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We met a few weeks ago at one of the subway stations and he shared his dinner with me. I gave him half of my precious beer and we somehow became best friends.
:')
We’ve stuck around for each other, so when one is sleeping, the other takes guard so no one touches us. When there are no beds available, we sit beside each other, I lay my head on his shoulder, and we sleep like that.
“I know. Are you…coming with me?” “Absolutely, woman. We ride together and die together.” “That sounds like some motorcycle club’s slogan.” “I stole it. Roll with it.”
You’re a nobody. A pest everyone stomps on without looking twice. A nameless, forgettable face no one remembers down the line. Be grateful that I’m giving you this offer. Say thank you and go with it.” I raise my hand and slap him across the face so hard, pain bursts over my palm and shoots down my arm.
You go girl
once. I want to see Larry again, but that will probably put him in danger with these men, so I opt not to do it.
Kolya, who’s my age, is the more diplomatic one—the talker, the pacifier, who may or may not carry a bomb with him at all times in case those pacifying methods don’t work.
As long as I don’t consider myself his wife and can separate reality from the role I’m playing, everything will be fine. And most importantly, I’ll survive.
Come to think of it, I probably had the nightmare because I didn’t sleep drunk. I don’t want to find out what will happen if I stay like this. I’m not ready to experience it.
My silence is my only defense mechanism against him, my last piece of armor, and if I let him take that, too, then I’m well and truly screwed. My identity will be erased and I’ll merely be a washed-out version of his wife.
Fuck him. He won’t break me. My name is Winter Cavanaugh. I’m not Lia Volkov and I’m no way in hell this madman’s wife. I chant that in my head in preparation for what’s to come. To say I’m not scared would be a lie, but my dignity keeps me upright.
Honestly? Respect.
“Tell me to fuck you,” he rasps. “Fuck me,” I murmur. “But you won’t be hearing anything.”
I’ve always thought they were the most unflattering part about me. Adrian, however, keeps studying them as if they’re pieces of art from a museum. My teeth loosen a little from my lip at the look in his eyes. Holy shit. I know he thinks he’s looking at his wife, and not me, but how lucky can a woman be to have a man look at her that way? Like he’ll destroy the world as long as she stays safe?
His joy is infectious and I break down in laughter with him. And just like that, my day is off to the best start possible.
Jeremy and I have lunch together and I ask Yan to come with us. After living on the streets for so long, I’ve learned to share my meals, especially with people I feel at ease with. I wish Larry was around, and since I have no way to reach him, I somehow pretend that Yan is his replacement.
Sometimes, I lie in still in the morning and feel like a slut for taking another woman’s role and orgasming on the bed she slept in for years. I feel like an imposter and a horrible human being.
Holy shit. Alcohol.
Sigh
“How about you?” he whispers. “Me?” “Do you look at me?” “I have no reason to look at you.” “No?” “No. I’m sorry if you think I’m your wife, but I’m not.” “Yes, you are, Lia.” “My name is Winter.”
“Shut up.” “No! You’ll listen, because I’m not just some blow-up doll who’s playing the sick role of your dead wife. I’m human. I have feelings. I feel.”
That’s how I ended up on the streets. That’s how I became a shadow of a person, homeless, a nobody. So no, Adrian. I’m not Lia. My name and identity are the last things I have, so don’t you dare take those away, too.”
Any hope I had for him to call me by my name shatters and disperses in the background. It hurts worse than anything he’s done to me.
Because at this moment, I realize that he’ll never see me. That, just like in the ballet, I’m only a shadow of someone else. An insignificant nobody.
When it takes me more than a second to get on the desk, Adrian loops his hands around my waist, lifts me up, and sets me on it.
Hot.
I wait for the numbness to take me over, because that’s what I need right now. If I’m numb, I won’t feel the sharp edges digging into my heart. If I’m numb, I won’t hate a dead woman because she still lives through me. Because she’s still alive for Adrian while I don’t exist.
My gaze slides to his, and I hope it’s as dead as I feel. I hope he sees the cruelty of what he’s doing to me, of the way he’s erasing my identity. But would he even care if that were the case? Would he take a second of his precious time to think that the woman he brought from the street feels? He doesn’t.
Adrian downs it, and before I can protest, he lets the glass drop to the table as the fingers of his other hand wrap around my throat and lift my jaw up. His lips meet mine and I recognize the stringent taste of alcohol. It’s slight, but it’s enough to go to my head. Actually, no. It’s not the alcohol that goes to my head. It’s a different taste altogether. Adrian’s.
I’m so in tune with him that my body feels like it’s fusing with his. I get drunk on him, not the alcohol.
he asks quietly, “Are you ever going to let me hear your voice?” I release his arm to stare up at him, at the slight furrow in his brow, at the disappointment I can taste off his posture. “Are you ever going to call me Winter?” I murmur back. He shakes his head once. I want to cry. I want to fall off the chair and become one with the carpet. But instead, I say, “Then you’ll never hear my voice, Adrian. Because it’s mine, not Lia’s.”
Adrian wraps an arm around my waist and leans his chin on my shoulder. The gesture is new and feels intimate, even more than his fingers inside me, and that causes me to shudder.
Instead of throwing them in the trash or hiding them in one of his drawers, Adrian shoves them in his pants pocket.
Adrian meets my gaze with a small smile that leaves me breathless. Holy shit. It’s not even a full smile, but I feel like I’m being attacked.
“Do you need Mommy too, Papa?” Adrian pauses before he says calmly, assertively, “I do.”
I should think that he only needs me because he wants his daily sick fix of punishing me, but the look in his eyes says something entirely different. His eyes that I always thought were uncomfortable are now suffocating, trying to beat words into me that I don’t want to listen to.
Adrian helps me put my coat on and buttons it to the very top before he loops a scarf around my throat. Then he does the same for Jeremy and lifts him in his arms.
Adrian’s lips pull in a small smile. Holy hell. I’m glad he doesn’t smile too often because I’d go into cardiac arrest or something.
I purse my lips at him, but he merely reaches to wrap the scarf around my neck before he gets to work.
A figure stares at me from the window. Her face is as pale as her nightgown, but her eyes are a raging blue as she stares at me. My eyes. The ghost Jeremy mentioned is staring at me and she looks ready to kill me.
I remain seated in front of the dresser while Adrian is kneeling before me. He’s fucking kneeling,
He’s just finished showering me. Since that day in his office, he’s been open about caring for me. He lathered my whole body with soap and even washed my hair. At one point, my legs couldn’t carry me and I sat on the floor of the shower. Adrian knelt behind me and finished with my hair. His hands were all over me—on my shoulders, my back, between my legs, and running over the birth scar. It was too much.
Yeah i couldn't handle that either girl-
He’s now in black sweatpants and no shirt.
Hot.
Lia was one lucky woman. Or maybe it was the opposite, considering the savage ways he touches me—her. I wonder how it felt to have a man as hard as Adrian care for her like this, as if she was his world. Was she tingling like me, or did she consider it suffocating as I should?
She’s lost somewhere I can’t reach. Somewhere that she can keep herself hidden away from me under lock and key. Nothing will bring her out. Except maybe… “Winter,” I call cautiously, to which she sucks in a deep breath, gasping and coughing as the air hits her lungs.
I doubt she remembers them. I do, though. The gurgling, choking sounds she makes is like my custom-made hell. Sometimes, I hear it even when I’m awake and I have to check on the cameras in case it’s happening in real time.
“I’m not her. And the more you compare me to her, the more I feel myself being erased, forgotten. I don’t want to be forgotten.”
“Then what do you want?” “Winter. For once, just call me Winter. Please.” I did and I hated it. I hated it so much that I want to pour bleach down my fucking throat. “No.” “Please…” Tears cascade down her cheeks. “Please don’t erase me. Please, Adrian.” “Don’t beg me for something like that. You’re Lia. Get used to it.” A sob tears from her throat,
Okay but WHY
“I wish I’d never met you.” My lips brush against her forehead. “I’ll meet you over and over again if I have to.”
He still tends to me—puts ointment on my cut lip, blow-dries my hair, wraps a scarf around my neck when he thinks it’s cold. But he doesn’t touch me sexually. No punishment. No orgasms. Nothing.
I put my chest to his so they wouldn’t be able to kill him and used all my energy to pull him inside with me. I can tell they don’t want me dead or they would’ve shot me, too, so I used my body as a shield against Yan.
If I could survive that, I can survive this. Because there’s no way in hell I’d leave Yan behind. He took those bullets for me. He’s dying because of me.
I’ve become addicted to him instead of alcohol.
A throaty moan fills the air and I realize it’s mine. Adrian pauses and a pleased groan spills from his lips. “Fuck, Lenochka… Do you know how many times I’ve thought about hearing your sexy throaty voice?”
