All the Secrets We Keep (Quarry Book 2) Page 13

  “Sounds like you really hammered out the details.”

  He poured himself a glass of wine and filled hers with sparkling water. It meant something, for him to remember. She and Wayne had been together for three years, and he’d asked her if she wanted a glass of wine right up until the night they’d broken it off, no matter how many times she politely or impolitely reminded him she didn’t drink. Ilya hadn’t impressed Theresa as the kind of guy to pay attention, but he had.

  It made her more honest than she’d anticipated being. For a moment she wished she’d had the wine to blame it on. Instead, all she had was a weariness about keeping secrets and the desire to take a chance she might regret.

  “I was living with someone. It ended, and he asked me to leave. Kicked me out, actually. I’d already put a lot of my stuff into storage when we were together, but he gave me a day to get my things and leave, which was more than your mother did when she booted us.”

  Ilya flinched. “Wow.”

  “He was really mad,” Theresa said mildly.

  “I didn’t know you were . . . it was a serious thing?”

  She fixed him with a look. “Yes, Ilya, it was a serious thing. He asked me to marry him, and I said no. It all went downhill after that.”

  “Shit.” Ilya rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, then laughed ruefully. “Why’d you say no?”

  “I didn’t want to marry him.” Even now, the memory of the conversation with Wayne had the power to make Theresa’s stomach squeeze and knot.

  “You didn’t love him.”

  Surprised, she shook her head. “Oh, no. I did love him. Just not enough, I guess.”

  “You dodged a bullet. Marriage is bullshit.”

  “Careful,” Theresa said with a small smile. “You’ll make me think you believe that.”

  “I didn’t know you were even with someone,” Ilya said.

  She squeezed the back of the chair. “How could you have known? And you didn’t ask. It doesn’t really matter, anyway. It’s over.”

  “But I wouldn’t have . . .” Ilya lifted his glass of wine, not finishing his sentence, although she could’ve guessed what he meant.

  That kiss.

  Theresa went to the vase that held various kitchen implements on the counter next to the oven and grabbed the pizza cutter from it. She cut, then cut again. One more time. She grabbed two gooey slices and brought them quickly to the table, sliding them onto the plates he’d put there before the cheese could drip off.

  “So Alicia let you move in here?” Ilya lifted the pizza to his mouth, biting, the cheese running in a long strand from his mouth to the slice.

  It was nowhere close to an accurate timeline, but she nodded anyway. “Yes.”

  “That’s generous of her,” Ilya said.

  She handed him a napkin. “Yes. It is. Very much, and I appreciate it.”

  She plucked a piece of pineapple from the top of the pizza and put it in her mouth, relishing the sweetness that had mixed with the saltiness of the ham. It was only a frozen pizza, but being able to buy it and put it in the freezer, then cook it for dinner . . . that was a luxury she’d no longer take for granted.

  “That story about the landlord,” he said after a few seconds. “That wasn’t true.”

  “No.”

  “Why’d you lie to me?”

  She’d been carefully avoiding his gaze, although she could feel it burning into her. She forced herself to look at him, lifting her chin, unwilling to let herself be embarrassed by this anymore. “I didn’t want to admit that I’d been sleeping in my car.”

  Ilya took a long sip of wine and tilted his head to look at her. His eyes narrowed and his mouth pursed for a second as it looked like he tried to parse what, exactly, she was saying. “You’ve been what?”

  “I’ve been sleeping in my car,” she said finally, flatly. She waited for this to feel better, or to feel worse, or to feel anything other than as if she’d just leaped off a cliff without a hint about what lay at the bottom of the drop.

  “For how long?” Ilya frowned hard enough to dig a crease between his eyes.

  “The past few months, on and off. When I could no longer ask my friends to put me up on their couches, not without feeling like an idiot, or telling everyone the truth that I was completely destitute, I had only my car. Okay, are you happy now?” She drew in a breath, then another. Waiting to feel the impact of her fall.

  “No, I’m not happy. Why the hell didn’t you tell me this before?” He looked stunned, setting his glass on the table hard enough to slosh white wine all over the sides of his fingers.

  “It wasn’t any of your business!” She forced herself up from the table, pushing away hard enough to rattle the plates. “I didn’t want you to know, okay? I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. I didn’t want you to think I was a failure or something.”

  Ilya was quiet.

  “Why did it matter what I thought?” he asked finally.

  “I don’t know. It shouldn’t,” she said. “Alicia was nice enough to offer me a place to stay until I could get on my feet. I took her up on it because I had no choice. Just like I accepted your mother’s offer to stay there when I had no other choice. Just like I slept on your couch because the alternative was to sleep in my car, and I just . . . couldn’t face it for another night, Ilya. This is not supposed to be my life.”

  She drew in a shaking breath.

  “No,” he said. “I guess it’s not.”

  Theresa’s fingertips skidded along the table’s surface, but she didn’t sit. Her appetite had fled. This pissed her off more than anything else—that all she’d been looking forward to was a quiet night alone, and here she was, stomach churning, heart pounding.

  She went to the oven and pulled out the challah, golden brown and smelling like home. She held up the baking sheet so Ilya could see it before she put it on the stove top. It would need time to cool before she could cut it.

  “Here,” she said. “We can share it.”

  Ilya looked away from her for a second, then sat up straight in his chair and fixed her with a steady, unwavering stare. “Fine. I’ll sign.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Stop it.” Theresa’s dark hair, still wet from her shower, had tumbled all over her shoulders and down her back in thick spiral curls that made Ilya want to tug them just to watch them spring back into shape. “That’s low.”

  “I mean it.” Ilya drank half his glass of wine. He looked at the crystal glass. It had been a wedding gift from someone on Alicia’s side. He’d never liked the pattern.

  Theresa dropped into her chair. Behind her on the stove top, a bit of steam drifted off the golden challah. “Please don’t mess with me.”

  “I’m not. Let’s say I had an epiphany. A sign.” He thought again of the shadow in the water, the push of it against him. The flash of orange and black. “Do you believe in signs?”

  “I don’t.”

  He smiled faintly. “Babulya used to do that thing with her fingers, remember that? She’d poke her fingers at you and spit to the side. Pfft, pfft, pfft. It was supposed to ward off bad luck.”

  “I don’t remember that,” Theresa said after a reluctant second. “But I believe you.”

  Ilya sat back in his chair and ran his hands through his hair, scratching at his scalp before clapping both hands onto his thighs. “Do you remember Chester?”

  “The goldfish,” Theresa said at once. “The one Jenni threw into the quarry.”

  There’d been women over the years. So many he’d lost count. Not one of them would’ve known about Chester, other than Alicia. Not one of them would’ve known about Jennilynn, except perhaps maybe as a long-ago memory of a tragedy that lingered.

  “What about him?” Theresa asked, when Ilya had said nothing more.

  He studied her face. High, arched brows as dark as her hair. Had he ever known her eyes were such a clear, rich amber? Or had he only paid attention when he got her up close? The memory of kissing her pushed
to the surface of his mind; he should be ashamed of that. Regret it. It should certainly feel like it had been a mistake.

  It didn’t.

  “I saw him the other day, when I was on a dive. He’s enormous.” Ilya held his hands a foot apart, then moved them wider.

  Theresa laughed, incredulous. Not that he could blame her. It was a pretty ridiculous story, one he could hardly believe now even though he’d seen the damned thing.

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “I mean it,” he told her seriously. “For years, we’ve been telling divers to look for him. Like a gimmick. I think, in a way, it was how Alicia and I could talk about her without talking about her, you know?”

  “Yeah. I think I do.”

  Ilya wiped a hand across his mouth. “But there he was, even bigger than I could have ever imagined. Scared the shit out of me. I’ve never panicked underwater, Theresa. I’ve had a few close calls. Some scares. But in all my years of diving, learning, instructing, all the places I’ve gone, including our quarry . . . I’ve never been so startled or scared that I lost control. I could’ve drowned. If I’d gone in solo the way I’d thought about it, if someone hadn’t been there to grab me, I might’ve.”

  She looked solemn. “Wow. That sounds scary.”

  “How could that fish,” Ilya said, “still be alive after all these years?”

  “No predators?” Theresa suggested, but that wasn’t what he meant.

  He shook his head. “Not that. I mean, you spend twenty bucks trying to win one for your girl, but they’re not supposed to live that long. They’re not supposed to outlast your relationship with her. They’re not supposed to live when . . .”

  “When she didn’t?”

  Ilya said nothing for a few seconds, looking into Theresa’s eyes. She didn’t speak, either, giving him time.

  “We made up those stories like a joke, but they turned out to be real all the time. And this is still the first time I ever saw him, in all these years. Maybe it’s just time to give up,” he told her quietly. He closed his eyes for a moment or so, thinking of the ’dozers knocking down the pavilion. “I’ve been trying for years to make Go Deep worth something, and maybe it’s time to admit I never will.”

  “It is worth something,” she told him. “That’s why they’re going to give you all that money.”

  And, blinking, Ilya realized she was right.

  The years of dreams hadn’t been for nothing. He and Alicia had built something from nothing, and although he would never be able to deny that his ex-wife had been the bones of it all, he was still able to take credit for being at least a little bit of the flesh.

  He eyed the bottle but didn’t add more to his glass. His head was pleasantly swimming, not drunk, and it was a good place to stop. He hadn’t been smart enough to make that choice in a long time, and it made him wonder again about Theresa’s reasons for abstaining.

  “Why don’t you drink?”

  “My father is an addict. Pills, though he’s been known to overindulge in booze when he can’t get access to the drugs.” She cleared her throat, her voice scratchy and wavering until she steadied it. “I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”

  “I like it,” Ilya said in a low voice, thinking of the times he’d dived headfirst into the drink. He met her gaze. “Do you think that makes me an alcoholic?”

  “I don’t know. Do you think you are?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t think so.” He turned the glass around in his fingers, then pushed it away, thinking of what she’d said to him after his grandmother’s funeral. “I want it, but I don’t need it. I guess if I can say no, that means I’m not?”

  Theresa tilted her head to study him. “Are you worried about it?”

  “Alicia used to say I drank too much,” Ilya told her. “She wasn’t the only one to say so.”

  “You do drink a lot. Maybe too much.” Her chin lifted slightly, as though she expected him to deny it.

  “Does it bother you?” he asked.

  Theresa looked as though she meant to answer him but stopped herself. Her brow furrowed, and her eyes narrowed for a few seconds as she looked at him. “It would, yeah. Over time.”

  She smiled at him then, that crystal-clear gaze digging deep inside him. Somehow, Ilya was leaning over the table and finding her mouth with his, a soft and light kiss that he told himself he meant only as a confirmation. Slightly more friendly than a handshake, that was all. Yet at the whisper of her breath on his mouth, the parting of her lips, he found himself hating the span of the table between them because it meant he couldn’t get any closer to her.

  She pulled away first, turning her head a little bit. Ilya returned to his seat. Theresa’s tongue slid along her lower lip for a moment before she pressed her fingertips to the curve of her smile. Her eyes glinted.

  “You’re used to getting away with that sort of thing, aren’t you?” she asked quietly.

  Ilya pressed his lips together, thinking of all those messages he’d deleted recently. “What exactly have you heard about me? Because I think it’s disturbing that in all this time you’ve been hearing all kinds of stories about me, and I’ve barely heard a word about you.”

  “Of course you didn’t hear about me,” Theresa said sharply. “I moved out, and you all kept on going with your lives, and I simply disappeared—out of sight, out of mind. Babulya was the only one out of any of you who bothered with me.”

  This surprised him. “She did?”

  “Yes.” Theresa got up and went to the stove to cut the challah into thick slices. She brought over two and handed him one. She bit into the soft bread with a sigh, chewing. “For everyone else it was like I didn’t exist. Never had. But she remembered me.”

  Ilya let the warm bread rest on his palm for a moment before inhaling the familiar scent. Nothing else smelled like challah bread. With his eyes closed, he could pretend the years hadn’t passed and his grandmother was standing at the stove, lecturing him. He could pretend a lot of things hadn’t happened yet.

  But what would be the point? It had all happened, and he had to deal with that. Ilya bit into the bread, tearing off nearly half the slice and chewing. It felt somehow disloyal for him to like it, but damn if Theresa’s challah wasn’t as good as any Babulya had ever made.

  “She never talked about you,” he said.

  Theresa shrugged and took another bite of challah. “She didn’t have to. It wouldn’t have made a difference. I was still gone. We weren’t a family anymore. It didn’t matter.”

  It should have, Ilya thought. “Still, you did hear stories about me.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t start hearing things until after Alicia and I became friends on Connex, and some of her friends started popping up in my timeline and stuff. You sure did manage to get around.”

  Ilya frowned, imagining threads of comments regarding his manhood . . . or lack thereof. “They talked about me on Connex? Did Alicia?”

  “She never did. When I connected with them, some of them remembered who I was, and they would talk to me about you. Ask me questions about you.” She gave him a shrug and a bland look and finished off her slice of challah.

  “What’d you say back to them?” he asked after some silence had passed between them with nothing but the sound of chewing. He also finished his challah and dug back into the pizza.

  Theresa laughed. “I told them the truth—that I hadn’t been in touch with you and had no idea what you were doing or who you were doing it with.”

  This didn’t set well with him. He pushed back from the table a bit but didn’t get up. He drummed his fingers on the edge of it, instead, then frowned.

  “Did they say I was a dick?”

  She didn’t laugh or smile but instead gave him a slow, assessing look that ended finally with a nod. “Yeah. Sometimes, some of them did. Were you?”

  “Yeah,” he admitted, not proudly. “Sometimes.”

  Theresa wiped her mouth with a napkin and then took a long d
rink of seltzer. “I joined a dating site the day after I broke it off with my boyfriend. For a while I averaged about four dates a week. Some for lunch, some for dinner. Some were overnights, especially in December when it was too freaking cold to sleep in my car.”

  Ilya blinked. “Wow. Shit. That sucks.”

  “Does that make me a dick? I didn’t force anyone to do anything they weren’t willing to do,” Theresa said. “I might’ve made it seem like I was interested in more than I was so that I could get what I wanted at the time, and I’m sure I hurt some feelings. Does that make me a bad person? Or just an inconsiderate one?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  Theresa shrugged. “I never made any promises I knew I didn’t intend to keep. That’s the best I can say.”

  “Are you still doing that?”

  “Not making promises I think I might break?” Her soft laugh sent a thrill through him, up and down his spine.

  “Dating . . . like that.”

  Her chuckle faded, and she studied him. “Yes. Sometimes. Not as much, since I’ve started getting more work, but if someone looks interesting, sure.”

  “Do I look interesting?” It was easy as anything for him to say it, a casually tossed-out comment. Flirting because he found it easiest to talk to women that way, and because they almost always responded.

  Theresa sat back in her seat. “What would you do if I said yes?”

  “Take you on a date,” he offered.

  Theresa shook her head but smiled as though he’d charmed her, which was his intent. She put her fingertips to her lips, saying nothing. He couldn’t stop himself from remembering how it had felt to kiss her. She shook her head again.

  “You’re not used to being turned down, huh?” she said.

  He’d only been half asking as though almost helpless in the presence of an attractive woman to stop himself from taking it a step too far. “I’ve been turned down plenty of times.”

  She laughed. “We’re not going to date, Ilya.”

  “Nah.” He grinned. “Of course not. That would be stupid.”