Page 58 of Wicked Pursuit

My parents exchange a look so filled with history that it’s got too many layers for me to translate. Finally Mom sets down her mug. “I suppose we’ll see, won’t we?” She rounds the kitchen island and presses a kiss to my temple. “I’m glad you’re home safe.” She walks through an archway, heading deeper into the house.

Da grabs the mugs and makes quick work of them in the sink while Dad watches me closely as if weighing his words. Finally he says, “If you sneak out again, I’m cutting down every tree around the house. You want to be treated like an adult? Start acting like one.”

17

The next morning, I wake to a text from Casimir.

Casimir

I’m about to get on the plane, but I’ll be back in a week. Be good.

I stare at my phone for several long minutes, trying to process the complicated emotions that rise in response to the knowledge that he’s leaving town. Because I asked him to. A small, terrified part of me is afraid he’ll be gone forever. That he’s had his fun, his cover is blown, and now it’s time to reconvene and figure out a new plan.

But I don’t believe that, do I?

Casimir claimed me at the auction. Publicly. I can’t believe that was all part of some plan that ends with him dumping me and making me look and feel like a fool. But as the days tick by with only the barest communication, adding up to a week and then more, my resolve starts to falter. Maybe he isn’t coming back at all. Maybe he’s just stringing me along to keep me complacent. Maybe that awful little voice inside me is right for once.

Or, even worse, maybe Jovan has killed him and someone is using his phone to text me.

No.No. I cannot believe that. He’s fine. It’s just as he’s said—it’s taking longer to convince his uncle to see things our way than initially planned.

I’m going through the motions, caught in stasis as I wait for something to give. My parents’ anger hasn’t thawed, and my aunt isn’t happy with me either. I spend every day closed away in my office, keeping my head down and diligently doing my work.

On the twelfth day after the text from Casimir, Dad knocks on my office door. Usually when I’m in trouble, it’s Da who ultimately smooths things over and lets me know the worst of my parents’ anger has passed. Dad isn’t much of a talker. That means I can go to Dad when the world becomes too much and I just need a safe place to land. His silences are comforting in a way I appreciate more and more as I get older.

But there’s little that can comfort me in my current mindset.

He looks at me for a bit, his pale eyes no doubt clocking all the signs that I haven’t slept well since coming home. Even with makeup, there’s no missing the shadows beneath my eyes, and I’ve been so stressed, I’ve reverted to my childhood habit of picking my nail polish.

“Let’s go.”

“Taking me to the firing squad?”

He doesn’t bother to respond to my snotty question, which is just as well. He motions for me to follow him out the door, and I know better than to do anything else. What Dad doesn’t solve with words, he does with actions, and he’s not above hauling me over his shoulder and tossing me into the nearest body of water if I get too pissy for no reason. I rise with a sigh and follow him out of the room. It only takes me a few turns to figure out our destination. The sparring mat.

We walk into the gym, and he jerks his chin toward the clothes that have been neatly folded in my cubby. The gym is set up closer to a commercial gym than a home one. I don’t know if it was always this way, or if it was changed once Da and Dad came to live here with my mother. They certainly use it enough, even now.

“I don’t want to spar.”

Dad rolls his shoulders and steps onto the mat. “You may not want to. But you need to.”

If Mom is good at teatime and giving me the space to feel my feelings, and Da is good at hugs and positive self-talk, then Dad is good atthis. He’s been dragging me onto the mat since I turned eleven and puberty hit me like a freight train. There were too many hormones and too much change, and my mental health took a wild free fall. Mom’s words couldn’t get through to me. Da’s hugs didn’t solve anything.

And then one day Dad hauled me onto the mat and started teaching me how to fight. On this mat, I learned to move with limbs that had stopped feeling like mine. I don’t remember learning to walk, but Mom says it happened much the same way. Dad has endless patience, and it didn’t matter how shitty my attitude was, he would meet me on the mat and put me through my paces until whatever repressed emotion was rattling around my chest burst free.

And once the pain was lanced, Mom or Da would magically show up not too much later and be available for me to spew my angsty young feelings at them.

I’d like to say I have better control of myself these days, but that doesn’t stop me from ducking into the changing room and pulling on my workout gear. It doesn’t alter the fact that, no matter how worried and stressed I am about my current situation, I know I’ll feel better after this. I step out of the changing room and glare. “I know what you’re doing.”

“Then you know it will help.”

I step onto the mat, and it’s the most natural thing in the world to fall into the rhythm of our customary warm-up. Stretching and then shadowboxing. Only once a light sweat covers my body does Dad return to me with a slight smile. “All right. Let’s see how rusty you are.”

I hesitate, testing him. “I really don’t want?—”

Just as I expected, Dad strikes out, intending to catch me unawares. I duck and attempt to sweep his legs out from beneath him. It doesn’t work, but I honestly didn’t expect it to. We circle each other slowly. Even when I was practicing several times a week with him, I only beat him one time out of twenty. He’s always pulled the force of his punches with me, but he’s never dialed back the intensity of his attacks. As much as I hate the bruises I end up with, I can’t deny that I’ve never fought anyone as good as Dad.

I’m not in peak physical condition currently, and it’s been months since we sparred together.

---