rough against my breasts and skin. I scratched and bit, pushed back hard against him. The way we moved was animalistic—angry, even. My head knocked against the door in the frenzy. I gripped him tightly, my nails digging in his shoulders and my teeth sinking into the soft skin at the base of his neck. Our moans and grunts were mumbled promises and threats, all blanketed under heavy breaths. My louder than usual exclamation and his vehement cursing streak punctuated our respective releases.

Panting violently, Grey dropped slowly to his knees as we slid down the door. His feet were bound at his ankles by his jeans. I settled on his thighs. Our foreheads pressed together as we struggled to slow our breathing and pounding hearts. I lifted my eyes to see his, but they were closed. I wasn’t sure what we were taking out on each other, but it was something yet to be said. I sent apologetic palms over the scratches on his skin, flushed and soft with sweat. An unexpected whimper broke from deep in his chest as if his soul had cried out. His fingers curled around the tops of my shoulders and squeezed.

“I don’t know,” he said, remorseful. “I didn’t mean … I just needed to feel you.”

“Baby, we’re both going through things that are pretty fucked up.” I grabbed his chin firmly and forced him to look at me. “I need you, too. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

He took a deep breath, holding my gaze. His eyes were so clear, I watched the turbulence inside him thunder. “Every time I’ve touched you, kissed you, held you … every single moment I’ve been inside you, I knew it would never be enough. It will never. Be. Enough.”

As I dropped my hand from his face, I watched him apologize to me over and over without once saying a word.

Lucie

Dizzy

I pulled him close, trying to avoid crying again. Drained of my energy, my body clearly disagreed and the emotion trickled over my cheeks anyway.

“That’s okay,” I whispered in his ear. “You’ll just have to stay with me forever, then.”

He pushed back, a small, forced smile on his lips as he moved to stand. My stomach twisted when he said nothing. We silently pulled our clothes together and dressed. The air was charged, and it quickly closed around me. I felt a tremor shake my body. My mind began to race as the floodgates reopened.

All
of them.

The familiar tickle of electricity began to paralyze my muscles and I fell back against the door dreading what I was about to see. I took a deep breath and let my eyes close.

Grey sets down his bag in the front hall and keys on the counter. His expression is guilty.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he says. “It was the last thing I wanted.”

“Are you okay?” Grey asked as the scene evaporated.

Dizziness tripped me a little, so I steadied myself and walked hurriedly down the hall. He followed close.

“Of course.” What little I saw had made me incredibly nervous.

“Lucie, was that a preview?”

I stopped at the counter, envisioning my keys sitting where he would apparently put them. My fingers ghosted the spot. I braced myself.

“Do you want to leave?”

He stilled, his face going slack. “What did you see?”

“I asked you a question.”

He pursed his lips. “No,” he said in a voice raw with honesty. “I don’t. I may not know what I’m doing, but I don’t want to leave.”

“Then why did I see you give me back my spare keys?”

He swallowed almost audibly. He shook his head though his eyes remained on mine. “You lent me the keys while I went to talk with Drew. This is your place and those are your keys. It doesn’t mean I want to leave.”

I would have felt mollified but for the undercurrent of anxiety. Maybe that was just the barrage of memory coupled with the disconcerting feeling in the preview. I continued into the living room and leaned an elbow on the back of the red chair. Images assailed me behind my eyelids, warping and mangling various pieces of my life together. My body seemed to twitch and jerk like abandoned circuits surging with extraneous voltage. My throat constricted and I choked on the overwhelming need to forget again.

He touched my shoulder tentatively and I felt my shoulders droop. He turned me and pulled me into his arms. We stood there for a while. Something was still off, but at least he seemed calmer now. My body sagged into his unmoving, solid frame. I rose and fell with his chest. Ushering tranquility into my lungs and bleeding out the worry—at least for the moment, I breathed with him. Against his neck, I absorbed the warmth of his skin, pressing my lips against his pulse. His heart under my palm was steady.

“I’m not sure I can process all this. I have all these pieces to reassemble,” I said.

“You don’t have to—not all at once. Or maybe you should call,” he paused and practically coughed her name, “Vivi.”

“I will. Can you just sit with me for a while? Maybe talk some more when I need to?”

“Okay.” Calmer or not, he kept that cool edge.

I wanted to ask if it had anything to do with his conversation with Drew. I assumed it had. I mean, how could it not affect him? At the moment, however, I was too selfish for his attentions and eager to exorcise my own unease.

“I didn’t want to remember.” The confession felt so good as it tumbled out. I was so relieved, my knees buckled. Grey simply lifted me up and enfolded me in his arms as he settled us onto the sofa. This time I surrendered when the tears came.

I closed my eyes to know his acceptance, to drift into recollection and consider why the restoration of my memory in any capacity felt like a burden instead of a relief. I tried to conjure the buoyant moments. Laughing. Smiling. There were some, but nothing that purported an overtone of a joyous life. My “parents” were never incredibly affectionate with me. Until now, that hadn’t occurred to me as something I missed.

I spoke a little more of what came to mind, but so often I felt as if I couldn’t find the words. When I could, they occurred to me in Russian first. Grey only asked for clarification on a few things—names, dates, locations.

“I need some tea,” I declared a bit later. My voice sounded frog-like from all the crying. I moved around the kitchen, preparing a cup of warm comfort and feeling a little like a robot with rusty circuits. When I saw Grey watching me, I paused. “Want some?”

He shook his head minutely while chewing on his lip.

“Are you sure?”

He stayed on the couch, throwing glances over his shoulder at the windows. When I returned, we just sat together for a while, not saying much. I drank my tea. The sound of children on the street was muted through the glass, under the whirr of air conditioning. I was overwhelmed by the continual ebb and flow of my life rushing forward to be reexamined, even though I still felt distant from it all.

“Tell me,” I said as I set the empty mug on the side table.

“About?” Guilt. His voice was steeped in it.