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Sanity told me, if I went there with him, it would be with the full force of a tsunami, and no amount of swimming would keep me afloat.
If the kiss was a chess game, I was the bespectacled novice. And he was the cheater who wiped the board clean and fucked me on top of it.
Darkness cast the room in shadow, though a golden sheen surrounded Mila’s sleeping form like a halo. The strange glow could be a trick of the light, but the night was a moonless one, meaning there wasn’t any fucking light. With a sense of annoyance, I realized I needed to get my vision checked.
My conscience was having a party—with tea and biscuits and pathetic deflating balloons. It was uncomfortable as fuck. Especially because I could still taste her in my mouth, feel her fingers in my hair, and hear the sound of her breathy moans. All of it burrowed beneath my skin, settling something heavy in my chest. It felt like . . . cancer.
In Moscow, cartoon hearts danced in my eyes when I saw him. Now, in this wintery Russian fortress, the sight of him created a sharp ache in my chest that threatened to rip me in half.
His gaze narrowed. “You pull a trigger on me, and I can’t even leave you out in the cold for fifteen fucking minutes. So you tell me, Mila, who cares more here?”
My heart felt so heavy, it compelled me to frame his face with my hands and skim my lips against his scar. The soft action contrasted his rough grip holding me in place. He tensed like he wasn’t sure what I was doing; like he’d never been touched this way before in his life; like he was expecting pain to follow. His simple reaction was my undoing.
“Moya. Vse moya.” Mine. All mine. Inked fingers braced on the wall beside my own. Suds and skin and a raven called Nevermore. My chest held a brittle paper heart knowing, soon, this man would slip through my fingers like another lost Lenore . . .
I’d been inside her enough times to memorize every inch of her body. My curiosity on that front should be satisfied. Though satisfaction was the feeling of a job well done; not the driving need to do it again and again until I died.
Tear-stained cheeks. Glistening eyes. Legs I would die for. She was so beautiful, the sight punched me in the gut. A train car had exploded like a scene in an action movie, but when pills dropped from the sky, all I saw was the memory of Mila dressed in yellow, standing on cracked pavement catching snowflakes in her hand.
“You shouldn’t have heard any of that.” I knew he was speaking about what Nadia had told me. I swallowed. “Because I’m too weak to handle it?” He shackled my wrists above my head. “Because you’re so sweet you fucking glow.” His eyes darkened. “And I’ll kill anyone who tries to take that light from you.”
“Why the fuck would you do that, Mila?” he growled with a deep rasp. “WHY?” “You’re not immortal,” I whispered, my throat thick. “I didn’t want you to die.” He stared at me with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and something else indiscernible. “You don’t get to sacrifice yourself for me.” He clenched his teeth. “You DON’T get to die for me, kotyonok.” His eyes crucified me. “If anyone dies between us, it will be ME. Do you understand?”
“You would survive without me. You would move on.” His tone roughened. “I can’t imagine a world where you and all your fucking yellow doesn’t exist. So if you die, you’ll take me with you. Your sacrifice would mean nothing, kotyonok. NOTHING.”
you know that poetry…
“I never knew I had a favorite color before until she yelled yellow…”
“Proshchay . . .” The last thing I heard before the anesthesia took me under was, “Fuck your proshchay, Mila.”
“You hit him,” I challenged. “That was necessary to regain my concentration.” “Your concentration of watching me sleep.” “Yes,” he growled.
A machine began to beep, alerting me to the fact a nurse would be in here soon, but I didn’t expect a dog. Khaos jumped on the bed and lay down beside me. Sobbing, I ran my hand through his fur, hugged him tight, and said, “It isn’t proshchay . . .”
im fucking SOBBING!!!!!!!
The sickly-sweet girl with a soft heart and love of yellow had somehow filled a blank space inside me. And I couldn’t handle the thought of her anywhere else but with me.
I knew then I’d follow this man to the fiery gates of hell if he just held my hand.
That night, I got married in Paris with a raven on my finger. Though, in my heart, I knew this man had never been my Nevermore. He was my forever.
