3. Bronwyn

3

brONWYN

I closed the store at eight but, by the time I’d cleaned up, re-ordered stock and locked up, it was closer to nine. After being on my feet all day, my joints were swollen tight and every step felt like bone grinding on bone. What I really wanted was to soak in a long, hot bath, with some candles and maybe some caramel crunch chocolate. But she needed me.

So I bundled up in a coat, scarf and gloves and set out into the blizzard.

The subway train was packed so I had to hang from a strap, which meant that each jolt and sway of the carriage whip-cracked my body, pulling my joints in all sorts of interesting ways. There was a priority seat, but it was occupied by a big guy in a suit who reeked of alcohol, and I wasn’t going to get into a fight with him. Even if he gave up the seat willingly, I’d have to deal with everyone else in the carriage. Why do you need the seat anyway? Look at you, there’s nothing wrong with you!

Climbing the stairs that led up to the street nearly killed me: I had to stop twice and take a breath of freezing air before I could push through the pain. But then I was at the top and I put my head down and just went for it: along the street, through the doors of the care facility, past the nurses’s station and into her room?—

My grandmother, Babette—she’s always insisted I call her Baba—is 5’8” and built, in her words, like a dockworker. When she was a nurse, she could heave even the biggest patients onto gurneys and more than once she punched out some drunk guy who tried to grope her. But now, nestled in a drab, high-backed chair, she looked tiny.

I pasted a happy smile on my face even as my heart broke inside. “Hey! Sorry I’m late.” I hurried over and hugged her. Her right arm gave me a weak little squeeze...but only her right arm.

It had happened three months ago. She’d been carrying a bag of groceries in from the car when she staggered sideways and just crumpled, hitting her head on a wall as she went down. The paramedics rushed her to the hospital and the doctors confirmed she’d suffered a massive stroke.

She was out of danger, now, but she wasn’t recovering as the doctors had hoped. And I knew this place was part of the reason. The room, with its cracked, faded yellow paint, felt more like a cell. Baba needed physiotherapy and stimulation to help her brain regrow all the connections it had lost. But the staff barely came into her room. Her plates from breakfast and lunch were still sitting in the corner and the puzzle books and word games I’d bought were in an untouched stack on the shelf. I wanted to scream in frustration but there was nothing I could do: Baba needed twenty-four-hour care which I couldn’t give her at home, and this place was the best I could afford.

I blinked hard: I’d save the crying for when I got home. “Have you eaten?” I asked. Both of us glanced sadly down at the plate of rubbery tubes in watery sauce that the care facility called pasta. “Can’t say I blame you,” I deadpanned. “Why don’t I run down the street and get you something?”

I brought her some hot food and helped her eat. Then I read to her until the nurses told me I had to go.

I hadn’t eaten all day so when I got back to my apartment, I dug around in the refrigerator and made myself a sandwich. Maybe I’m weird but sandwiches have always been my comfort food: there’s no other food where you can customize it to your exact mood. Right now, I need pastrami and cheese and extra pickles, and chips, lots of chips. I layered it all into a huge, bursting-at-the-seams sandwich, poured a glass of milk and then huddled in bed to eat it because it was too cold anywhere else.

But even when I was full, and I’d stopped shivering, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about my bank account, which had been dropping deeper and deeper into the red each month. The tiny salary I paid myself barely brought it back into the black before bills and the cost of Baba’s care facility slammed it down into the red again. I was barely able to afford groceries: luxuries like new clothes were a distant memory. And then there was the store, a whole different level of worry.

It wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time, there was a bouncy eight-year-old who loved swimming, board games and, above all, books. My parents had always been big readers, and they got me reading early. I’d lie for hours stretched out on my stomach, chin propped on one hand, utterly still apart from the slow turning of pages. I was a princess, a starship commander, a farmer with a family of talking mice...

And then one day, I came home from a weekend with Baba and my own story just...stopped, like someone had torn out the rest of my book.

I remember Baba clutching me to her chest as I sobbed into her dress. She was struggling not to cry herself: she’d just lost her son and daughter-in-law. “We’ll get through this,” she told me. “The two of us.”

Suddenly, at fifty-eight, Baba had to become a mother again. I moved into her tiny apartment, and we did our best to make it work. She put in long shifts at the hospital to pay the bills and I helped where I could. I’d always had a weird, analytical brain, obsessing over tweaking systems and making things mesh: that’s why I liked board games so much. I put it to work organizing rotas, meal planning and clipping coupons. College was out of the question so when I left school, I got a job working in a grocery store.

The place was fascinating to me. There was something about the complex flow of it that suited my brain: seeing how all the staff, product lines and store layout worked together wasn’t too different from figuring out board games, or meal planning. I soaked up all the knowledge I could and after a few months I started making timid little suggestions, like maybe we could widen the baby food aisle, because then it would be easier for parents pushing prams. And when profits went up, my boss noticed. Over the next seven years, I rose slowly up the ranks. But when my dream job, a store manager post, opened up, my boss took me aside and gently explained that I wasn’t in the running. “You’re great,” he said with feeling. “You could run a store. But there’s no point even putting you forward. These days, they want a college degree.”

That night, I was one of the last ones in the store, checking around before we locked up. I shut off the lights…and then I just sank down in the darkened vegetable aisle. It hit me that this was it. I was going to be stuck at this level for the rest of my life unless I did something.

What if I opened my own damn store?

And as I sat there on the cold tiles, I suddenly knew exactly what I’d sell: books. Books had helped me through the death of my parents, my teens, they’d been an escape from the daily grind of work...I wanted to share that and help people to find books they’d love.

So I enrolled in a business course at the local community college. It was exhausting: I was working shifts at the store by day, then classes in the evening and then reading books on bookkeeping and finance until I fell asleep. But slowly, very slowly, I started to shape my crazy idea into a workable business plan. I saved as much of my paycheck as I could for the startup costs and Baba insisted on throwing in a chunk of her retirement savings to help.

And then Nathan walked into my class. Plaid shirt rolled up to show chiseled forearms dusted with golden hair. Ocean-blue eyes that twinkled when he smiled, and he smiled a lot. He flopped down in the seat next to me without asking if it was taken, then leaned over. “You look smart. Can I copy off you?”

I flushed and nodded. I’d been single for over a year: I hadn’t had time to meet anyone, and guys weren’t interested in the pale, curvy girl who lived with her grandmother. But at the end of the class, Nathan asked me out for coffee.

A few hours later I knew all about his plans. A wife, two children (a boy and a girl), a Jack Russell (his family had always owned Jack Russells) and, when his planned chain of organic smoothie stores was successful, a fancy apartment in a nice part of Chicago and holidays in Europe. I’d never met anyone so sure of what they wanted, before. Two more dates and we were having breathless, up-against-the-wall sex at his place. A month later, I met his parents. And eight months after that, as we walked through showers of pink cherry blossom in Jackson Park, he went down on one knee and asked me to marry him.

I stared down at him, open-mouthed. Ever since I was a kid, I’d had daydreams about someone riding in to rescue me. Some handsome prince who’d carry me off and marry me, complete with a big, fairytale wedding. This is it! I felt my throat closing up. “Yes!”

We booked a trip to New York for the following weekend to celebrate and I ran home to tell Baba. She’d always been a little hesitant about Nathan, but she hugged me tight and told me how happy she was for me.

I’d been getting twinges of pain in my joints, and I didn’t want it to spoil our trip to New York, especially because we’d be spending a lot of time walking. So I talked to my physician and he sent me for x-rays and tests. The day before we left for New York, Nathan and I sat down with a specialist.

I had early-onset rheumatoid arthritis. My body was attacking the lining of my joints, making them swollen and painful. It could be managed, but it couldn’t be stopped. And it was going to get a lot worse.

I grabbed for Nathan’s hand and he squeezed mine reassuringly. But when he turned to look at me, it was like he was seeing me for the first time. And when we stumbled, dazed, out of the specialist’s office, we looked around at the other patients in the waiting room, most of them with some form of arthritis. Some were as old as Baba, some as young as me. Some had to use sticks to walk, some couldn’t walk at all. I was staring at my future.

The next day, I was lying on the grass in Central Park, my head cradled in Nathan’s lap as he sat against a tree. The sun was shining, a string quartet was playing, and the diagnosis seemed like a bad dream. Everything’s going to be fine, I told myself. “When we get back,” I said gently, “should we start looking at apartments?”

“Mumm.” He was right there, stroking my hair. So why did his voice sound so far away? “Let’s do that.”

A week after we got back, he said we should maybe slow things down a little.

A week after that , he split up with me. That picture he had in his head of his perfect life. I no longer fit. He didn’t want a wife who was flawed.

In the kitchen of our little apartment, Baba hugged me tight while I cried my heart out. I’d had break-ups before, but I’d never been left feeling so utterly worthless. So not enough.

“I don’t know what—what I’m going to do,” I sobbed. My bookstore plan had been risky. Now it felt impossible.

Baba squeezed me harder. “I do,” she said. “Our ancestors were Welsh. Celt warrior women who lived in the forest and when the Romans invaded and tried to take their home, they fought. That’s what you’re going to do, Bronnie. You’re going to fight.”

And so, three months later, I opened All You Need Is Books (my grammar-nerd friend Luna had argued that technically it should be Are Books, but it was my store, dammit). Baba was right, I had to fight. Fuck Nathan and fuck arthritis.

The first few months went well: every store gets a boost when it’s new and people are curious. But now, six months on, the store was losing money each month. Baba’s care facility bills meant I could barely afford food. I’d almost burned through my startup money. If I didn’t figure something out soon, I’d have to shut down...and Baba would have lost the money she gave me.

I rolled onto my back, wincing as my aching joints flexed, and stared up at the cracked plaster of the apartment’s ceiling. I had no idea what I was going to do. And there was no one I could go to for help: my parents were gone, Baba was sick, the man I’d thought I was going to marry dumped me... I was twenty-seven and, suddenly, I was all alone. I had some great friends, but they had problems of their own and they weren’t the same as family. I felt like I was adrift on an endless black ocean with no one else in sight.

I could feel my mind tumbling downward, faster and faster, and I knew I had to think of something else, now, or I wasn’t going to stop until I hit bottom?—

Radimir Aristov.

My mind stopped with a jolt, like a falling rock climber grabbing a handhold. Radimir Aristov. He was definitely unique enough to distract me. I wrapped the memories around me to shut out the cold dark. That accent, shaping each syllable until it was deliciously rough ice. That name, Aristov, like the whisper of a silver dagger being drawn. The swell of his pecs under his soft white shirt, just a hint of dark tattoo peeking through. The way he jerked his waistcoat to straighten it. The warmth of his hands when they’d touched mine...

And something happened. I’d only meant to distract myself but once I started thinking about him, I couldn’t stop.

It was that power that throbbed from him, like a drumbeat too low to hear, a vibration that shook my whole body. It resonated right to my core and bloomed into heat. I’ve always been built out of steel, like Baba, but the heat just melted me into taffy. He felt so utterly different to every man I’d ever met. Like he’d stepped into my bookstore from a shadow world that was colder, harder, realer than the one I knew.

After he’d stalked out of my store, I’d run over to the door: I couldn’t help it. I saw him climbing into a big, black Mercedes that whisked him away. What would have happened if he’d taken me with him?

I closed my eyes and imagined. I could feel the shocking cold of the night air as he pulled me across the street, my sneakers skidding in the snow. I felt something drop inside me, dark and deliciously hot. Like the feeling you get on a rollercoaster when you tip over the first hill and plunge.

He threw me into the car and I sprawled on my back on the back seat. He climbed on top of me, a knee pressing between my thighs, and the door whumped shut. The sound of the street dropped away instantly: we were in his world, now, hidden by tinted glass. The driver started the car and I rocked on the seat as we roared away.

I stared up at him, our faces only a foot apart. “What do you want?” I managed.

He was lit by the streetlights whipping past, his face alternating between light and shadow. “ You know what I want, ” he rumbled, those gray eyes blazing. He pushed me down on the seat, my legs kicking towards the ceiling, and his lips came down on mine.

He was hungry, aggressive, forcing me open and making me his. The first touch of his tongue against mine sent an electric shock through my body: my back arched off the seat, my hair sliding on the leather as my head rolled back. I could feel myself reaching up, not to push him away, exactly, just to maintain some control. But at the same time, it was like I was falling backwards into pink bliss. The hard press of his lips, the slow grind of his pecs against my breasts...why exactly did I need to maintain control, again?

His hand traced down my side and then up, underneath my sweater and vest top, and I groaned in shock as his fingertips skimmed over bare skin. He smoothed up my side, the warmth of his hand shocking, and then his hand was sweeping around to the front.

He slid his hand under my bra and suddenly my breast was in his hand, being rolled and softly kneaded, my nipple rasping against his palm. I swallowed, panted, and groped upwards, blindly, too far gone to open my eyes.

A hand closed around one of my wrists. Then it captured the other one and pressed them both down to the soft leather above my head.

I got that roller coaster drop again. I wasn’t in control anymore. I should be scared. A part of me was scared.

But I didn’t want him to stop.

The kiss changed, a slow grind of his lips against mine as his tongue sought me out and then freakin’ owned me. I was breathless, urgent in a way I’d never felt before. However hard he kissed me, I wanted it harder. I felt weak, damsel-fainting-in-a-corset weak, and all I could do was kiss back, like whispering into a hurricane. But every time I brushed the tip of my tongue against his, I felt his whole body go rigid. His chest vibrated as he full-on growled. The more he felt me lose myself in the pleasure, the more turned on he got.

He suddenly rammed my sweater and vest top up around my neck. My bra fought valiantly for a second to keep me covered. Then he grabbed it and pulled, there was a sudden snap, and I was completely bare. He lowered his head and licked at my nipple, bathing it in warmth and bringing it to quivering hardness. Every flick of his tongue sent a new wave of hot, tight pleasure strumming through my body. I tried to reach for him...but he still had my wrists pinned, and his grip was like iron.

That dark, forbidden plunge inside me. I went floaty and breathless. I pushed against his grip again, a little harder, this time. My wrists lifted a fraction of an inch off the seat. Then his hand pressed them down even harder, and a dark ribbon of heat twisted straight down to my groin and made me crush my thighs together. God, what is this?

Radimir suddenly lifted his head. I blinked hazily and saw him staring down at me, his eyes molten. His hand stroked down my body to the waistband of my jeans...and he paused. He was giving me a chance to say no.

But my pulse was like a bass drum crashing inside my head, drowning out anything else. I panted, staring up at him, and stayed silent.

I thought I saw his eyes gleam. Then he grabbed the front of my jeans and pulled, hard, and I felt the buttons on the fly pop open, and with a second jerk he dragged them down over my ass and hips, down around my knees. I felt the cool air of the car against my pussy lips and realized he’d pulled my panties down with them. I flushed as his eyes swept over me, drinking me in. Then he was unfastening his belt, shoving his pants down one-handed as his cock sprang free. He spread my knees, and I cried out as the head of him parted my slickened lips and plunged deep into me?—

Everything blurred, becoming frantic flashes of sensation. The silken stretch of his cock inside me, the pleasure making me arch my back?—

The weight of him between my thighs, pinning me?—

The silky rasp of his expensive shirt against my nipples as he thrust?—

Him flipping me over and pulling me up onto my hands and knees, then fucking me from behind, even harder, holding my wrists behind my back OH GOD YES ? —

I bucked and trembled as an orgasm rolled through me, waves of pink pleasure that tumbled me into delightfully dark depths I hadn’t known were there. I finally surfaced, panting, and opened my eyes. I was in my bed, one hand in my soaked panties.

My heart was still slowing. What the hell was that?! I fantasized plenty but never about some random guy I’d only met for a few minutes. Sure, Radimir was hot as hell, but he was an actual, real-world gangster. If the stories were true, he’d killed people, or at least had them killed. Why was I fantasizing about being whisked off in his car while he… I reddened.

It had been so real. My wrists still felt warm from where he’d gripped them. And what was that about? I’d never wanted it rough before. Or at least, I’d never been conscious of it. But I couldn’t deny how the fantasy had taken hold of me. And now I felt gloriously floaty and relaxed, like the orgasm had wrung all the stress out of me.

I closed my eyes and felt myself sinking into sleep. But as I drifted downward, reality crept back in.

Baba was still sick. The store was still losing money. And I was still alone.

When I was a kid, I’d thought that someday, a prince would come and rescue me.

I’d thought Nathan was that prince. But all he did was make me realize the truth.

There are no princes.