Page 20 of Deviant Need

“No.”

“Then I don’t get it.” He runs a hand over his buzzcut, frustrated. “You’re being weird, and you won’t tell me why, and I don’t understand what I did wrong.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. That’s the problem.”

“What does that even mean?”

Shaking my head, I turn toward the door. “Go to sleep, Mikhail.”

“Danya, wait⁠—”

“We can talk tomorrow when you’re sober.”

“Why won’t you just tell me what’s wrong?”

Because you won’t remember this conversation in the morning anyway...

I walk out before he can grab me again, closing the door behind me. His voice follows me down the hallway, frustrated and confused. I don’t answer. Just head into my room and close the door behind me, sinking onto my bed and pulling the blanket over myself.

I feel like the most selfish person on this planet. He didn’t do anything wrong. He went out, had fun, came home. That’s it. And here I am acting like he committed some crime by existing near other people.

I need to pull away this time, do it for real instead of telling myself I will and then caving the second he needs me. He can sleep with whoever he wants. I know that. I have no claim on him, no right to feel this way about any of it.

Rolling onto my side, I stare at the wall. Maybe I should hook up with someone, go out next weekend and find some guy at a bar, get it over with. I’m twenty-three, and the only kiss I’ve ever had was from someone who was just being kind, completely clueless about what it did to me. And I’ve spent years pining after him because of it.

He didn’t sleep with anyone tonight. That doesn’t change the fact that he will eventually, probably next week or the week after that, or the fact that he’ll come home and curl up with me after, seeking comfort from the one person who can’t give it to him without bleeding out in the process.

I need distance. Real distance this time, not the fake kind where I tell myself I’m pulling away and then end up in his bed three hours later because he had a bad day or couldn’t sleep or just wanted me there. I need to stop doing this to myself before it kills me.

Pressing my face into the pillow, I try to ignore the ache in my heart that won’t go away.

Staring down at my laptop, I try to focus on the code in front of me, but the numbers and lines blur together until they’re incomprehensible. “Entombed” by Deftones blasts through my AirPods, and I sigh, rubbing my face with both palms.

So, I might have been slightly overdramatic and took it out on Mikhail when he came home, even though he didn’t technically do anything wrong. But I couldn’t help it. It just hurts too much to keep pretending everything’s fine when it’s not.

The thing is, my brilliant master plan to find someone else and get it over with has a fatal flaw. I can’t do it without connection. I’ve tried convincing myself I could and spent the entire morning running through scenarios in my head, but the truth is I’m not wired that way.

I jerk off, obviously. I’m twenty-three with a working dick. But it takes everything in me not to think of Mikhail while I do it, and even then, I fail most of the time.

This is exactly why I’ve come up with an actual plan. A real one this time, not the half-formed idea I had last night about hooking up with strangers. I’m a planner anyway. This is what I do.

Step one: avoid Mikhail. Hence why I’m sitting in Yulian’s office right now instead of at home where we usually work side by side. Mikhail’s sulking anyway, hasn’t left his room since he stumbled in yesterday morning. Probably nursing the worst hangover of his life and confused about why I was being weird.

Step two: sign up to a dating app. Try to find someone else to focus on. Build an actual connection with them, take my time, maybe eventually want them enough to sleep with them. It’s a long shot considering I’ve been in love with Mikhail since I was fifteen, but I have to try something.

Step three: throw myself into finding my biological family. The DNA test should come back soon, and when it does, I can obsess over that instead of obsessing over him.

It’s a solid plan. Completely achievable if I actually stick to it this time instead of caving the second Mikhail looks at me with those blue eyes and asks me to stay.

I just have to commit.

My phone buzzes on the desk, and I glance at the screen.

Mik:

where are you

My stomach twists. Silencing the notification, I turn back to my laptop, forcing myself to focus on the encryption protocol I’m supposed to be debugging. The code still looks like gibberish, but I stare at it anyway, willing it to make sense.