Page 7 of Escaping the Bratva
My mouth waters just thinking about the frozen carbonated drink. “We have to go.”
She smiles. “Roger that.”
She turns a corner, heading towards the only 7-11 I know of in Seattle. When we pull up, the bright neon sign makes me squint my eyes. Alyssa quickly turns off the jeep and gets out. I follow behind her, and she takes my hand, basically dragging me inside.
“Slurpee, Slurpee!” she chants, and I laugh feeling like a sorority girl instead of a grown adult.
The teenage boy at the counter smiles at us. The convenience store is empty, and we’re probably the most entertaining customers he’s had all night.
“Slurpees are in the back. There’s a sale right now—”
His words are cut off by Alyssa’s chanting. “Slurpee, Slurpee!”
I can’t help but laugh as she drags me to the back of the store, and we begin to fill up our cups.
“Ooh, I could layer all the flavors together,” I say, looking at the wall of selections.
Alyssa scrunches up her nose as she leans her body weight against the handle of one of Slurpee machines.
“You’ll go be sooo sick ‘morrow if you do that,” she says, slurring her words.
She’s probably right. The bell on the door chimes, but I don’t pay any attention as I choose the cherry flavor and start to fill my large cup with the cold, red liquid. When I turn around to grab a straw from the table behind me, my breath catches in my throat. No. I must be seeing things. I sit my cup down and rub my hazy, drunken eyes. There’s no fucking way.
“Hey, kitten,” the man standing in front of me says, his voice still holding a hint of that Russian accent that I remember so well. He’s bigger than I remember. His shoulders are much broader, and it looks like he has a significant amount of muscle underneath his button-down shirt. He’s dressed like he’s coming from a nice restaurant even though it’s nearly three a.m.
“What. The. Hell?”
His lips split into a smile, showing off pearly white teeth.
Alyssa comes up behind me and leans against my arm. “Are you done? I’m tired.” She notices the man standing in front of me. “Hey there, handsome.”
V still has that pretty brown hair, but now, it’s buzzed. His beard is short and clean, but it’s his deep gray-blue eyes that make my body freeze. I’d thought about those eyes so many times in the last decade until I forced myself to never think about him again. What the hell was he doing in Seattle?
V sticks his hand out to shake Alyssa’s, ignoring how I’m standing there like a caught fish gasping for water.
“I’m V,” he says to Alyssa. She shakes his hand, and I don’t miss the way her cheeks flush. I’m caught off guard, but a surge of emotion hits me. I can’t possibly feel jealousy over a man I haven’t had a claim over since college. I snap out of the momentary trance.
“I’m not fucking doing this.” I shove past him, taking my drink to the front counter to pay. I have to get some distance between us. I’ve never run into him before, so I assume he’d just moved to the city. What fucking reason would he have to move to Seattle? I feel like I’m in some sort of nightmare. I rub my eyes again, trying to clear my hazy brain. Maybe I’d been drugged at the club. Yes, that’s it. Someone must have slipped something into my drink, and now I’m hallucinating my college boyfriend. It makes complete sense.
“Four fifty,” the cashier says.
I dig into my purse, but before I can pull out the money, Alyssa puts her Slurpee on the counter next to mine and V says, “I got it.”
His eyes don’t leave mine as he pays for our drinks.
“You two have an Uber?” V asks as he waits for the cashier to give him our change.
Alyssa shakes her head. “Nope, parked outside.”
V furrows his eyebrows. “You drove here?” His voice sounds like he’s reprimanding a child.
“I’m fine,” Alyssa slurs, and I want to shake her and tell her to stop talking to him so that I can go home and pretend that this never happened. The cashier hands V his change, and he puts the coins in the take-one, leave-one container before stuffing the cash in his pocket.
“Let me drive you home,” he suggests.
At least Alyssa’s sober enough to look uncomfortable. “I don’t think so, big boy. Stranger danger.”
His eyes focus on me again. “I’m not a stranger, am I, kitten?”