It feels impossibly strange, staying in Maya’s family’s old house. Even though Maya and Nik were the related ones, she always felt like a sister to me.
We fell out of contact a few years ago when I left to go to school, and I know better than to think it was accidental. No one in the business thought it was right for me to step out of the mafia life like it was a pair of uncomfortable shoes. No one but my father, who, like my mother had, wanted me to have a better, safer life.
Didn’t quite work out that way, did it?When I heard Maya disappeared a few months back, it took everything in me not to go looking. It didn’t matter that I’d built a life for myself. That I had a boyfriend, a gallery I co-owned with a college friend, or a blossoming painting career. I would have dropped it all in an instant to find my best friend, estranged as she might have been by that point.
But my dad was adamant. He knew that to protect me, I had to stay in my world—my edgeless, mundane world—and let Maya live or die in hers.
I still regret it to this day, not going after her. I regret a lot of things.
This house, beautiful as it is, feels haunted without her. Is she alive somewhere? Did she escape? Was she taken?
Will I ever know?
Nik is already in bed, shirt off and hair pushed idly back from his forehead. The sight of him sets my nerves blazing. In a different world, I’d be melting. I’d be sliding beneath the covers, climbing on top of him, tasting him like I’ve always wanted to—like I’ve never had the courage to.
But that, more than ever before, is only a fantasy.
I know that whatever happens between us tonight will be stained with distrust, betrayal, and obligation. Every inch of this horrible, sham-marriage has to be.
Heart still hammering, I quietly get into bed beside him. He’s on his phone, eyes narrowed and jaw set. His father thought it best we spend a few ‘honeymoon’ weeks in solitude.
Code for, I’m sure, letting my very visible wounds heal and devoting some time to getting me pregnant. Solitude is a bit of a misnomer too. I’m sure Anton has a perimeter set up, maybe far away and out of sight, to ensure I don’t escape his or his son’s clutches.
But he should know better—anything I do affects my father, who’s still in their captivity. I’m not stupid. And as much as I dislike that I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.
“So,” I say softly. Nik shuts off his phone and lies back.
“So?” he asks after a minute, impatient.
My knees are trembling. I press them together to make them stop. “Your dad… I mean, the whole point of this…”
Nik looks at me, brow furrowed, eyes bright with offense. “Don’t, Zane.”
Heat rises to my face. “I just mean—”
“I know what you mean.” There’s a soft, barely controlled tone of fury in his deep voice. “I didn’t consent to this bullshit marriage either, you know.”
I stare at him, understanding slowly dawning on me.
He doesn’t want to have sex.
Not like this, or not now, at least. Relief washes over me, a cold pulse. Beneath it there’s a touch of something else—offense? Embarrassment? I don’t expect Nik to want me. But still, we were friends for so long. Practically our whole lives. His prickly disinterest, bordering on disgust, cuts me deeper than I’d ever admit.
“I know,” I finally say, quietly. “I’m just trying to do this right, so no one else gets hurt.”
The anger in his face softens, if just a little. “I know.”
I sink down into the bed. The autumn chill clings to the walls and flows from the closed window. Somewhere, a wolf howls. “Do you remember what our moms used to say when we were here?”
He turns off the light, plunging us into darkness.
My sense of him becomes electric. He’s so close I can feel his heat, the rhythm of his breathing. Yet he doesn’t touch me.
“Yeah,” he finally says. “‘I love you to the bottom of the lake.’”
Somehow, inexplicably, I wish he were saying it to me. I wish he meant it. I wish all of this were different.
“Goodnight,” I whisper to him after a moment, and am answered by silence.
