Page 80 of Luka

“How are you not in Spokane?” I stride toward him, my eyes searching for a bulge in his back pockets where his phone might be.

What if someone else has it?

What if someone else was texting me?

What if?—?

My eyes land on the device resting on my counter. My arms tingle as blood drains from my extremities, but Arseni doesn’t seem to notice my panic. Or care. He chugs juice from the carton.

“Arseni!”

He pulls the carton down, orange liquid dribbling down his chin and turns to give me a look filled with something that isn’t sympathy or care. It looks like contempt, but it’s a little hard to tell with the bruises on his face, one purple eye still swollen. He looks like he got into a bar fight.

“Hi,Arseni,” he says, his voice dripping with what is now obviously contempt. “How are you,Arseni? It’s good to see you,Arseni.”

“Why are you not with Lucia?” I ask, my voice firm, though my eyes lower to his torso. He’s bigger built than I am, but my shirt that he’s wearing seems baggy on him now. Did he lose weight?

“Why am I not with Lucia?...” He hums as if he’s pondering that, then takes another drink. He sets the carton down then retrieves a paring knife from my block. “You know,” he says, twirling the knife into the air and catching it as he walks toward me. “I’ve beenprettyfucking busy.” His eyes don’t meet me, but they burn with anger.Rage. I can feel their flames as he approaches. I set the gun on the island before this escalates.

His sunken cheeks catch my attention, making him appear sickly.

My stomach drops. “What happened?”

He laughs and twirls the knife again. “What the fuck do you think?”

I don’t want to say it. Already, before the confirmation, a mountain of guilt piles on top of me.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

My eyes close to avoid the anger in his expression.

“They got to you.”

“Yeah, well, the bitch parked my car next to theirs, so it wasn’t exactly hard to pin me to her.”

“How long?” I ask, trying not to calculate the number of pounds he must have lost. His collar bone juts through my shirt.

He tips his head. “Uh, well, about how long it took for them to drive up to Idaho.”

They tracked his phone. My eyes close as I rub my forehead.

“They weren’t nice enough to give me a fucking calendar, but obviously it was plenty long enough for you to stab me in the goddamn back.”

I shake my head. “Arseni, I?—”

“You had her the whole fucking time!” He steps up to me, his eyes wide and crazed as he presses the knife to my throat while pinning me to the island. I grip the edge of the marble and let his anger roll at me in waves. “They tortured me, you son of a bitch!”

“I didn’tknow. And fuck, I told you to dump your phone.”

“And then you have theaudacity, the fuckingaudacityto ask me to help her. I should kill you. Iwantto kill you.”

He pushes the knife against my neck, its serrated edge tearing tiny bits of skin. Not enough to kill me, just enough to tell me he could.

“Theydidkill Mackenzie,” he goes on. “The bitch told them there were two men, so I had to corroborate that, and there was no way I was going to give you up. I told them a lot of shit just to save you, and for what, Luka? What did you do for me?”

Pain breaks past his anger, the hurt clear in his voice, and he pushes harder on my throat as he leans in with his teeth bared. “I wasterrifiedof you calling me or texting me and incriminating yourself, and you just … didn’t. You sent me away just so you could have that whore to yourself. Do you know how selfish you are? Can you even comprehend what a horrible friend that makes you? I used to think it was just your siblings you didn’t care about, but fuck!” When he presses the knife in even deeper, I think he really might kill me. And I might deserve it.

But he’s right. I’m selfish.

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