“Are you okay?” Arsen asked Maya, taking her hand to lift her out of her seat and off the subway car before it started moving again.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Maya said, but Arsen could tell that she was lying. She wasn’t very good at deception, even after years of dealing with criminals. The next moment, she yanked her hand out of Arsen’s, which hurt him like he’d been stung, but he should have expected her to pull away. We’re not together anymore, he reminded himself. He had to keep repeating that inside his mind until it really sunk in. Despite the fact that it had been over a year, somehow he had never really accepted it as reality.
He unlocked his apartment and opened the door for Maya, who stomped inside, her feet falling heavy on the ground like she weighed a thousand more pounds than she really did. She was frustrated, that much was obvious. Arsen felt it, too—the disappointment that they still hadn’t found anything, but Maya was really worrying him. She seemed disconnected, like she wasn’t really there with him; her brain seemed to be a million miles away.
She stared at the ground as she walked back and forth across the living room and kitchen, turning around and retracing her own steps several times in a row.
In all their years together, he’d never seen her like this. Sure, he’d witnessed more than his share of panic attacks and crying fits, but nothing like this. She was so agitated and so angry, pacing around his apartment back and forth, back and forth, like she was stuck on train tracks that moved her on the same path over and over again.
“So what do we do now?” Arsen said, trying to get Maya’s attention. But she didn’t look at him, her head bowed as she continued to move past him. Arsen cleared his throat, speaking louder this time. “We’ve got to go back to square one, right?”
“I can’t fucking believe that we…” Maya trailed off, shaking her head.
“What? Say it,” Arsen said, leaning against the wall to look at her as she moved.
Maya sighed deeply, her breath coming out ragged and rough. “We’re just…wasting our time. We don’t know what we’re doing here. We might as well just sit on our asses while he carves Roxie up into bits.”
“Hey,” Arsen said. “Don’t talk like that. It doesn’t help anything.”
“Well, what the hell will? Huh? What the fuck can we do to actually help? I’m just…” Maya shook her head again and fell back into silence, picking up the pace until she was practically power-walking across the room.
“Hey, baby, baby, stop,” Arsen said, stepping in front of Maya to freeze her in her tracks. He grabbed her shoulders to hold her in place, but his grasp was gentle. She could have shrugged out of it if she wanted to. But she didn’t.
“Don’t call me that,” Maya whispered. Her eyes were now wide and full of fear, but at least she wasn’t running away from him.
“It’s what you are,” Arsen said. “No matter what, you know? You’re my…well, you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t,” Maya said, shaking her head again and staring down at their feet. “I don’t…I don’t feel good, Arsen. I don’t feel okay.”
“Okay, okay, how can I help?” Arsen asked, beginning to rub his hands gently over her shoulders, trying to work out the tremendous amounts of pressure he found between her shoulder-blades.
Maya’s throat worked as she visibly swallowed, finally lifting her eyes to look into Arsen’s. “Maybe just…hold me?” She leaned forward, slowly folding her body into Arsen, who quickly wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close to his chest.
“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be alright,” Arsen murmured into her hair, rubbing a hand down the top half of her back, feeling her spine through the back of her sweater and dress.
“It’s not; it’s not. It won’t be okay, Arsen. I’m not okay,” Maya whimpered into the fabric of his shirt, her words muffled but still audible.
Arsen smoothed over the back of her head, scratching lightly at her scalp, feeling her sink deeper into his body. “Let’s go to the couch,” he murmured, dropping a kiss on the top of her head before pulling back to lead her over to the sofa.
They settled onto the cushions of the couch, Maya pressing her body right up against Arsen’s and reaching over to grab his hand. He could feel her pulse pounding through the thin skin of her wrist, her blood rushing right against him. Arsen rubbed his fingers over the back of her hand, willing her heart to calm down, but it thumped hard and fast like a war drum. “You’re going to be okay,” he whispered to Maya.
“How can you say that?” Maya whispered, clutching harder at his hand until her nails dug into his skin. “I’ve never been okay, as long as you’ve known me. I’ve always been…”
“You’ve always been strong,” Arsen argued. He didn’t mind feeling her nails dig into his skin. He was willing to take whatever pain she had to offer if it would make her feel better. “You’ve always been tough. You’ve weathered every storm. You’ll make it through this one, too, even if…” Even if we don’t find Roxie in time, he thought to himself, not saying the words out loud. He wasn’t sure if Maya could bear to hear them right now.
“But that’s just it,” Maya said. “I’m not so sure I have made it through every situation. I…I think there’s something wrong with me. I think there’s something really wrong, like I’m dead inside or something.”
“No,” Arsen argued, turning on the couch to face her and look into her eyes. He brought a hand up to cup the side of her face, causing her eyes to slide shut as his thumb rubbed her jawline. “That’s not true. You’re fine, baby. You’re perfect.”
“Then how could I do what I did to those boys today?” Maya asked, and when Arsen looked up into her eyes, he saw that they were full of tears, shining and bright. It hurt so much to see her in pain. Arsen felt like a piece of his heart was being slowly ripped away from the center of his chest. “How could I scare them like I did? What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing,” Arsen said. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You were defending yourself and me too. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“But I was…violent,” Maya said, struggling on the last word, practically choking on it as she forced it out of her mouth. “I was like…him.”
Him. Her kidnapper. The one who’d taken Maya and killed Lizzie. Arsen felt like flames burst to life in his belly just thinking about that fucker, the man he hated more than any other person on the face of the planet. He reached forward and grabbed Maya’s face, holding both sides of her head firmly with his hands. “Hey, listen to me. You’re not like him. You could never be like him. You’re too good. You’re too strong. You could never do anything like that.”
“But what if I do? What if he ruined me forever? I’m evil. I’m sick. I’m…” She paused to suck in air, breathing so deeply and raggedly that Arsen was a little worried she was having another panic attack. “I’m not a good person, Arsen. I’m not good.”
“Why do you say that?” Arsen asked, adjusting on the couch so he could shuffle closer to Maya’s body. “That’s not true.”
“It is,” Maya said. “As soon as I come back to the city, I’m…” She trailed off again, shaking her head. “It’s stupid and wrong and fucked-up. I’m not good. I’m not pure or perfect or anything that you think I am. I’ve just lied to you all these years, and you’ve fallen for my act.”
“So, what, you want to hurt people, is that it? That just makes you human. That just makes you normal,” Arsen said.
Maya didn’t say anything for a long moment, but two tears slipped out of her eyes and streaked down her cheeks, so Arsen reached out and wiped them away with his fingertips, gently tracing the outline of her face. Maya closed her eyes and inhaled shakily before reaching up to pull Arsen’s hands away. “Stop,” she murmured.
Arsen’s heart fell inside him, but he did what she told him, pulling away until they were no longer touching. They sat like that—separated by mere centimeters that felt like miles—for several long minutes, staring at each other, staring at the emptiness of the room, and staring down at their own laps until Maya finally broke the silence. “I think the city…I think the city doesn’t agree with me,” she said softly.
“What do you mean?” Arsen asked.
Maya bit down on her lower lip, gnawing at it as if it were a chew toy. “I come back here, and then…I’m back to the person I was.”
Arsen didn’t know what to say right away. As far as he could tell, Maya had always been the same person, the same exact beautiful, complicated, broken, scared, and brave person. But of course, he’d never known her before the incident. Maybe before the kidnapping, before that sick fuck had done so many bad things to her, she was somebody else entirely. “Are you different in the countryside?” he asked.
“Very,” Maya answered. “Very different.” Arsen was tempted to cut in again with more questions, burning with curiosity about this alternate life that Maya had apparently lived while she was gone, but then she spoke again, unleashing a long stream of words in a rush. “I’m this whole other person out there. I’m nice and polite and kind, and I help people. And I’m normal. I don’t have panic attacks. I don’t freak out on people. I don’t ever do anything like I did today.”
Arsen nodded slowly to himself, trying to picture this alternate-universe Maya. It was hard to conjure up a believable image of the person she was describing. In Arsen’s mind, she didn’t even look like Maya. He wondered if Maya dressed differently, if she carried herself with less force, less power in the country. “Are you happy?” he asked, thinking out loud.
Maya shifted uncomfortably in the seat next to him. “I…I don’t know,” she finally said after a short pause. “Yes, I guess so. As happy as I’m capable of being.”
“I thought you were happy with me, once,” Arsen said, thinking back on a thousand moments where he made Maya laugh or smile, her bright, gleaming teeth cutting through the darkness of his mind like tiny knives. Those moments hurt him now, slicing him apart inside. But it wasn’t always that way.
At some point, Maya had started fidgeting with her fingers, picking at her cuticles until blood bloomed up on her thumbs, a bright orange-red color staining her skin. “I think I was, sort of,” Maya said. “As close to happy as I could possibly be, here in the city.” She sighed deeply and wiped her bloody thumbs on the front of her dress, apparently not caring if it stained. “I don’t know, though. I guess I’m just whining, like everybody else does. I don’t know who I am, and I’m taking it out on other people. So original,” she said with a humorless chuckle.
“You are original,” Arsen argued, feeling himself start growing annoyed at how much Maya was beating herself up. “You’re not like other people.”
Her brow furrowed, but she didn’t look in Arsen’s eyes. Instead, she stared down at her own bloodstained fingers, holding them out in front of her like she was just realizing what she’d done to herself. “I don’t know. I guess I can’t win either way. I want to be like everybody else, you know? I want to be normal. I want to just be okay. I don’t want to be fucked-up. But I am. That’s what makes me special, isn’t it? How messed up I am? If I hadn’t been kidnapped and raped and beaten and cut up, you probably would never have loved me. You never would have seen anything special in me,” she rambled, but this time, the words came out slow, like they were fighting through fog just to get out into the open air.
“That’s not true,” Arsen whispered. “That’s not true at all.”
“Isn’t it? You only ever knew me after I’d been fucked up. You’ve only ever known me like this. If you met me out in the country, you wouldn’t even like me. You wouldn’t want to be around me. I’d just bore you. I’m only here because I’m sick, because I’m broken. If I were healthy, if I were normal…” She trailed off again, exhaling heavily.
“I don’t love you because you were hurt. I love you because you fought back. You survived. I love you because you’re tough. Because you want to save people,” Arsen said, shifting forward on the couch to close the distance between them.
It was only after the words left his mouth that Arsen realized he used the present tense. His entire body flushed at once, his blood rushing to the surface of his body as if it wanted to escape.
Once again, Maya cut through the silence, not elegantly but roughly, her voice coming out in a low, hoarse whisper. “You…you do?”
Arsen debated within himself for a long moment, arguing both sides. I do love her. But I don’t. I shouldn’t. I can’t do that anymore. That’s pathetic, weak, ridiculous, loving somebody who left you, he thought. But then the other voice in his head popped up, arguing against his self-protective instincts. She needs love. She needs to feel loved. She needs to remember why she deserves it. She needs you.
He cleared his throat, reaching forward to put his hand on Maya’s knee. He wasn’t trying to be creepy or invasive. He just needed some contact, however small, to ground himself. He needed to feel her strength. “I do,” he murmured, rubbing his thumb along the sharp outline of her kneecap.
Maya burst into tears, all at once, as if Arsen popped a balloon to release all of her emotions at the same time. “Fuck,” she groaned, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, but the sobs kept rising out her throat, over and over and over again, one after another after another until she was practically wailing.
“Shh, shh. Come here. Come here. I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry,” Arsen said in a rush, reaching over to pull her into his arms again, crushing her against his body.
Maya cried into his shirt, probably getting the front of it ridiculously damp, but he couldn’t bring himself to care, not when she needed him so badly. She clutched at his sleeves, tugging them hard within her clenched fists. Arsen would let her do whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, as long as she stayed here with him. He’d let her break down, fall apart, or do whatever, as long as he could touch her, feel her strength through her skin. She pulled back a little to look up into his eyes, and even though her face was wet with tears, reddened and splotchy, Arsen almost gasped at how beautiful she looked, raw and vulnerable under his gaze for what felt like the first time in their lives.
He didn’t know who started it. Later, when he looked back on it, he’d eventually decide that it didn’t matter. All he knew was that Maya’s hand was on his thigh and his own hand found its way into her hair, and the rest was history.
Their mouths collided, almost painfully hard. Acting on its own, without help from his brain, Arsen’s hand wrapped around the side of Maya’s neck to tug her in closer, deepening the kiss until their tongues rubbed up against each other, each of them invading the other’s mouth, exploring the familiar territory.
God, yes. God, yes, Arsen thought, clawing at Maya’s back, trying to get her as close to him as possible, trying to join their bodies together after they’d spent so long apart. She felt just like he remembered, just as soft and hard in all the right places. But there was a little nagging thought at the back of his mind, persistently repeating itself until it cut through the fog of lust and love that clouded his brain. She doesn’t want you. She ran away from you. She wants her fiancé now. She just misses him. You’re taking advantage of her.
Arsen pulled away from Maya, ending their kiss without warning, leaving her with her eyes closed and her mouth open, awaiting more of his touch. It was so fucking tempting to just lean in and smash their faces back together, melt with her for as long as he was able to do so. But he fought it, even as Maya opened her eyes and seemed to nonverbally plead with him to resume kissing her. He held strong, fighting with the lump in his throat before he spoke.
“Do you really want this?” he asked, trying as hard as he could to keep his voice steady and calm. It would be so easy to beg, so easy to plead with her until she gave him the answer he wanted to hear. But he pulled back a little more, abandoning the sweet, seductive heat of Maya’s body for the chill of physical solitude.
Maya visibly swallowed, her throat working up and down while her eyes darted from his face to his hands to the space between his legs. “I…I…” Maya stuttered, shaking her head at herself.
Arsen waited for her answer, his heart pounding in his ears. Please, Maya, he thought, feeling more desperate for this than he’d felt for anything else in his life up to that point. Please.