She shakes her head. “I’ll be fine. I just need to take it easy.”
“Okay, well, I’m going to raid my parents’ fridge for breakfast before I run to get the parts I need. Anything you want? Besides blueberries, of course.”
She grins. “You remembered.”
“Of course I did. You got me to eat fruit. It’s a miracle.”
A soft giggle escapes her lips. “I don’t think I’m very hungry right now.” She yawns. “Maybe coffee. Two-and-a-half milks and one sweetener, please.”
“Two-and-a-half milks and one sweetener.”
“Yes, please.”
“Right.” I repeat it twice before I give up and write it down on a scrap of paper, knowing I’ll screw it up. I doubt we even have sweetener in the cupboard.
On impulse, I cross the attic floor to the bed and lean down to lay a kiss on her forehead. Her fingers graze my throat as I pull away.
“Hey, Jesse?”
“Yeah?”
She smiles up at me. Even with a bashed-up face, she’s beautiful. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
“I’ll be back soon.” I lay a second quick kiss, this time on her cheek, and then I leave.
My parents’ house is eerily quiet when I step through the sliding door. My dad’s already gone—not surprising. He’s normally at his desk at the main office in Bend by six a.m., even when he goes in on weekends. I know Amber’s asleep in her room, because her red Mini is parked in the driveway. She won’t be up until close to dinnertime.
I set the coffee to brew and start rifling through the cupboards and fridge, looking for something that can pass for breakfast. After my grandma died, we operated under very much a “fend for yourself” environment of packaged foods and order-in for a few years, my parents struggling to adjust without the extra help. Thanks to those days, I’ve grown partial to frozen pizza pockets for breakfast, a habit I haven’t been able to break.
My mom started making more of an effort around the house about the same time that I hit rock bottom, my bad choice in friends getting me detained for questioning, with attempted murder charges looming. I didn’t do it, of course. I tried to stop it. But for those twenty-four hours, while waiting for Tommy—a mouthy jock who didn’t deserve to get stabbed—to pull through, while my supposed friends were both pointing fingers at me, my mom sat in this very kitchen, a constant flow of tears streaming down her cheeks. Asking over and over again where she went wrong with her son.
That’s what Amber told me, anyway.
Now all I see in the fridge is fresh fruit and vegetables, some high-end cheeses, yogurt, and weird-colored bread. Fresh steaks ready for the grill. Alex would know what to do with all this stuff. Not that I’d ever let her cook this weekend.
Even though she said she wasn’t hungry, I load a plate up with some fruit and cheese and yogurt. Miraculously, I find sweetener in the cupboard, which I add after making her coffee. I move fast. The last thing I want is to discover that Amber has suddenly become a light sleeper and have her appear in the kitchen.
When I climb the stairs to my attic apartment, I discover Alex cocooned in that wool blanket. Asleep again. I set everything down on the nightstand next to her and then, grabbing my keys and wallet, I head out, locking the door behind me.
It’s almost four o’clock when I hear the water running upstairs.
She slept all day. I know because after I raced out to Bend and back with a trunk full of parts, I kept checking in on her. With me, normally, hours go unnoticed when I’m in my garage. With this car sitting in front of me, I’d expect those hours to turn into days. But I watched that damn clock on the wall all day long, creeping up the stairs several times to make sure she was okay.
She says she’s fine and I can’t see anything besides what’s on her face, but I’m still worried. How long can a person sleep?
“Alex?” I take my time climbing the steps, my footfalls extra heavy so she hears me coming. When I get to the top, she’s standing in front of the small side window, an awed smile brightening her injured face.
“It’s even more beautiful out here than I imagined.”
I come up behind her, probably too close but I can’t help myself, and look out the window to see what she sees—snow-capped mountain peaks, the sky smeared with shades of pink and purple from the setting sun. “You should see it here in the summer.”
“And look!” She points to the old woman’s two horses, grazing on a bale of hay by the barn. “I wish I could go see them.”
“Maybe another time.” I very gently brush the strands of hair off her face. “Feeling better, Sleeping Beauty?”
She dips her head to hide the coy, crooked smile. “Starting to. I’m going to take a bath, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t. It’s nothing special in there, though, Alex.” Definitely not like her house. Or an eight-hundred-dollar-a-night hotel room.
“It’s perfect. Really. I just need some towels and I can’t reach them. Can you help me?”
“Right.” The storage in there is odd, the only cupboards running along the high side and eight feet up. I follow her in and then maneuver around her in the tight space to dig out the fresh towels. “What’s that?” I ask, watching her sprinkle white granules into the bath.
“Epsom salts,” she explains with a shrug. “It helps.”
Sounds like she’s been here before, even though she says she hasn’t. Gritting my teeth, because she doesn’t need to hear my complaints—her body is complaining enough right now as it is—I hand her the towels and then slip out around her.
She shuts the running water off. “Did you get any work done on your car?” I glance back to see the door open a sliver and her slowly easing her shirt up over her head. Numerous black bruises—as if from fingers digging into flesh—mark her back and waist.
“Yeah, brakes and a good tune-up,” I mutter, yanking the fitted bedsheet over the mattress. I hate knowing she was with him at all, but to see proof like that? I keep my head down and make the rest of the bed, listening to the sound of her na**d body slip into the water.
Since seeing her cowering in the kitchen yesterday, I haven’t had a single thought about her besides getting her somewhere safe. Not in the long car ride here, not lying in bed next to her last night, not even while in the shower.
Now, though . . . I can’t claim that anymore. Which means I probably need to get the hell out of here. “Hey, I’m going to head back downstairs to work on—”
Her phone begins ringing.
A splash of water sounds. Alex, sitting up. “Is that him?”
I check the screen. “Unknown.”
There’s a long pause and then, “That’s him. Can you please bring it to me?” The sound of the shower rings scraping against the metal rod tells me she’s drawing the curtain. Closed or open, I can’t say. Either way, it’s a see-through material.
I push through the doorway, trying to keep my eyes up and toward the glow from the small window above the tub until I’m close enough to focus on just her face.
She reaches out to take the phone from me, splashing drops of water on my arm. “Stay?” Bright reddish-brown eyes plead with me.
With a nod, I sit down on the floor, my back pressed against the outside of the tub. And I listen.
“Hello?”
The harsh tone blasts through from the other end and, though I can’t pick up the words, I know it’s him.
“Yes . . . No . . . Yes . . . I’m fine.” He talks for a minute straight and she simply listens. “Okay, Viktor . . . Okay . . . Love you too . . .”
My stomach clenches.
“Yes, in a few days. Good night.” She hangs up. The phone appears in front of me, her hand extended over my shoulder. “Can you please take it before I drop it in the bath?”
I do, her wet fingers slipping over mine in the process. “What’d he want?”
“Nothing. Just checking in, I guess.” She sighs. “I was just beginning to relax, too.”
I turn, just far enough to see her from the neck up. “Still glad you came?”
She manages a smile. “Yes.”
Although I shouldn’t bring it up, I can’t help it. “Do you regret the night in the hotel?”
I don’t move as she shifts closer to me, until her head rests on the edge of the tub, just inches from mine. “I don’t regret that night, Jesse, and I never will. I just felt incredibly guilty for doing it because I knew it was wrong. It’s . . . When I married Viktor, I truly believed it was forever. I never thought I would end up being this person who sleeps with another man. And yet, here I am, only four years later. A cheating wife.”
“An abused wife, who’s been cheated on countless times herself, and who was hurt and angry,” I correct her.
“That’s an excuse, not a reason.” A hollow-sounding laugh escapes her lips. “I guess we’re all capable of doing bad things. I was just being self-righteous, thinking I might be above that.”
This hollow, cynical version of Alex that I’m seeing now . . . this is what a guy like Viktor has made her into. “Do you still feel guilty?”
She toys with the collar on my flannel shirt, her wet fingers grazing my neck, sending shivers down my back. “I still know it’s wrong.”
And I know that if I don’t leave right now, I’m liable to do something to take things too far. And I also know that she’ll let me.
“I can’t remember the last time I had a pizza guy deliver to my door,” Alex says between mouthfuls. “And I’ve definitely never sat on the floor like this.”
I smile, propping up the layer of pillows around her back for her. I found some in the old cedar chest and then grabbed a bunch from my mom’s living room. “They don’t normally deliver this far, but they do it for us. Amber and I used to sit around the fireplace like this when we were little kids, in the winter. We had these long metal pokers, and we’d melt marshmallows and then make S’mores.”
“Hmm . . . S’mores. I’ve heard about those.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Seriously?”
She giggles, tucking a strand of melted cheese into her mouth. “My mom stepped off a plane from Russia when she was twenty-four, to begin working sixteen-hour days, seven days a week. I wasn’t raised on Western culture’s traditions.” She rests her head back to share my oversized pillow, the smell of her freshly washed hair erasing my appetite for pizza.
“What were you raised on?”
A faint smile touches her lips. “She used to tell me fairy tales before bed. About fences made of human bones and witches that killed little ducklings.” Her face scrunches up. “Horrible fairy tales. They gave me nightmares.”
It’s not funny but I can’t help laughing, which gets her laughing, which gets her wincing and touching the side of her face.
I slip my arm under her shoulders and pull her to my chest.
“I’m going to leave him, Jesse. I’m going to tell him that I know about the cheating and it’s not working out. I don’t want his money. Maybe if I agree to just walk away empty-handed, he’ll let me?”
Somehow, I doubt it. “How do you think his ego will take it?”
“I don’t know.” She tips her head back, her big eyes peering up at me. “I’m kind of scared, but . . . I figure, what can he do, really?”
That depends. The more I think about Viktor and his dealings with stolen cars, the more worried I get for Alex. I don’t know much about that world, but I have to think he’s got more at stake than chump change. Otherwise, why would the risk be worth it? “What do you know about Viktor’s business dealings? The non-legit ones.”
She purses her lips, as if afraid to admit that she has even suspected anything below-board. “Viktor keeps that stuff to himself and I don’t ask. I’ve met Rust. I’ve met some of his other business partners. Most of them are Russian. We even hosted a garden party last summer and had them over, with their wives. I cooked this whole big spread of things that Viktor used to have growing up in St. Petersburg. He grew up in a wealthy home. Anyway, they all seemed nice.” She rolls her eyes. “Although we went through a lot of vodka that night.” She pauses. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wanted to make sure you don’t know anything that he doesn’t want to get out.”
She shakes her head. “No . . . For once, I’m happy to be the oblivious wife.”
And so am I. Because the oblivious wife is the harmless wife. “So, where are you thinking you’re going to go?”
“I don’t know yet.” I look down at her face to see the flames dance within her eyes as she stares intently at the woodstove. “This should be easy, right? People pick up and start over at thirty and forty years old, with kids and everything. I’m only twenty-two. I should be able to chalk this up to a bad mistake of my youth and move on. But I don’t know where to begin. I have nothing besides what he’s given me.”