ChapterTwenty-One
Soft chatter filled the café and filtered through Lily’s senses, interrupting her concentration on the Hit It draft loaded on her laptop. It had been Natalia’s idea to get out of the apartment, but now that they were situated with their lattes and laptops, Lily couldn’t focus. The air-conditioning rattled. The steam wand screamed. And there was so much damned chatter.
With a deep exhale, Lily closed her laptop and leveled her stare on Natalia. Big brown eyes peeped up from over a purple laptop.
“Not feeling Hit It today?” Natalia asked.
Lily shrugged. “Just distracted. I don’t know. Maybe I should have stayed home.” She glanced outside through the large window and watched the cars and people zooming by. Everyone was going about their day. The world didn’t stop turning just because she was stuck. Behind her eyes, her mind replayed every moment from the second Rachel called her up to the front of the gym on Monday. What if she hadn’t gone outside with him? What if she’d turned and walked away? After all, did he really deserve a conversation?
Natalia shut her laptop and took a long sip of her latte. “Didyou leave your apartment Tuesday after Kieran dropped you off?”
“No, but—”
“And did you leave your apartment yesterday other than for therapy?”
Lily glowered. “No.”
“There you have it.” Natalia set her coffee cup down with a satisfied smirk. “If you’re not gonna pull yourself out of your head, you best believe I’m gonna do it for you.”
A flicker of warmth sparked in her chest. Yes, Natalia was there for her. So were Jack, Alex and Ilya. Even Seb had spent the last few days texting her unhinged memes. Then there was Kieran. He didn’t say much in his check-in texts, but he’d ordered a delivery of crepes from her favorite twenty-four-hour breakfast place last night and tacos the night before that.
“On the topic of therapy,” Natalia continued. “How was it?”
“Good, I guess. I mostly just angry vented.”
“Cause you’re pissed at Vov?”
Lily sank back in her seat and shrugged. “More pissed at myself. Like, I keep replaying everything I could’ve done differently, and I’m so fucking annoyed that I took all those self-defense classes and didn’t even sock him once.”
Natalia tapped her chin with one perfectly manicured nail. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Vov tracks you down like some creepy cyber-stalker. He assaults you at your place of work. And you’re mad at…yourself? Like, when I say it back, you hear how stupid it sounds, right?”
Lily rolled her eyes. “You and my therapist would get along.”
“She thinks you’re being dumb, too?”
“She’s much more professional than you, thank you very much.” Lily picked up the straw wrapper from her coffee stirrer and twisted it around her finger, making loops over and over. “She called me replaying it and analyzing it and trying to explain it as ‘intellectualizing.’ She thinks I do it to avoid feeling my feelings.” Lily shrugged and bent the wrapper until it snapped. “I’m not doing it on purpose. I just wanna make it make sense.”
“Okay, but it’s not going to.” Natalia reached across their small table and placed her hand atop Lily’s. “You can’t make sense of an insane situation. And Vovik is insane. And I know you loved him. Iknow. And he had a shit childhood and his dad beat on him and everything sucked. That never, ever gave him an excuse to take it out on you.”
“I know,” Lily whispered.
“Yeah?” Natalia squeezed her hand. “I never thought I’d hear you stop making excuses for him.”
A year ago, she probably wouldn’t have. But lots of people, herself included, had bad childhoods. They didn’t then weaponize that against their loved ones. “I think Kieran helped me see it’s a choice.”
Natalia’s brows furrowed with concern. “Did his dad…?”
Lily nodded and leaned back. She wrapped her hands around her latte, letting the warmth seeping through give her strength. “His dad was awful, but Kieran never took it out on anyone other than his dad. Vovik saw his dad beating on his mom and decided it was okay. Kieran saw his dad hurting his wife and kids and decided to become a fighter and teach self-defense classes.”
Seconds ticked by in silence as Natalia mulled that information over behind the rolling of her lips. “Are you sure you’re okay with messing around with him knowing he has a violent past?”
Kieran wasn’t violent, though. There was some anger there, especially where his concern for his siblings came in, but hewasn’t violent. He was calm. He was in control of his body and his mind. When her own violent past came knocking, he didn’t lash out and attack it. He held her.
Kieran was safe.
She nodded, more to herself than to Natalia. “I’m okay with it. I trust him. If anything, I wish he’d open up to me more. I’d like tobemore.”
“Why not tell him?” Natalia asked behind a sip of her coffee.
