Page 40 of Charmingly Obsessed
I watch my own fingers, strangely detached, wrap around the edges of the scalding metal. The room is filled with shouting now. Raised voices. Panic. I lift the panel, trying to separate it gently from her skin, but…
Her skin. Oh God, her skin. It stays on the metal. Pink. Raw. Blistered.
Diana chokes on another scream, a strangled, broken sound, her body wracked with shudders of unbearable pain.
“Help,” she barely whispers, her eyes wide, glazed with shock, fixed on her ravaged hand.
My lips go numb. My ears are ringing. The world narrows to this single, horrific point.
I have to do this. Now. And the only strength I have left, the only thing keeping me upright, is just enough to grit my teeth against the bile rising in my throat.
With one swift, brutal motion, I rip the panel away. Taking a layer of her skin with it.
And at the exact same instant, her screams of pain, sharp and piercing, rip through the carefully constructed surface of my heart, leaving nothing but raw, exposed, bleeding flesh.
I stare at her hand.
At the small, delicate palm, now a grotesque landscape of red and white. It blurs before my eyes.
I did this. I fucking did this to her.
“Step away from her, Mykola!” Someone – Albina, her voice sharp with command, with fury – shoves me back. Hard. “For God’s sake, move away from her now!”
And I step back. Stumbling. Though it feels like I’m moving backward through thick, viscous mud. My gaze is locked on Diana. On her face. On her eyes.
But she no longer looks at me.
And I know, with a certainty that chills me to the bone, that she never, ever will again.
Not like she did before. Not with that hesitant curiosity. Not with that flicker of… something.
I’ve destroyed it. Destroyed her. Destroyed everything.
In the space of one catastrophic hour.
17
Chapter 17 Diana
Three Years Later
I step out of Serafima Pylypivna’s guest bathroom, a couple of heavy-duty painkillers clutched in my hand for Frez, just as he exits the spare bedroom she’s temporarily assigned him.
We nearly collide in the dim, narrow hallway, a clumsy, awkward shuffle like two teenagers fumbling in the dark. His fault, mostly. He’s too big for these old-world proportions.
Judging by the thunderclouds gathering in his bruised, still-swollen face, his hushed, intense phone conversation with the mysterious “Larrington” didn’t end with rainbows and unicorns.
He’s deep in thought, brow furrowed, radiating a dangerous, coiled energy that makes the air around him crackle. The raw, animalistic violence from the park clearing still clings to him, afaint metallic tang of blood mixed with the expensive, familiar scent of his skin.
“Let’s get some tea,” he says. “Or… whatever you’re having.”
Serafima Pylypivna, a magnificent whirlwind in a paisley silk robe that looks like it was liberated from a maharaja’s closet, is already in her element in the kitchen. She’s humming an obscure Ukrainian folk tune and vigorously chopping ingredients for anOliviesalad – chicken breast, pickles, potatoes, peas – with a speed and precision that would make a Michelin-starred chef weep. The air is thick with the scent of dill.
Frez, looking ridiculously out of place yet somehow perfectly at home, squeezes past the overflowing sink and leans casually against the ancient, temperamental gas stove, watching her with an unreadable expression.
I bypass the tea, opting for cocoa for him – something warm, sweet, comforting. A peace offering. Or maybe just an excuse to fuss, to avoid meeting his intense gaze for a few more precious seconds.
With no other option, I take the only available seat at the small, cluttered kitchen table. Serafima, thankfully, has her back to Frez, her focus entirely on her salad artistry.
