Page 95 of 10 Days to Ruin

“I said, don’t tell me?—”

“But you’re hopeful, too, and that’s maybe the worst thing you could be, because hope is the deepest cut and the slow bleed that would follow if you let it slice you open is what terrifies you most of all.”

I shove back against his chest as he approaches me, but it’s like pushing a brick wall. He comes closer instead of farther. I can’t back up, either; I’m just pinned against a glass cage as Sasha looks down at me with the scariest light of all in his eyes: hope bright enough to match mine.

He cradles my face in his hands. “I didn’t bring you here to frighten you,ptichka.I brought you here to show you it doesn’t have to hurt.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Falling.”

Then his mouth crashes into mine. It’s not claiming; it’serasing.Rewriting every awkward fumble, every indifferent, unsatisfying blunder of my past and replacing it all with him, him, him. His teeth catch my lip, pulling a ragged sound from my chest as his hands bracket my hips—anchoring me against history itself.

His kiss says,Let me be the villain you deserve.

My kiss replies,Never.

30

SASHA

The Beretta 92 clicks empty in my palm as I fire the last bullet. Five shots ripple through the abandoned warehouse—five targets meet their untimely demise.

I lower the gun to check my work. Not bad. Center mass on each silhouette.

Feliks whistles as the last shell casing clinks to concrete. “Not bad,brattan. You shoot like a man who’s getting laid regularly.”

I eject the magazine harder than necessary. “Impossible. Your mother moved to Miami.”

He laughs, tossing me fresh ammo. “You wish you were that lucky. Mama Vasiliev would eat you alive.” Slouching against the wall of the shooting stall, he squints at me. “But seriously, you’ve got that post-coital glow. Library date went well,da?”

I take my time loading in the new clip, racking a bullet into the chamber, squinting down the sight to check the alignment. The whole time, I do my damndest to ignore the thoughts crowding in my head.

Ariel’s mouth going pliant under mine.

Her nails digging desperate half-moons into my shoulders.

Falling, I’d called it.

Bullshit.

This isn’t normal gravity at work. This is getting sucked into a black hole.

“She’s…” I look down the barrel, exhale, and fire. The target’s head explodes. “… persistent.”

Feliks snorts. “Persistent. Right. And Chernobyl was a minor electrical fire. Where do you two lovebirds go from here?”

“We’re negotiating. Figuring things out.”

“Ah,negotiating.” Feliks mimes jerking off to let me know what he thinks of that particular train of thought. “And then what? Holding hands in Central Park? Buying matchingI <3 NYhoodies?”

I scowl at him, if only because the Central Park crack hits a little too close to home. “Do you know what happens to men who talk too much?”

“They get promoted topakhan?”

“They get promoted to target practice.”

Feliks just chuckles. He knows he’s too valuable to kill. All I can do is scowl, give him the cold shoulder, and keep firing my feelings down-range.

---