Page 13 of State of Mind

Dmitri nodded. “Well, if you hire me, you’ll hear about it. I was adopted, but my parents…” He shook his head. “I don’t remember when they were okay. They split up when I was two, and my dad got to keep me, but then he got all —” he waved his hand in a circle. “Messed up? My aunts tried to help him out, but he took off when they wanted him to go to rehab. I had some anger management problems when I got back to Savannah.”

Wilder heard the ache in his voice—the desperation to be more than the people had painted him out to be. “How are things now?”

He shrugged, eyes darting off to the side. “They could be better. Some stuff happened with my best friend here and people kind of blamed me for it.”

“Is he the one who had the incident with Antoine?” Wilder asked—because he knew about that.

Dmitri looked down at his hands, flexing them. He looked older than his age—far older than twenty, with the weight of the world on his shoulders. But Wilder could sense something more about him—a sort of inner light that just needed space to shine, and he wanted to force the people in Dmitri’s life to give him that.

“I’m not judging you,” Wilder said quietly.

Dmitri shrugged, still staring down at his lap, which made it hard for Wilder to understand him, so he leaned forward and strained his ears. “People think it was my influence. Owen was a good kid before he took off. But they don’t know what really happened. He was working at the paper and his boss,” he stopped abruptly, and his cheeks flushed. “Sorry, I shouldn’t…uh… This isn’t really my place to say. But he was angry, and it wasn’t his fault.”

“I understand,” Wilder told him, leaning a little closer. “Believe me.” Dmitri looked at him then, a sort of hunger in his eyes, and Wilder nodded. “From experience. I know what the trauma is like, and how it can make you feel this sort of bone-deep, visceral hatred for anyone and anything that let you down.”

Dmitri bowed his head and closed his eyes for a long moment. “I don’t mind taking the blame for what happened. The people in this city never really liked me anyway, and he deserved better.” He looked up, then let out a small laugh, and his cheeks bloomed with color. “God, sorry to dump this on you. This is like the worst interview ever.”

Wilder waved him off. “We’re good. I promise.”

Biting his lip, Dmitri shifted in his chair, then laid his hands on the desk. “My life is weird. I’m the adopted, ambiguously Asian kid of these white, addict parents and people don’t get it. They expect me to like…you know, be this stereotype. To play violin and be good at math and know, like, Mandarin. And when we moved to Albuquerque people thought it was hilarious that I grew up in Georgia—they acted like it was the Bible Belt or something. I never really fit in anywhere.”

“I know what that feels like too,” Wilder told him, and when Dmitri looked skeptical, he shrugged. “I was born hearing. I didn’t start going deaf until I was in my twenties, but my entire family is Deaf. Every single one of them. My mother wasn’t a good person. She spent most of my childhood making sure I never felt like I belonged, and it wasn’t until I was in college that I realized not every kid like me was treated that way. By then…” Wilder shrugged, feeling the sting of old pain, “the damage was done.”

“That sucks.”

Wilder laughed. “Yeah. It did. But I found somewhere that made me feel welcome and wanted.”

“Here?” Dmitri asked him, and he looked so damn hopeful, Wilder didn’t have the heart to tell him the rest—to tell him how he’d clawed his way to some semblance of okay just to get up every morning and face the sunrise. He didn’t tell him about Scott, or the nights he spent lying in his bed with the covers wrapped around him, thinking it would be easier if he just didn’t wake up in the morning.

Because the journey to where he was now—the man sitting in his chair across from his new employee—was long. And it was damn near impossible. It was hard-fought and impossibly won, but he couldn’t promise that to Dmitri.

“I wouldn’t give up Savannah for the world,” was all he could say.

But it was enough. And here they were, a year and a half later, and somehow Wilder was even more at home, and Dmitri had lost some of the heavy weight on his shoulders from where he’d been carrying his own little world.

“How was last night?” Dmitri asked as he reached for an apron. Most of the cupcakes had been baked—they just needed frosting and decoration, and Dmitri had mastered that.

He grabbed one of the icing bags and the spinning stand, pulling the tray of cinnamon chocolate ones toward him as Wilder went back to the banana creams. “It was fine. Jayden lost a bet and Talia got us wine, and then Knox disappeared after like an hour, probably to either get laid or stalk Roman and Aksel even though he refuses to tell us why he’s so obsessed with them.”

Dmitri rolled his eyes. “Wow.”

“I try not to pay close attention to everyone else’s business,” Wilder said with a half grin. He took his cupcake and gently rolled the frosting in his pile of crushed almonds that surprisingly tasted like graham cracker crumbs.

Dmitri’s mouth moved but Wilder didn’t hear him, so he assumed it was either a groan or a sigh. “Part of me can’t wait to turn twenty-one so I can drink with y’all, but it also feels so pointless. I mean, what’s left for me, you know? Gambling and drinking?” He swallowed thickly and ducked his head. “I don’t ever want to be like my parents.”

Wilder set his cupcake down on the display tray and then reached for another before he caught Dmitri’s gaze. “You won’t be. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders.”

Dmitri shrugged. “I guess. I mean, it doesn’t matter. It’ll just be nice when people stop seeing me as some idiot kid.”

“You’re not an idiot kid,” Wilder started, but he stopped because he knew Dmitri just needed to vent. “So, did you see the new guy?” he asked quickly, changing the subject.

Dmitri laughed as he grabbed another bag of frosting. “You mean Adriano’s brother?” When Wilder nodded, Dmitri rolled his eyes and grinned. “Who hasn’t seen him. He had some diva tantrum at the bar last night and screamed at my aunt when she brought him a salad because it had pine nuts on it. She said he wasn’t drunk or anything either—just an asshole.”

Wilder winced, biting the inside of his cheek to keep his opinion to himself. But he knew Luca wasn’t going to endear himself to anyone in this city if he behaved like they owed him. “Do you know why he’s here?”

“Sonia said it’s some dumb white-boy, eat pray love shit. He’s trying to find himself. That’s what he told Raphael, anyway.”

Wilder blinked. “In Savannah?”

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