Page 24 of Endless Love

“Do you eat like this often?” I can’t believe that he does, given that he has plenty of money.

“No.” Ivan takes a bite of his breakfast, a sausage and cheese biscuit that makes me feel faintly queasy looking at it. It’s probably the stress and not the food itself, but I don’t like the smell. “But I like diners. The same way I like a nice pub. Simple, unassuming, good.”

I can’t help but think of the Michelin restaurant we went to on our first date. “Our first date wasn’t either of our preferences, was it?” I ask quietly, wiping a little bit of jam off of the corner of my mouth with my thumb, and reaching for a napkin. “It wasn’t real, either.”

“I wanted to impress you.” Ivan sets his sandwich down, as if he’s lost a little of his appetite with that question. “That was real.”

“Why?”

He lets out a long, slow breath, and I can tell he doesn’t have an answer. Maybe because whatever the answer would havebeen then, it isn’t true now. Or maybe he never really knew. Maybe it was a compulsion, an obsession, just like the rest of it.

A wave of tiredness that has nothing to do with the lack of sleep washes over me, and I lose what little remains of my appetite, too. Ivan starts the car, and I crumple up the remainder of the biscuit and the wrapper, dropping them into the bag as he pulls back out onto the highway.

Halfway through the day, we stop for another fast-food lunch and fuel. I can feel the difference in how I’m eating; I feel sleepy and lethargic, and I drift off in the car after a while, the monotony of the road lulling me into sleep despite the fact that we could be being chased by the Bratva, or the FBI, or both, right now. They’re not here right now, and that’s enough for me to fall asleep, exhausted.

I wake up a little while later when Ivan pulls into another gas station, the slowing of the car waking me. I go in with him this time, and I feel him watching me as the clerk standing behind the counter tries to make small talk. I glance over at Ivan, wondering if he’s jealous. There’s nothing between us now—and there is, all at the same time. Whatever there was has been irreparably broken, not least of which because I have no idea if there was ever anything real at all, but there’s still something there. For me, it’s desire and anger all twisted up together, and for Ivan?—

It’s not jealousy that I think I see in his face, though. It looks like concern. And I don’t understand it until later that evening, when we stop well after nightfall at another crappy motel, and we’re behind a closed and barricaded door with another bag of greasy food.

“We’re going to have to get something to dye your hair,” Ivan says bluntly, without any preamble, and I’m so startled that a french fry falls out of my hand onto the carpet.

“What?”

“We need to dye your hair. I don’t know what color.” He frowns. “It’s hard to dye hair so dark anything from a box. But we’ll have to try something?—”

“Are you going to dye yours?” I retort, still shocked just by the suggestion.

“My brothers know very clearly what I look like,” Ivan says, crumpling up his food wrappers and dropping them in the trash. There’s a heaviness to his gait as he gets up that tells me he’s still exhausted, but I’m too upset to care right now. “They don’t need to bother with descriptions. It’s bad enough that they can get information on where we’ve been just by asking about me, if we’re seen together. But they only know what you look like from pictures, and having briefly seen you. If we change how you look, they’ll be giving people a description of a woman with me that doesn’t match up. It may help throw them off.”

He sighs, sitting back down. “You’re beautiful, Charlotte. Men look at you. Men like that clerk today. If Lev walked into that gas station and described you, he would remember you.”

“I thought you were jealous.” A laugh bubbles up behind my lips, and Ivan pauses, his gaze fixed on mine in a way that sends a shiver down my spine.

“If I thought a man who could take you from me was looking at you, I’d be jealous.” There’s a rough edge to his voice that makes my skin tingle. “But it wasn’t going to be him.”

“No one can take me from you.” I wrap my arms around myself, looking away. “I’m not yours.”

The silence that follows tells me that Ivan doesn’t entirely agree with that sentiment. How he can think Iamhis, I have no idea. Not after what’s happened. But when I look up at him again, there’s that same intense expression on his face, his gaze resting on me as if he’s memorizing me for a day when I’ll no longer be sitting here in front of him.

It should make me uncomfortable. Uneasy. But instead, it makes me feel something else—a deeper, more primal feeling that I’m afraid to look at too closely. It reminds me of that moment, just a couple of days ago, when I wondered what it would be like to have a man like Ivan love me.

The way he’s looking at me now makes me wonder what it would feel like to have himpossessme, too.

Ivan stands up. “I know you don’t like it, Charlotte. Truthfully, I don’t, either. But we just need to get to Vegas.” He says that last as if he’s repeated it many times over in his head. “After that?—”

I bite my lip, still looking away. “I can’t believe this,” I say softly. “Every day, it’s something else. Some new thing I’m just supposed to be okay with. Some other huge change that makes me feel like I’m losing my grip on what few parts of myself I have left.”

Ivan looks around sharply at that, meeting my eyes again. “Charlotte.” There’s something like a plea in his voice, but I don’t have any room to care about it right now. Not when he’s the reason all of those parts are gone.

I never knew it was possible to desire someone, hate them, and care about them all at the same time. And now I wish I’d never learned.

“I need space.” It sounds ridiculous, in a hotel room this small, with one bed and another closet-sized bathroom. There’s nowhere for Ivan to go, and I can’t imagine that he’ll leave me in here alone. But to my surprise, he nods, sliding a pack of cigarettes that I’ve never seen him smoke before out of his pocket. It’s a small indication that he’s feeling as badly as I am, even though he’s doing a better job of hiding it.

“Alright.” He swallows hard, his throat moving. “I’ll be right outside.”

I blink back tears as I watch him walk out. I want to cry, but I’m worried that if I start again, I won’t stop.

Instead, I go into the bathroom, and splash cold water on my face, wishing for my face soap at home that smells like watermelon, and the velvety cream on my sink. And then I toss my jeans onto the floor and slide into bed, as the faintest whiff of cigarette smoke slides into the room from outside.

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