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Dima: just tell me. Who was it?
Ilya: RESEARCH. GOODNIGHT. STOP TEXTING ME.
I lock the phone and throw it facedown on the mattress.
I want to fucking scream.
Instead, I drag the duvet up over myself like that might somehow smother thought if I pull it high enough. If I can’t see my problems, they can’t see me. A strategy usually reserved for toddlers and particularly stupid ostriches, but desperate times and all that shit.
The sheets are warm, and the room is dark except for the little lamp I always leave burning on my nightstand. I roll onto my side and curl in tighter, one hand tucked between my pillow and my chest. My breath warms the cotton beneath the duvet, turning my little hiding place stuffy and close. I will just stay here and forget all about black eyes.
Maybe if I sleep, I’ll wake up and this entire disaster will have been a dream. Maybe I’ll even forget what his hands feel like. Except my throat tightens at the thought, because apparently I don’t want to forget his hands. I like them. They’re nice hands. Very nice, actually.
No.
Be quiet, cancel the thought.
Be unconscious. Be nowhere. Be anything but here.
And somehow, I manage to fall asleep. It doesn’t last, though, because I’m dragged out of it by the sensation of hands clawing at me.
They’re already around my throat, locked in like they were waiting for me to wake up just so they could steal the breath I came back for. My vision slams into place in pieces: ceiling, the doodles above the bed, and him.
“You ignored me today.”
I try to swallow, and the hands don’t let me. My pulse hammers against his palms like it’s trying to apologize for me.
I blame Kento for this. After he disoriented me today in that classroom, I didn’t check my phone for a good while, mainly because I know he likes spamming me and reminding me of everything I’m trying to erase. But that’s a mistake. Anton texted me to go somewhere. By the time I saw it, I had already started texting Dimitri and Alexei about my life crisis, so I don’t even remember where he asked me to be. The message is a smear in my head.
I should have known better than to ignore it.
“I didn’t see it. Shocking concept, I know.”
He looks at me, and then my skull hits the headboard. A clean burst of pain that empties the back of my eyes.
His palm slaps over my mouth. I taste my own breath bouncing back into me. His other hand stays on my neck, thumb slotted under my jaw.
“You think you are funny, Ilya?”
I laugh into his hand. He drags me up by the throat until my shoulders leave the mattress and the headboard finds me again. He puts my head where he wants it and lets the wood do the rest. Pain blooms behind my ear. It’s nauseating. I kick once, stupidly, and he knees my hip down.
There are only two people who can manhandle me. One is Kento, and one is Anton. The difference is that I’m not scared when Kento does it. Sure, I try to fight it, but there has never been a moment where I thought he would hurt me. With Anton, it’s different. I know when he puts his hands on me, it’s to wreck me. Or maybe to kill me.
“Next time, you answer when I text.” He takes his hand off my mouth just long enough to grab my phone from the nightstand. He turns it and holds it in front of my eyes, so close the light hurts.
“Read.”
“Eat glass.”
He slams my head into the headboard again, shorter this time, a punctuation mark.
“Read,” he repeats.
“‘Come to the warehouse,’” I rasp, scanning the blur of text. “‘Don’t be late. Don’t make me look for you.’” I flick my eyes up to him, bratty on purpose.
He drops the phone on my chest and puts that hand on my ribs instead. The ones that fucker already ruined. He settles his weight there and presses until my body tries to fold around the pain. “If you ignore me, I have to put you back where I can see you.” He leans his forearm across my collarbones and cuts the air down to a thread. Then he lets a sliver of air back in, as if he’s feeding an animal by hand.
He holds me there a moment longer, just to prove he can, then eases off. “Get up,” he says. “We’re leaving.”
