Page 110 of 10 Days to Ruin

He won’t look at me. Won’t even face my direction. “Get her away from me, Feliks.”

I’m wobbling. It’s a miracle I’m still upright. If it weren’t for Feliks clamping me around the waist in brotherly fashion, I probably wouldn’t be.

“Come on,” he says softly. “Let’s get you home.”

Mute and stumbling like a zombie, I let Feliks turn me toward the exit. We shuffle slowly to the waiting car. He opens the door and helps me into the backseat, then closes it and takes his place up front.

As we peel away from the curb, piloted by a stone-faced man with Russian tattoos littering his scalp, I twist in my seat. Sasha stands amidst the concrete bones of the parking garage, backlit by a throbbing fluorescent pulse.

His mouth moves. I’m probably imagining things—hell, I must be—but I could swear he’s saying to himself,I thought for a moment I lost you.

35

ARIEL

I don’t want to smell like him anymore.

That’s all I can think as Feliks escorts me up to my apartment and pushes me, kindly but irrevocably, inside. The door snicks closed and I know that it will not open until Sasha gives his approval.

But that’s fine, because I’m headed straight for the shower. I strip off clothes as I go, leaving a trail of cold-sweat-soaked leggings, the twisted figure-eights of my underwear and sports bra, and my shoes kicked haphazardly against the hallway wall.

I don’t wait for the water to warm up—I just jump right in, even though it feels like ice-tipped needles stabbing me.I don’t want to smell like him anymore.

The million-dollar question, though, is this: Which “him” do I not want to smell like?

Because Sasha’s scentandDragan’s scent are both clinging to my skin. Which one is it that’s making me sick to my stomach?

I don’t have it in me to suss out the culprit. I just scrub and scrub until my arms are pink and lemon-raspberry body wash is the only thing in my nose.

Even when I’m done and sitting on the foot of my bed, though, I keep thinking I catch whiffs of them.

Sasha’s minty, cedar musk.

The smoky, acid tang of Dragan.

I shudder again and again, even though I’ve got a towel wrapped around my head, another around my torso, and the radiator heat cranked as high as it will go.

Every time I think I’m smelling Sasha, my insides quiver and my pulse roars in my ears.

Every time I think I’m smelling Dragan, I’m dragged back into a past I’ve spent fifteen years scrubbing out of my mind as desperately as I just scrubbed his touch off my throat.

Leander darkened my door. His under-eyes were baggy and purple, sagging low. I remember thinking that he looked like Eeyore. Winnie the Pooh’s friend.

“She’s gone,” he told me, not moving from the door of my bedroom.

“I know she’s gone,” I spat back at him bitterly. “I watched her get fucking dragged out of here.”

Cursing at age fifteen was new enough to still feel like it had some venom. Cursing at my dad was even newer than that. Leander wasn’t the kind of father you hurled profanities at.

“No,neraïdoula mou.I mean, she’sgone.”

It took a moment for his words to sink in. When they did, the journal I was scribbling in fell from my hands. “Wh… what do… Baba, what are you talking about? Jas is— Jas is supposed to get married tomorrow.”

He just shook his head. “The wedding is canceled. She’s gone.” Then he turned and stomped away down the hall, as if that explained that and nothing more needed to be said.

I stared at the dark rectangle of the empty doorway for a long, long time.

Memory’s a funny thing. Easier to repress than people tend to think. I let myself erase Dragan Vukovic from the story, because as far as I was concerned, it wasn’t him that killed Jasmine. Not really.

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