11. Charlotte

11

CHARLOTTE

T he thin morning light filtering between the drapes, still pale enough to let me know that it's barely late enough to actually be morning, comes so quickly that I wonder if I actually fell asleep. I can hear Ivan moving quietly around the room, folding up the blanket, and I wish to the depths of my soul that I could just fall back to sleep.

Better yet, that I could do that in my own bed, in my own apartment, at home where I'm safe. Where in another few hours, I'll wake up again and get dressed for work and meet Jaz before going about the same, boring day that I lamented not all that long ago.

"Charlotte." Ivan's voice is soft, but it scratches over my skin. "We have to go."

I squeeze my eyes tightly shut for a minute. The bed is uncomfortable, the duvet is stiff, and the room got cold at some point during the night, but I still don't want to get up. Somewhere behind me, though, Ivan is waiting patiently, and I force myself to roll over and sit up.

"I left out another shirt for you." Ivan points to a black t-shirt at the end of the bed. "We can stop and get different clothes soon. Once we cross over into Minnesota, anyway."

"Great. I can't wait to stop at the first TJ Maxx we come across." I know I sound like a diva, which I've never been, but apparently, not getting enough sleep isn't good for my mood. Along with the sort of abduction, being on the run from the law, threats, and car theft that I've experienced over the last twenty-four hours. "Can I at least take a shower?"

Ivan glances at the window, letting out a heavy breath. "Ten minutes."

I want to argue, but I decide to take what I can get. I head into the bathroom, locking the thin door behind me—as if Ivan couldn't come right through it if he wanted to—and turn on the hot water. The steam that the small, closet-sized bathroom quickly fills with is soothing, at least, and I strip down, eager to wash off the last day.

A little over ten minutes later, with my hair wet and all of me smelling like cheap motel soap, I put my old jeans back on and slide Ivan's t-shirt over my head. I don't bother trying to tie it up at the waist or do anything cute with it this time. I can already feel my urge to care slipping away. It's not as if anyone is going to see me except for Ivan, and he?—

I swallow hard, biting my lip as I grab the small tube of travel toothpaste next to the sink and squirt some onto my finger. I don't think it matters what I wear, when it comes to Ivan. He's going to want me no matter what.

Unfortunately for me, the feeling is far too mutual.

Ivan's arms are crossed over his broad chest as I walk out of the bathroom. "That was?—"

"More than ten minutes. I know." I push past him, going to shove the armchair away from the door, just for something to do. "It was fifteen, tops. I needed to do some semblance of brushing my teeth."

"We'll get some toiletries and stuff when we stop in Minnesota, too." Ivan is right behind me as I walk out into the crisp, grey morning, following me down the rusty steps out to where the Corolla is waiting. In the daylight, the color looks even worse. But it looks like a hundred other sedans being driven around to errands and school drop-offs by moms and students and other people who aren't in the Bratva or on the run, and I'm sure that's why Ivan picked it.

Ivan doesn't say anything as he starts the car. He's been quiet since we had to run from the hotel last night, and I can imagine why. The part I can't imagine is how it must feel to have a family that hates you so much that they try to hurt you. A family that wants to hurt Ivan in ways worse than shooting him. That want to use me to hurt him.

It doesn't seem like it's something new or surprising to him. He seems to be taking it in stride, but I can't help feeling that there's got to be some deeper hurt underneath it. I don't see my family all that often, and there are certainly some old wounds from things my parents did wrong as I was growing up—but I can't imagine them ever wanting to hurt me. The idea of it is unthinkable.

Ivan pulls into a fast-food place that serves breakfast, and after looking at the options, I decide a chicken biscuit seems like the least terrible of the greasy options. I ask for some strawberry jam to put on it, and I see Ivan looking at me with interest as I spread it on the inside of the biscuit, while we sit in the car in the parking lot. He's parked at the back, facing forward so we can see the entire lot, a level of paranoia that I would never have even considered until now. Now, it seems like the smart thing to do.

"What?" I ask him, a little bit crossly, as I take a bite of the biscuit. It's better than it has any right to be, and I hate that a little, after a lifetime of avoiding fast food. The coffee, on the other hand, is terrible, and I feel a wave of longing for the little coffee shop near my work that I used to stop by as a treat once or twice a week. I'll probably never go there again, if everything Ivan has told me is true, and that longing turns into that feeling that's very much like grief.

It's followed by guilt, because so many other people in the world have worse things to grieve than the loss of their favorite coffee place, and there are hundreds of coffee shops all over the world I could visit even after my life is wiped and rebooted. But that was a part of my life, my little corner of the world, and it's been ripped away from me.

Some of my anger at Ivan comes back with that thought.

He shrugs at my question. "I've just never thought of putting that on that particular food before."

"Do you eat like this often?" I can't believe that he does, given that he has plenty of money.

"No." Ivan takes a bite of his breakfast, a sausage and cheese biscuit that makes me feel faintly queasy looking at it. It's probably the stress and not the food itself, but I don't like the smell. "But I like diners. The same way I like a nice pub. Simple, unassuming, good."

I can't help but think of the Michelin restaurant we went to on our first date. "Our first date wasn't either of our preferences, was it?" I ask quietly, wiping a little bit of jam off of the corner of my mouth with my thumb, and reaching for a napkin. "It wasn't real, either."

"I wanted to impress you." Ivan sets his sandwich down, as if he's lost a little of his appetite with that question. "That was real."

"Why?"

He lets out a long, slow breath, and I can tell he doesn't have an answer. Maybe because whatever the answer would have been then, it isn't true now. Or maybe he never really knew. Maybe it was a compulsion, an obsession, just like the rest of it.

A wave of tiredness that has nothing to do with the lack of sleep washes over me, and I lose what little remains of my appetite, too. Ivan starts the car, and I crumple up the remainder of the biscuit and the wrapper, dropping them into the bag as he pulls back out onto the highway.

Halfway through the day, we stop for another fast-food lunch and fuel. I can feel the difference in how I'm eating; I feel sleepy and lethargic, and I drift off in the car after a while, the monotony of the road lulling me into sleep despite the fact that we could be being chased by the Bratva, or the FBI, or both, right now. They're not here right now, and that's enough for me to fall asleep, exhausted.

I wake up a little while later when Ivan pulls into another gas station, the slowing of the car waking me. I go in with him this time, and I feel him watching me as the clerk standing behind the counter tries to make small talk. I glance over at Ivan, wondering if he's jealous. There's nothing between us now—and there is, all at the same time. Whatever there was has been irreparably broken, not least of which because I have no idea if there was ever anything real at all, but there's still something there. For me, it's desire and anger all twisted up together, and for Ivan?—

It's not jealousy that I think I see in his face, though. It looks like concern. And I don't understand it until later that evening, when we stop well after nightfall at another crappy motel, and we're behind a closed and barricaded door with another bag of greasy food.

"We're going to have to get something to dye your hair," Ivan says bluntly, without any preamble, and I'm so startled that a french fry falls out of my hand onto the carpet.

"What?"

"We need to dye your hair. I don't know what color." He frowns. "It's hard to dye hair so dark anything from a box. But we'll have to try something?—"

"Are you going to dye yours?" I retort, still shocked just by the suggestion.

"My brothers know very clearly what I look like," Ivan says, crumpling up his food wrappers and dropping them in the trash. There's a heaviness to his gait as he gets up that tells me he's still exhausted, but I'm too upset to care right now. "They don't need to bother with descriptions. It's bad enough that they can get information on where we've been just by asking about me, if we're seen together. But they only know what you look like from pictures, and having briefly seen you. If we change how you look, they'll be giving people a description of a woman with me that doesn't match up. It may help throw them off."

He sighs, sitting back down. "You're beautiful, Charlotte. Men look at you. Men like that clerk today. If Lev walked into that gas station and described you, he would remember you."

"I thought you were jealous." A laugh bubbles up behind my lips, and Ivan pauses, his gaze fixed on mine in a way that sends a shiver down my spine.

"If I thought a man who could take you from me was looking at you, I'd be jealous." There's a rough edge to his voice that makes my skin tingle. "But it wasn't going to be him."

"No one can take me from you." I wrap my arms around myself, looking away. "I'm not yours."

The silence that follows tells me that Ivan doesn't entirely agree with that sentiment. How he can think I am his, I have no idea. Not after what's happened. But when I look up at him again, there's that same intense expression on his face, his gaze resting on me as if he's memorizing me for a day when I'll no longer be sitting here in front of him.

It should make me uncomfortable. Uneasy. But instead, it makes me feel something else—a deeper, more primal feeling that I'm afraid to look at too closely. It reminds me of that moment, just a couple of days ago, when I wondered what it would be like to have a man like Ivan love me.

The way he's looking at me now makes me wonder what it would feel like to have him possess me, too.

Ivan stands up. "I know you don't like it, Charlotte. Truthfully, I don't, either. But we just need to get to Vegas." He says that last as if he's repeated it many times over in his head. "After that?—"

I bite my lip, still looking away. "I can't believe this," I say softly. "Every day, it's something else. Some new thing I'm just supposed to be okay with. Some other huge change that makes me feel like I'm losing my grip on what few parts of myself I have left."

Ivan looks around sharply at that, meeting my eyes again. "Charlotte." There's something like a plea in his voice, but I don't have any room to care about it right now. Not when he's the reason all of those parts are gone.

I never knew it was possible to desire someone, hate them, and care about them all at the same time. And now I wish I'd never learned.

"I need space." It sounds ridiculous, in a hotel room this small, with one bed and another closet-sized bathroom. There's nowhere for Ivan to go, and I can't imagine that he'll leave me in here alone. But to my surprise, he nods, sliding a pack of cigarettes that I've never seen him smoke before out of his pocket. It's a small indication that he's feeling as badly as I am, even though he's doing a better job of hiding it.

"Alright." He swallows hard, his throat moving. "I'll be right outside."

I blink back tears as I watch him walk out. I want to cry, but I'm worried that if I start again, I won't stop.

Instead, I go into the bathroom, and splash cold water on my face, wishing for my face soap at home that smells like watermelon, and the velvety cream on my sink. And then I toss my jeans onto the floor and slide into bed, as the faintest whiff of cigarette smoke slides into the room from outside.

—

In the morning, Ivan wakes me up a little bit later than yesterday. "So far, so good," he says tiredly, and I can't help but notice that the dark circles under his eyes look deeper today. "No sign of anyone closing in on us. Or, alternatively," he adds, as if he can't let me get too relaxed, "they're just waiting for the right time."

"So, what?" I sit up, rubbing my hands over my face. "Getting back on the road?"

"We'll stop at a store first. And somewhere for clothes. We'll get the things we need, toiletries and maybe some decent food, and—" he pauses, pressing his lips together. "Dye."

My stomach tightens at that, and I want to argue, but I don't. I know it's a stupid thing to be upset about. It's hair—it will grow out, and grow back, and whatever I put in it now will be gone eventually. But like most women, I've always been picky about my hair, and I've gone to the same stylist in Chicago since I was a freshman at Northwestern. She's always done the same thing for me, perfectly—lowlights painted on by hand, perfectly scattered throughout to make my hair look dimensional, the same cut?—

The same boring thing, every ten weeks. The thought crosses my mind as I splash water on my face in the bathroom again and rub toothpaste over my teeth. The same cut and color, just like most other things in my life. A routine that I've never shaken up.

Everything around it is awful, and difficult to reconcile, but this?—

Maybe box-dyeing my hair a new color isn't the worst thing.

I try to keep that sliver of positivity as Ivan and I go to the first store we find that has clothes—a Ross—and then to a Walmart to get toiletries and some food that isn't deep-fried or pre-frozen. Some cut-up fruit, some sandwiches with cold cuts, a half gallon of milk, and some cereal cups. Ivan buys one of those insulated bags to put all of it in, enough to last us a couple of days. The fruit looks so good after two days of fast food that I want to eat it in the middle of the store.

The last aisle we stop in, after getting toothbrushes and floss, some drugstore skincare products for me, and whatever else we can think of, is the one with the hair dye. I look at the rows of boxes for a long time, as Ivan picks up one that promises to turn me ash blonde.

"That's going to make my hair orange." I swallow hard, picking up a box labeled ‘Cherry Cola.' "What about this."

"I don't think it's different enough." Ivan lets out a sharp breath. "Adding a little purplish-red tint isn't going to make you look like someone else."

"I could dye it blue." I laugh, picking up another box. "Semi-permanent." I have a feeling it will wash right out, but the suggestion is more to lighten the mood than anything else.

Ivan picks up a box of medium red. "This?"

"It's going to look awful. Like Ariel." I wince, turning it over to see what it says brown hair will change to. "I'm not suited to be a Disney princess."

Ivan sets the box down. "No, you're not very princess-like."

I think it's a compliment. The way he says it makes it sound like one. And I suppose this could have been so much worse, if I were the kind of woman to throw tantrums and complain. Since I yelled at him that first night, before his brothers showed up, I haven't shouted again. I will, at some point, I have a feeling—I can feel it pressing behind my ribs, all of the anger that I haven't let out because I keep thinking that it won't do any good. It won't change anything.

But it will burst out, eventually. Something will make me snap. But until then, I don't know what else to do besides keep bottling it up.

I'm definitely not a princess. I don't think I've been inside of a Walmart since I was a college freshman and it was the only place we could get snacks after one in the morning when Jaz and Zoe snuck weed outside of the dorm. I didn't smoke, of course, because it could have gotten me into trouble, so I was the one who drove us to get the snacks.

Now I wish I had. I wish I'd just done it, so I could have laughed and been silly along with them, walking up and down the aisles buying ice cream sandwiches and popcorn and taking it all back to the dorms while giggling the whole way, instead of being borderline annoyed because they were high and I was sober, and I wanted to go to bed.

I might never see either of them again, and I wish I'd taken more risks, when I had the chance.

Before I can think twice about it, I reach out and grab two boxes of the ash blonde, dumping them into the basket.

"Let's go," I tell Ivan, striding past him to the checkout line.