“Don’t tell me what she is,” Alexei says, spinning on him. “I know Gracie better than you ever will.”
“Well, you’ve never kissed me,” I mutter, half under my breath.
Instantly, I know what a mistake I’ve made. Because I watch the realization wash over Alexei’s features.
“But evidently you didn’t see that part,” I say as Alexei turns to ice.
“He kissed you?”
“Let’s go find Jamie!” I say too cheerfully, bolting for the beach.
“Grace!” Spence yells, chasing after me, but I’m moving fast over the uneven ground. I’ve spent too much time in the tunnels underneath Valancia. My eyes are used to the dark. I’m like a creature of the night, and they can’t match me.
When I reach the edge of the tree line I pause and search for Noah or Rosie or even my brother. I need a distraction.
But the pause is all it takes for Alexei to reach me.
“He kissed you?”
“I’m fine!” I shout, but it’s too late. Spence has caught up with us, and Alexei isn’t looking for an explanation. He turns and pulls back his arm in one smooth motion, dropping Spence to the ground with a single blow. Some might call it a sucker punch. I know Spence never saw it coming. He lies on the ground for a moment, sprawled and stunned.
He’s older and he goes to West Point, but Alexei is a little taller and enraged.
Spence doesn’t care, though. He lunges at Alexei’s legs, toppling them both out of the cover of the trees and onto the beach. They land, tangled together, rolling and fighting as sand billows up around them, rising like a fog.
They are darkened silhouettes, black shadows outlined in fire as they tumble and twist and brawl closer and closer to the party.
Soon, other people see them. The crowd turns. And a murmur sweeps across the beach, a low, simmering echo. “Alexei.”
But no one knows the boy who knocks him to the ground and pounds against him with a terrible backhanded hit.
I want to run to them — to stop it. But before I can move, Alexei reverses their positions and kicks, striking Spence in the ribs with a vicious blow that makes him double over for a moment before charging, unwilling to be knocked down. Not again. Not without company. They roll together, a tangle of limbs and aggression and blood.
When they get too close to the fire, a cry goes up.
That’s when I see Jamie. He’s nearer the water, barefoot in the sand with his jeans rolled up, surrounded by Lila and a mob of pretty girls that I don’t know.
When Noah appears beside me he is entirely too calm, considering two boys are trying to kill each other by the fire.
“So … Alexei’s back,” I say.
“I can see that. I’d go say hi, but he seems busy.”
Jamie is in motion now, leaping over one of the burning logs that has fallen, smoking and smoldering, from the fire and onto the sand.
“Stop it!” he yells. For a moment, he sounds like our mother, scolding us for bickering and fighting and taking the risk of breaking her favorite lamp.
But his friends don’t hear him. It’s like there’s no sound on the beach but the sickly slap of skin against skin, the crunch of bones and sparking, burning wood.
Even the music has stopped playing.
When Spence throws Alexei to the ground, he rolls and comes up almost in one motion. Sand sticks to his sweat-covered skin. And the cry he lets out, the string of Russian curses … He sounds like a stranger.
Alexei lunges for Spence, feral and brutal. All strength and wounded pride and fury.
There’s only one boy on the beach who is fast enough to reach them, strong enough to leap into the breach when Alexei charges again.
I watch Alexei spin as Jamie catches him around the waist, using his own momentum to change directions.
How many times have I watched the two of them play at battle, tussle and wrestle and fight like brothers? Jamie, older, always a little bigger. Alexei, always a little more wild.
But now it’s not like that. It’s like Alexei has been tackled by a stranger.
“Let me go!” Alexei shouts, pushing against the offending hands. He might not even recognize my brother.
And Jamie, being Jamie, laughs.
“It’s good to see you, too, buddy. I heard you were in Moscow.”
“I’m back,” Alexei growls, then lunges for Spence, who is breathing hard and bleeding from a cut on his eyebrow. His shirt is torn.
“Control your dog, Blake,” Spence shouts before spitting blood into the fire.
Alexei lunges again, breaking free. They’re going to kill each other, I think. Before I realize it, I’m moving forward. My arms are around Alexei’s waist. I can feel the sand that clings to him, the rise and fall of his chest. It’s like trying to hold back an animal, but Alexei won’t hurt me.
Alexei will never hurt me.