Oleg
I don’t get out of bed other than to eat a little the next day. Or the day after.
Not even on the third day.
I can’t face what I lost. I had Story. She was mine for two short weeks. She let me hold her. Make love to her. Bring her home.
She was going to move in with me. For the first time in years, I had a reason to get up in the morning. Things felt possible again. I was willing to stretch myself. Start interacting with my environment. Join the living.
There was such a lightness around me. I didn’t hate my body for betraying me. I found new ways to communicate. But most importantly, I got to be around Story. My obsession. I had her to myself—all her minutes. All her hours. She sang and played her guitar in my bed. Stood in my shower. Let me love her.
Loved me back.
She said so.
But she didn’t choose us. She didn’t choose me. I caused her too much stress, and she opted out. I can’t blame her. Not for a second. I want to punch myself in my own face for hurting her. For making her cry. For causing her more trauma.
Wednesday morning, Nikolai and Dima come into my room without knocking. I’m on my back in the center of the bed. “So what the fuck happened?” Nikolai demands.
I ignore him, staring at the ceiling.
“This place stinks. You have to get up and take a shower, mudak. And come out and eat something.”
I keep ignoring him.
“I’m guessing Story broke up with you?”
I sit up, my hands curling into fists. I’m suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to punch my brothers—something I’ve never done.
Nikolai and Dima seem to realize it because they step back in unison. “I’m sorry.” Nikolai holds his hands up. They both know my fists are as lethal as any gun.
“I do not want to fuck with you, Oleg,” Nikolai says. “We just want to maybe talk it through. See if we can help.”
I shake my head. There is no help. Not for me and Story.
Despite my refusal of their offer to assist, they both sit down on the foot of the bed.
Now I really want to kill them.
“What scared her?” Dima asks. “The danger?”
I glare at him. He tosses the iPad over to me.
I growl, but suddenly the need to discuss Story becomes a fresh addiction. Like talking about her will bring here back.
The drama, I type.
Nikolai cocks his head. “Hmm.” He sounds doubtful, like he’s questioning my answer.
“Of course you know her way better than I do, but I’m not sure that fits. I mean, if she couldn’t handle the drama, she would’ve called the cops the minute she found you shot in the back of her van, right?”
“Da. To me, it almost seems the opposite,” Dima agrees. “What did she tell Sasha? She has a high tolerance for chaos. She didn’t even freak over getting shot at on the roof. I mean, the girl can really roll with things.” He says it appreciatively, and I’m partly pleased and partly infuriated with his admiration.
Panic starts to shiver deep in the pit of my stomach. Do I not even understand why she left me? Was it really me she couldn’t handle?
Nikolai seems to guess at my fear because he says, “There’s no question she loves you. I haven’t seen anyone that torn apart as when she thought you’d gone to your death.”
“Maybe Maxim when he thought Sasha was dead,” Dima counters, “But yeah. She was a hot mess.”
A hot mess.
“So, to me, it seems more like it was about you leaving. She absorbed all the rest of the crazy shit that went down without much of a complaint,” Nikolai says.
Me leaving. That strikes a chord somewhere.
Story had told me she couldn’t rely on the people in her life. That she’d had a lot of love from her family but no stability.
That must be why she said she always left relationships. Maybe she’s the type who leaves before she gets close. Before she can be abandoned or let down again.
She’d liked that I was steady. I showed up week after week. She could count on me.
And so by leaving, I did the one thing she was afraid of. I proved myself unreliable. As capable of wounding her as the other people closest to her.
I betrayed Story. Abandoned her.
Fuck.
I didn’t just poke her wound, I stabbed her in it. After she’d told me how scary it was to rely on someone.
Gospodi.
I thought I’d turned myself into Skal’pel’ for her and left her money for a new start, but was it any kind of gift worth receiving? A bag of cash and another abandonment?
It was no gift at all. Story’s the type who’d rather risk her own life and stay by my side. She’d already proven that to me. And I made her sacrifice mean nothing.
“What?” Nikolai demands.
I type, I abandoned her when she needed me to be her rock.
“Fuuuuuuck,” Dima says after he reads it.
“So you have to show her that you’re still her rock,” Nikolai advises.
I hold my hands out to ask how?
“Tell her. Keep going to her show. I wouldn’t get in her face too much—you don’t want to disrespect her wishes—but prove you’re not going anywhere. Not ever again. And communicate. I seriously feel like shit that we didn’t get to know you until Story moves in. I don’t know why we didn’t try harder to draw you out of your shell. I mean, fuck. We could’ve learned sign language a long time ago.”
“Definitely,” Dima concurs. “Hell, maybe we could even get you a speech therapist. I’ve been doing some research, and it sounds like they could teach you new ways to talk.”
I want to weep with gratitude at the flicker of hope the twins sparked—not about talking but about winning back Story. I stand, and when the twins also stand, I pull them in for a handshake and man-hug, thumping them each on the back.
“Oh. Okay. Wow. You must feel better,” Dima says, chuckling. “How can I help?”
I shake my head. I already know what I’m going to do. And it’s going to work. It may be a long game, but I’m willing to play it.
I’ll play it until the day I die if I have to.
I’m Story’s rock, and she’s going to know it and believe it and feel it right down into her bones.
I love her, and I will never abandon her again.
Chapter 16
Story
“Story? Hey, it’s Mom.”
The warning bells all go off at once at the sound of my mom’s voice. It radiates with the heaviness of depression.
“Mom, are you okay?”
“Uh… I’ve been better. Sam and I broke up.”
Tears spear my eyes, not for my mom but my own self-pity kicking into gear. Like, seriously? Do I have to deal with my mom’s breakup right now when I haven’t even managed my own yet?
“Can you come over? I don’t want to be alone.”
Blinking back tears, I shove my feet into my boots and pick up my keys. “Okay, Mom. I’ll come right now. Are you at home?”
“Um… yeah. I’m at home.” She sounds lost.
I have to breathe through the spike of fear that accompanies all of my mom’s episodes. The fact that she reached out is good. Getting her help early prevents the really damaging lows. “I’m heading over now.”