Page 26 of Break Me Open
“Ah. So there is another way.” He points his fork at me. “Just remember, he bites harder when you rise to it.”
I push food around my plate and let the conversation swirl around me. Collins makes a joke about my accent — which earns a middle finger from me — and Mason complains about the cold. Niko tells a story about Ari falling off a roof as a teenager and refusing to admit he was hurt until their mother threatened to throw away his cigarettes. I listen, and I laugh in the right places. I do all the normal things, but underneath, there’s a tautness that doesn’t ease.
Whenever someone says Ari’s name, I have to stop myself from reacting. Every time the door opens, some part of me tenses, waiting to see if he’ll walk through it. The entire time we eat, he doesn’t show, and the stupidest part is that it bothers me too.
Lights-out finds me lying on my bunk, staring at the slats above me. My body aches in a good way from the course, which should be the kind of exhaustion that knocks me into dreamless sleep.
Instead, I lie there and think about things I’ve spent years of my life trying not to think about. Crushes that came and went in private, stuffed into the corners of my brain and ignored. But then there was Niko with his big laugh, easy kindness, and his stupid heroic energy. Niko, who checked on the lad’s other officers forgot, who stayed late to go through drills one more time because“you’ll sleep better if you know it’s right.”I admired him, that slid sideways into fancying him.
Nothing was ever going to happen, of course. He has a fiancée back home, a baby on the way, and is as straight as a fucking ruler. That was fine. Crushes don’t have to go anywhere; you just let them sit and hope they don’t leak.
Then Ari showed up.
You’d think a younger brother would make that situation worse — and he did — just not in the way I expected. I hadn’t meant to notice him at all, let alone take note of every way he moved and provoked.
I definitely didn’t mean to lie awake thinking about water running down his body. I throw an arm over my eyes and exhale hard. “I don’t want him,” I whisper into my sleeve. It sounds weak even to me.
He’s arrogant, he flirts with danger, and he’s in a position that if anything happened, there would be consequences — for him and for me. And yet, here I am, thinking about his voice in the shower, his laugh, and the way my hand caught the back of his thigh and he tensed, just for a second. He felt it too, I’m sure of it.
My stomach twists. I’m making it easy for him. Every time I blush, stammer, and avoid looking directly at him, thenfail five seconds later, I’m feeding whatever game he’s playing. Part of me wants to prove him wrong, but the other part of me wants to prove him right.
I roll onto my side, tug the blanket up over my shoulder, and stare at the thin strip of light under the door.
Working with Ari is dangerous, wanting Ari is suicidal, and acting on any of it is out of the question. So, I won’t. Simple. I won’t touch him or let him see this.
I can fight this. I’ve fought worse.
I’m good at self-denial.
I joined the bloody army.
Ten
Arseny
The forest at the edge of the base isn’t a real forest, not really. It’s curated with trees planted in too-neat lines, undergrowth kept just shitty enough to make you trip, but not enough to hide a full-grown man. Perfect for training, joint exercises, and hunting someone who doesn’t yet realise he’s prey.
I adjust the strap of my rifle over my shoulder and pretend to pay attention while the Russian CO and the British Sergeant argue about sectors on the map like they’re splitting custody of a child.
Niko is relaxed beside me with his eyes on the map. He looks serene, happy, even. He loves this shit, the structure, clarity, and objectives. I like the part after that, when the structure breaks, and we see who’s still standing.
“Sergeant Zakirov,” the CO barks.
“Yes, sir,” I answer automatically.
“You and your brother will each take a mixed squad,” he says. “Brits and ours together. Rotate through these waypoints. Blue team patrols, the red team has the ambush. Then you switch.”
“Da,” I say. “We’ll make it educational.”
Niko’s eyes flick sideways. He doesn’t like my tone. “You get red first,” he says to me, in that older-brother voice that thinks it’s in charge.
“Perfect,” I say, because red means hiding, contact, and I get to choose where this little game happens.
The CO moves on, and the Brits hover near their Sergeant, pretending not to be cold and slightly lost. There are six ofthem again for this run. I scan them quickly. There are two loud ones, one skinny one, one who keeps messing with his radio, one who thinks he’s invisible, and Lance Corporal Caiden Varrik, pretending he isn’t watching my hands when I point at the map.
“Sergeant Zakirov will take point for this half,” their Sergeant says. “You’ll follow his instructions. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” the Brits chorus. Caiden’s assessing gaze flickers to me for a second; he looks annoyed. Good. That means he’s still thinking about the other day. The memory of him on his back on the mat, his eyes dropping to my mouth, gives me a pleasant little spark.
