“Mix-ups in your life seem common.” His eyes flick to the doors we went out for Alexei to fight, which I called a mix-up. “How long without a working cell phone? Weeks?” Trick demands. Every time I answer a question, the next comes immediately.
A crease forms between his wife’s brows. She looks over her shoulder at him and then back at me.
This tricky man’s blue eyes never leave my face as he waits for an answer.
“Yes, some weeks.” I look away from his sharp gaze, my eyes landing on the bride. “This wedding dress you wear, you never told to me how you came to choose it.” I’m grasping for conversation because I can feel all the eyes upon me and, for some reason, it feels dangerous.
My cheeks flush, and the heat moves down to my neck and chest. I’m grateful that Alexei’s brother’s wife helps by talking about how much she likes dark colors more than light ones and how on important occasions, people should choose to be themselves. Even her engagement diamond is blue instead of white, she tells me.
“How long have you been in America, Natalia?” This again comes from Trick.
“About four months. No, nearly five.”
“How old are you?”
I pinch a piece of hair between my fingers, playing with it so my nervous fingers have some occupation. The scrutiny is not good.
“You don’t need to answer,” Alexei says to me in Russian. To Trick, he speaks in English. “What’s with the questions?”
The other man doesn’t look troubled by Alexei’s dark expression. And his tone is unmoved by worry when he says, “I’m curious.”
It strikes me as strange that the other man doesn’t look uneasy after having seen Alexei get angry over another man paying too much attention to me. Maybe this Trick thinks because he’s not smiling or offering to help me that Alexei won’t be bothered? Except I can tell that Alexei is annoyed by the questions. Next to me, his body is rigid.
“I heard you had to borrow a pair of shoes, Natalia. Why was that?” Trick says.
“I forget to bring.”
“Strange thing for a woman to forget. Did you have to pack and leave New York in a hurry?”
The man is relentless, and he knows something. The underground club is illegal. My whole life in America is illegal. Could he get Alexei and me arrested?
The other man who came outside when Alexei was fighting with Aiden Callahan joins us at the table. My gaze darts to Alexei’s.
Alexei stands and picks up a pair of shot glasses. “Before you got here, we were making some toasts.” He extends the glasses.
The darker-haired man takes a glass, but Trick shakes his head. “I’m not drinking tonight.”
“Or any night for the next few months,” his friend says with a smirk.
“It wasn’t my idea,” Laurelyn says quickly. “And it’s a celebration. You can join in the toasts, Scott.”
“I’m good.”
She reaches a hand up and squeezes his. That draws Trick’s gaze down to her face. “You should,” she says with a nod.
Trick takes the shot glass. “What are we toasting to?”
Alexei leans down to get a shot for himself and to give one to me. “To taking the best of what life’s got to offer.”
We clink glasses and all drink. This is my third vodka shot in minutes, and not my only alcohol of the night. My head swims. At least it doesn’t bother me to sit anymore.
I’m a little unsteady when Alexei pulls my chair out and suggests we dance. I’m happy to escape the conversations, which is ironic because for the past few months all I wished for was to have more American people to talk to.
On the dance floor, Alexei pulls me against him and propels us in a circle.
“The one called Trick, what do you think he knows?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
