I freeze for a second, scanning the empty room. Fear crawls down my spine.
“I’m at the gym… how do you know that I’m not home?” I say slowly, my voice coming out softer than I’d like. I want to be big and scary and angry, but my words shrivel in the small, cold fear leaking out of my heart. The silence that follows stalls my breath, each individual hair on my arm rising to attention.
“Why are you at the gym in the middle of the night, Cassandra? That’s not safe! Someone could have followed you or?—”
“I’m a grown adult, Mikhail, and contrary to what happened that night at your club, I’m actually highly capable of taking care of myself. Now tell me exactly how you know I’m not home!”
A weighted silence settles over the line.
“That night you slept over. I was worried about you, so I shared your location with you when I gave you my contact.”
Well, now the anger is ready to come roaring out.
“That is a total invasion of my privacy, Mikhail!” I roar through the phone.
“I know, Menace, and I’m sorry. But I just kept thinking about it all happening again—you, somewhere in trouble without me to help.” He pauses. “I was worried about you.”
My feet weave me into a path of angry paces, even as a small, weak corner of my heart does a little jump at the thought of someone being worried about me. Wanting to protect me.
Jesus, can you tell I’m damaged?
“Why are you at the gym, Cassandra? It’s the middle of the night,” Mikhail says.
My fucking God, the audacity of this man and his endless questions.
“Nah uh. We are not just brushing past this. You don’t get to ask me incredibly invasive questions and track my location without me knowing. This is so fucked.” I rasp out, exasperated.
“Okay,” he says, simply. It infuriates me even more.
“And why are you the one who always gets to ask the questions? You tell me little to nothing about yourself, but you get to demand all of this information out of me?”
“Fine. What would you like to know?” he says in a flat tone.
I swear my brain short-circuits on the spot.
“What do you do for work?” I decided on.
Another fucking pause.
“I run businesses,” he responds calmly.
“Don’t play that shit with me, Mikhail. I remember how we met. Tell me what you do,” I say, more slowly this time.
He sighs on his end of the call.”I don’t think it’s best if we get into that right now.”
I laugh, callous and angry.
“For someone who stalks my location in the middle of the night and thinks he has the right to question me about it, you can’t even answer one fucking question.” I seethe, hissing out a breath.
“Cassandra—”
“Goodnight, Mikhail,” I reply, before ending the call. I slip my headphones back on and open up the privacy settings on my phone, shutting off all forms of location tracking.
I lift up my weights, my energy renewed with blazing anger.
Mikhail:
I’m sorry.
