She didn’t try very hard.
He was the one who broke the kiss, panting. Nikolai wiped the wetness of her kiss off his lips with the back of his hand. With his back against the door, there was no place for him to go, but he turned his head and held up his hands, pushing her away as effectively as if he’d shoved her.
“You wanted me to go. Let me go,” he said. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Alicia could still taste him. She could still feel him against her, though inches of space now separated them. So many words left unsaid, and she was as much at fault as he was, if not more. How could she hate him for not asking her to stay when she hadn’t been able to ask him to go with her?
“Sometimes you love someone who can’t give you what you want, so what can you do but love them enough to let them go?” she said.
“Bullshit,” Nikolai answered. “If nine planets in this universe can align, why can’t we?”
For that, Alicia had no answer. This time, Nikolai was the one who bent to kiss her. The briefest brush of his lips on hers, nothing more than that.
“Close your eyes,” he told her, and she did, waiting for another kiss that never came.
She heard the click of the door. Felt the rush of winter air that started her teeth chattering. Then silence.
When she opened her eyes, Nikolai was gone.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“I should punch you right in the face,” Ilya said. “But to be honest, I’ve run out of energy.”
Niko hadn’t bothered to sneak into the house, but he hadn’t expected to find his brother sitting at the kitchen table with a full bottle and an empty glass. “Pour me one?”
“You can have mine. I tried, but it doesn’t taste good to me. Hell if I can figure out why.” Ilya filled the glass halfway with amber liquid and pushed it across the table toward Niko.
It didn’t taste good to Niko, either, so after a single, grimacing sip, he pushed it away. He looked at his brother, not sure what he expected to see. Ilya leaned back in the chair with a shrug, when he caught his brother’s look.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Ilya told him.
“You could say congratulations. That’s what I said to you,” Niko replied, knowing the response was shitty but saying it anyway.
Ilya snorted rough laughter. “Why? You guys running off to get married?”
“She’s running off. I don’t know where.”
His brother’s laughter faded, and he tilted his head, brow furrowed. “What do you mean she’s running off? Where’s she going?”
“I don’t know.”
Ilya sat up straight. “What do you mean you don’t know? What’s wrong with you? You didn’t ask?”
Niko stood, scraping the chair on the linoleum hard enough to almost knock it over. “She’s leaving tomorrow morning. She said she’d be at the airport by four. Does it really matter where she’s going? She’s still going to be gone.”
“That’s in about two hours,” Ilya said. “You should get your shit together and go after her. Fuck’s sakes, man. Don’t tell me you came back here and did all this just to let her go?”
Niko’s fists clenched, then unclenched. “She has the right to go wherever she wants. I know it’s what she wants, Ilya. She wants to leave.”
“She doesn’t want to leave you,” Ilya said. “And if you can’t see that, you’re an idiot. Now I really might punch you in your face, for being stupid.”
He might welcome the punch, if only because a fight would get rid of at least some of this anxiety. He put his hands on the kitchen counter, his back to his brother. “Shit.”
“Yeah, it’s a mess of it. You’d better figure it out.”
Niko looked over his shoulder. “She could be going anywhere. She didn’t say anything to you?”
“You always were the pretty one, not the smart one.” Ilya shook his head with a sour expression. “Because, right, Allie absolutely confided in me about her plans. Sure. Again, what the hell is wrong with you? She’s taking a trip, not moving across the world to join a commune.”
Niko frowned. “It was not a commune.”
Ilya waved a hand, clearly not caring. “Whatever. You’re afraid she’s going to do to you what you did to us, but that was you, not Allie. Go to the airport and find out where, how long she’ll be gone, when she’ll be back. But go after her, Niko. Or she will come back, but it won’t matter, because you’ll have lost her. And trust me, brother. You’ll spend a long, long time wishing you’d stepped up when you had the chance.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The drive to the airport normally took about forty minutes, with traffic, on the winding back roads from Quarrytown. At three in the morning, there wasn’t any traffic. The car she’d hired to take her made the trip in twenty-five minutes, and the driver didn’t speak, so that was a bonus. Alicia wouldn’t have been able to hold much of a conversation.
All she’d brought was one small suitcase and a backpack, both meant as carry-ons. She had money in her pocket and more in her bank account. She had a ticket to Barcelona, and from there she intended to spend the next four weeks traveling to wherever the desire took her. Places she’d read about or seen in movies but had never imagined she would actually visit. She would take planes and trains and buses and walk along cobblestoned streets and try adventurous foods from street vendors.
She didn’t want to go.
She was afraid to go; that was the embarrassing truth.
She tipped the driver and got out of the car. All Alicia could think of was that long-ago night, staring up at the night sky and watching those planets align. She’d never imagined back then that she wouldn’t get out of this town, that she wouldn’t live the life she’d dreamed of, so why now that she had the opportunity was she so terrified to actually try?
She hefted her pack on her shoulder and turned back, ready to hail the driver, but he probably wanted to get back home and into bed before the sun rose. He’d already pulled away from the curb, his brake lights barely blinking. Her fingers tightened on the handle of her suitcase.
And there, across the drop-off lane, standing with his hands shoved in his pockets, was Nikolai.
She didn’t believe it, not at first. She had to be conjuring him out of wishful thinking . . . but no, there he was, crossing the street, looking both ways so he wouldn’t get struck by a car. He was in front of her before she knew it.
“I couldn’t let you go without saying good-bye,” he said. “Not ever again.”
Alicia put down her bag, then the backpack. “What . . . ?”
He kissed her. Or she kissed him—she couldn’t be sure who moved first. Maybe they moved at the same time, urged by mutual desire and the urge to be in each other’s arms. All she knew was that the taste of him flooded her. His arms around her warded off the early-morning chill.
“I love you,” Nikolai said. “I should’ve told you before. I should’ve said it every time you asked me and every time you didn’t.”