Page 89 of Scorch

If we were alone right now, I wonder what she’d say.

Curious, I pull out my phone.

You still pissy with me?

You make it sound like it’s my fault.

Now you’re assigning motives. For real? Okay, are you still angry?

Yes, Viktor. I am still angry. You have tagged me like I’m an animal, and you aren’t the least bit repentant. It hurts badly. It makes me think you’re no better than the vindictive asshole I ran from.

I grip my phone so hard my knuckles whiten.

I am nothing like him!

She sighs.

So you say.

I love you! He only wanted to use you

And you don’t want to use me?

of course not

You make me feel betrayed and claustrophobic

I glare at the phone, unsure of how I’m going to respond when she shoves her phone in her pocket.

Guess that conversation’s over. I’m trying to keep my head on straight, trying to see things from her perspective.

How do I make her feel free… while keeping her safe? It’s a conundrum I can’t quite get my head around.

I shake my head and don’t meet her eyes for long moments as we drive toward her family home. I’m checking in our rearview mirrors, checking my phone.

I can’t shake the feeling we’re being followed, but that’s afflicted me for so long it’s almost become routine.

“We’re almost there,” Vera says with a smile. “I’m glad you’re coming back with me, Lydia. We’ve missed you.” Nikko reaches over and tweaks an errant lock of hair. “And I suppose it isn’t that bad coming back home with my husband in tow.” She giggles to herself. “The first time I met him—which was the last time we were here together, I thought he was Jason Bourne plucked straight out of the novels, turned Russian. I didn’t know he spoke English.”

“That was intentional,” Nikko says with a smirk.

Lydia shakes her head, clearly judging Nikko. She doesn’t know the half of it.

And look how they turned out.

At least by now, she hasn’t demanded she have distance and stormed out on me, but it seems like she’s one step away from doing exactly that.

We pull up outside her home. I know it well, as our family didn’t move away from this city until my father began planting roots in The Cove. This was where her family grew up, though. What’s familiar to her.

I know the front yard is where she’d sit when her father was on her case and she needed some space. There’s a bench made of stone a good distance from the front of the house, so she could come out and be left alone for a while. Her mother’s made some nice homey adjustments since her father left because when he was home, he didn’t care for what he’d call “frivolity.”

Quite something coming from a man who had a different mistress in every major city in both America and Russia.

But I do know her little haunts in this home. She had a small area in the unfinished basement, complete with concrete floors, where she’d strike one match after another after another until her father came home or her mother caught her. They’d both stop her, but with different responses. Her mother would beg to know why, and her father would rage, throwing and breaking things, occasionally striking her.

He didn’t need to ask why. He largely was the reason why.

And way down by the creek, there was a small access point to a local state park with camping and picnic areas. She would sometimes sneak down there and make good use of the grilling stations. She never cooked food, of course.

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