Page 14 of Confession
I escaped the instant we got home, and no, I did not look at him. I couldn’t. I know what I’ve done. I’ve blown up the best thing I’ve ever had. This job. My place here. Him.
It’s over.
I can get away with shoving him, but pressing my lips to his …
There’s no way he mistook my meaning. I kissed him, or almost. He’s going to fire me. He’ll be too uncomfortable to keep me around.
I start wiping my hands on a towel to hide how they’re shaking. “Vitali didn’t like the way I handled the situation at the strip club, and I didn’t like that he subverted me. We don’t always agree.”
“Quite a disagreement for you to be hiding down here.”
I throw down the towel. “I’m not fucking hiding. This needs to be done.”
I am fucking hiding. Obviously.
“Hm.” Sasha tears off a piece of her muffin and pops it in her mouth.
“Can you fuck off? You’re blocking my view of the monitors.”
“You don’t need to see the monitors. That’s what the alarms are for.”
My temper flares so hot and so suddenly that I feel it flood out through all my limbs. I close my eyes and try to breathe. I need her to go away.
“Mickey turned up in the harbor,” she informs me. It takes a second for my brain to override my body. Sasha waits until she sees I’m tracking then adds, “He should’ve come to Vitali the second the DiMaggios approached him.”
“Well, he won’t make that mistake twice.”
Sasha huffs a laugh. “You’re so much colder than people think you are.”
I shrug. “He endangered Vitali.”
The moment stretches, and I brace myself for her to circle back to the car ride, but she says, “You’re off tonight. He’s already tagged me for Eclipse.”
Relief wars with panic. He’s avoiding me too. I knew it. He’s uncomfortable. He got kissed by a gay man.
Two fucking years I’ve managed to control myself. Two fucking years of hiding my attraction to him, my obsession with him, my absolute fucking need to be around him. It’s been two years of torment, yes, undeniably, but it’s a torment that I do not want to lose.
But I have.
I’ll be cut off. Thrown away.
As that reality fully sinks into me, it settles into a space that I realize has always been there, waiting for it. This was inevitable. I’ve always known, deep down, that this would end.
I know what I am and where I’m from. I know that I don’t belong here.
My throat is so tight that I have to clear it before I can manage, “’Kay.”
I go back to cleaning the guns, focusing on my work so that I don’t have to look at Sasha. I hear the intake of her breath like she’s going to say something. I brace for it, but she changes her mind. She gets up from the computer chair and leaves without a word.
I just keep cleaning the guns like I haven’t destroyed everything.
I know I have to face it. I will. I just need a few more hours to prepare myself for what that will mean.
And I have a piece of business to take care of first.
***
“Hello, Leo.”
