Chapter 126 Boundaries, Pasta, and Dangerous Thoughts
POV Maya:
Mikhail must be really ashamed for his brother to come in his place to apologize to me. I shouldn’t have touched what wasn’t mine. I was upset by the way he treated me, but what truly makes me sad is his brother pretending to be him. That’s why I’ve decided to go to him and apologize. I have this habit of assuming that people think and behave the same way I do, but that’s not how it works. I created a version of Mikhail in my head, and now I realize I made a mistake.
Me and my tendency to believe that everyone takes everything as a joke, that people deal with everything the same way I do. The old story of boundaries. It’s time for me to start respecting other people’s boundaries again. I enter the house and, even though I’m afraid he might yell at me again, I go up the stairs toward his bedroom. I don’t want to think too much, because if I do, I’ll back out, and I don’t want to hurt him more than I apparently already have.
I knock on his door twice and hear nothing. Did he leave? I open it a crack and see him sitting on the edge of the bed, staring fixedly at the lubricant in his hand.
Okay, he really does look hurt.
Why am I like this? I enter the room and close the door. I don’t want his brothers to show up and hear my embarrassing apologies. I sit on the floor in front of him. It takes Mikhail only a few seconds to lift his head and realize it’s me. His face shows surprise; I guess he didn’t expect to see me barging into his room again so soon.
“Please forgive me,” I say, embarrassed and sad to see how much my attitude affected him. “I was cleaning your room and saw the lubricant, and I started imagining things I shouldn’t have. One thing led to another, and when I realized it, you walked in on me holding it.”
“Maya, I—”
“Please don’t yell at me, and please don’t kick me out. I promise I’ll never come in here again, and that I’ll never, ever touch your things again,” I declare desperately. “I have this habit of being… inappropriate.” I use the same word my mother used when I didn’t behave the way she expected. “From now on, I’ll respect your room and your things.”
“You’re not inappropriate, and I’m the one who should apologize. I shouldn’t have yelled at you; it was wrong, and I regretted it the second I did it. Will you forgive me?” he asks, and it doesn’t take long for me to break into a huge smile and throw myself against his body.
“Of course I forgive you,” I say, feeling my eyes fill with tears.
“You’re incredible, Mikhail, and I was being nosy. It won’t happen again.”
“Really? I wasn’t expecting that one,” he jokes, making me smile.
“So you can see how serious I am.”
I smile at him, happy that we worked things out, and I’m caught off guard when he tilts his head toward me and kisses my forehead.
“Now I think we’d better go downstairs. I need to make the pasta before my brothers get here to eat.”
Ah, the pasta, of course. I’m going to buy him a cookbook as a gift.
“I can help you, on one condition, of course—that for all intents and purposes, I’m the one who cooked.”
“That’s fine by me,” he agrees with a shrug, and I narrow my eyes at him.
“Seriously? That easy?”
“Yes. Deep down my brothers know you can’t even cook an egg without setting the kitchen on fire.”
“Ouch, that hurt because it’s so true,” I bump my shoulder against his, and Mikhail gives me a smile that makes me sure that yes, now we’re fine.
...
Why won’t Adrian take his eyes off me?
I ask myself for the third time while eating the wonderful pasta I made—with Mikhail’s help, of course. Adrian is sitting across the table, and his eyes never leave me. I kind of like the attention, but his looks are starting to make me shy… Shy? Calm down, I think I got carried away. I put another forkful in my mouth, and, being the bold woman that I am, I lift my chin and stare right back at him. Is he upset that I unmasked him? Oh, come on. Did he really think he would fool me? I can tell them apart with my eyes closed.
Okay, at first I used to look at the mole on his neck to know who was who, but now I can tell them apart perfectly. Mikhail is playful, kind, and has the patience of a saint, even when I take advantage of his kindness by saying I was the one who cooked, when we all know I wasn’t. Adrian is more serious, but that doesn’t change at all the affectionate way he treats me, even when I scare him after we watch a horror movie.
The honest-to-God truth is just one: I’m fucked. Fucked in every color of the rainbow. I’m starting to have thoughts that it’s way too early for me to be having, especially when they haven’t even brought up the subject that made me come live in El Soledad in the first place. Judging by the way they treat me, this engagement is going to be decent, which means we won’t have any indecent fucking until I become their woman—which is bullshit, because I don’t know how to be decent.
“Maya, are you going or not?” I look at Sebastian, who’s asking me something I wasn’t paying any attention to.
“Going where?” I ask, shoving more pasta into my mouth.
“To Celeste’s bar,” Mikhail says, and I break into a grin.
I’m going to love drinking that delicious cocktail again.
“Of course I want to go,” I declare excitedly. “I’ll finally wear the dress I bought.”
“Why don’t you wear pants?” Dominic asks, and my smile instantly fades. “It looks like it’s going to get cold,” he adds, leaving me surprised.
Is the brute being protective of me? Who would’ve thought.
“Alright, I have the perfect pants to wear,” I say, and he smiles, going back to his food.
Okay, now he’s scaring me.
I go back to eating, narrowing my eyes between Adrian and Dominic. They’re very, very strange. Tonight I’m going to find a way to figure out what’s going on with those two. Dominic is so strange that he only called me a slut once, and that’s really concerning.