Page 55 of Craving Dahlia

“None of your business.” He keeps walking, striding out of the library. Deep down, I know following him is only going to make this all worse, but I can’t help myself. He’s making me angry, and I don’t like being dismissed like this.

“Alek!”

“Fuck off,” he snarls, heading straight for the front door. I barge after him, striding down the steps, but I can’t keep up. I barely make it down the steps and out into the courtyard before I hear the roar of his motorcycle, and see him tearing down the front drive.

“Shit,” I breathe, grabbing my phone before I can stop myself. The smart thing to do would be to go back inside, and wait for him to calm down and come home. The even smarter thing to do would be to forget about this altogether, accept that Alek is never going to open up to me about any of this, and leave it all entirely alone.

Instead, I text the number Evelyn gave me for one of the drivers in case I needed to go somewhere, and ask them to bring a car around.

“Where do you need to go?” the driver asks when he gets out to open the door for me, and I see a glint of confusion in his eyes. I don’t have anyone with me for security, and it’s late.

“There’s a bar in—I’m not sure where it is, exactly. Salty Sal’s. I need to go there.”

The driver’s eyebrow rises. I have no idea if that’s where Alek is going, but I overheard him talking to Dimitri about it once, like it was a place he goes regularly. It’s my best and only guess—I can’t trawl every bar in New York City trying to find him. If he’s even going to a bar.

He could be going to see someone else.That thought twists my stomach, making me feel like I want to throw up. “Now,” I say urgently, and the driver frowns. I can see him struggling between the fact that this seems off—probably something he might get in trouble for doing—and the fact that he’s technically supposed to do what I ask, the same as he is for Dimitri or Evelyn or Alek.

“Alright,” he says finally, opening the door for me. I slip inside, my heart pounding, as the driver gets in and pulls away from the mansion.

What am I doing?Alek isn’t going to be happy that I’m following him. But I’m too angry, too tired of being ignored and shoved aside, kept in the dark. I’m tired of being treated like an annoyance, like a fly to be swatted away. This is my life too, and Alek is now inescapably a part of it.

The driver doesn’t say anything, but I can tell by the glimpse of his face that I get in the rear-view mirror that he’s unsure about where we’re headed, as we start to get closer. The neighborhood we’re in definitely looks run-down, and when wepull up in front of our destination, I can tell that it’s the very definition of a dive bar.

“Just wait. I don’t think I’ll be too long.” I go to open the door, not bothering to wait for the driver to come around and open it for me, and I hear him protest as I do.

“Are you sure?—”

“I’ll be fine. Just pull around somewhere that you can park, and wait.” I get out, the heels of my boots clicking against the uneven concrete as I head straight for the front door, yanking it open and getting a strong whiff of beer, cigarettes, and that unique, faintly musty smell of a very old, rundown bar.

Unsurprisingly, I see Alek, sitting at the far end with a beer bottle in front of it. He’s staring at it, gaze narrowed in like it’s some kind of crystal ball, and I shove my way past the handful of patrons between me and him.

I stop right next to him, and he looks up, his gaze darkening as he sees me.

“What the hell?” he growls, his jaw tightening. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“We were having an argument.” I cross my arms over my chest, staring angrily at him. “You left before we were done with it.”

“Like fuck I did.” He grabs the beer bottle, taking a long drink. “I don’t want to talk about any of it,zhena. Not a fucking thing. Leave it alone.”

“No.” I narrow my eyes at him. “You don’t get to just run away and come drink your sorrows here, while I have no fucking idea what’s happening. We’re a part of each other’s lives now, Alek, like it or not, and?—”

“I don’t fucking like it.”

“Neither do I!” My voice rises, and I can see some of the patrons starting to look our way, but I don’t care. “I don’t likeany of this. But I don’t get a choice about it. I don’t get to run away from it?—”

“You had a choice.”

“Is that what you wanted me to do? Because I saw the look on your face when I told you that my father wanted me to get rid of the baby. You were pissed. So I don’t think that you?—”

“I don’t even know that it’s mine.”

“For fuck’s sake!” My voice rises to a shout, all of the emotions of the day bursting out, refusing to be held back any longer. “Stop saying that! It’s yours, Alek. I hadn’t fucked anyone for months before that night, and I haven’t since. There’s no one else it could be.”

Something changes in his face when I sayI haven’t since, a flicker of some emotion that I can’t quite pin down. His gaze meets mine, and a sarcastic twitch jerks up the corner of one side of his mouth.

“That good, hm,zhena? No other man could compare once you’d had my cock?”

“Fuck you,” I hiss, and I see the closest thing to a smile that I ever have on his lips, but there’s nothing humorous about it.

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