Page 77 of Breaking Away

And she’s working on a computer screen in the dark, sitting on a kitchen bar stool, unaware I’m approaching behind to watch.

She’s editing photos. Not slowly, but with military precision. Whatever program she’s using has a whole sidebar of tools she’s switching between, faster than I can follow.

It’s like watching a painter in warp speed apply brush strokes where you doubt the direction they’re going, but then feel like a complete idiot once they finish because it ends up being brilliant.

She’s not just good. It’s gone way beyond that.

In five minutes, ten photos transform. Kavi crops and adjusts color fearlessly.

And the photos themselves…

She’s going too fast. It’s a birthday party, butfuckif it’s not more than that. People. Celebration. Opening up. Rawness.

And I thought her drawings in high school were fucking impressive.

I rub a spot over my chest, frowning. Inside me grows a strange desire to print her work out. Frame it. Put it up. I’m leaning in closer when I see it.

A photo comes up of an old man covering his face. His cheeks are too red. Somehow I hear the hiccuping in my ears. The smell of acrid liquor. The photo is so viscerally taken that it tosses me into a memory I’m not ready for.

My dad. He won’t meet my eyes. I didn’t play well that night, so he drank.

“Fuck.”

Too late I realize, I muttered the word out loud.

Kavi shrieks, falling off the bar stool.

I’m fast, but not fast enough to save her completely. Her leg bonks something, but I catch and cradle her head.

She punches me.

32

KAVI

Just my luck,I’m being kidnapped. I scream as loud as I can, fighting them off. “You can’t take me!”

“It’s me,” a rough growl of a voice claims, somehow ducking the swing of my arm.

“Who is ME?!” I shriek-ask. Whoever this person is, they’re too solid to budge. My measly punches bounce right off them. I’m gathering myself mentally to go for the eyeballs when this rugged shadow man gives me his name.

“Dmitri,” he grunts. “It’s Lokhov.”

Oh.

I settle. We’re still in the dark, so I can’t see his expression when I hiss out, “Why are you kidnapping me?”

“I’m not.”

Isn’t he? Instead of putting me down, I’m lifted into his arms, carried away. He walks, apparently with enough spatial memory to get us into the living room without knocking anything over. Gently, I’m lowered onto a couch. Then he disappears. When the lights flood on, I realize he had gone to turn them on.

My eyes water. I’m blinking, half-sprawled on the couch like a disoriented goddess. Not that I feel super glamorous. Darkpinkish-hair sticks out of a toppled-over bun, and I’m wearing pajamas. A silky top and shorts so short you can see dimpled thighs.

Lokhov stares, half-way across the room, frozen mid-step.

I’m frozen, too, that is—for Lokhov is naked. Not fully, but enough. I drag my teeth over my lip, trying not to hyperventilate. He’s got sweatpants on… and that’s it. No shirt. There are abs. And then there are more abs. And sure, I’ve seen muscles before. Tyler and the rest of the team packed a lot of them, but Lokhov’s body isdifferent.It’s meaner. Blunter. There’s a happy trail, thumbprint wide, arrowing into his pants.

When he finally reanimates, it doesn’t help. Lokhov stalks like caged energy. It’s careful and slow. A panther waiting behind wheat stalks. A kind of beast that you don’t expect is moving but is, inch-by-inch.

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