Exposed (8 page)

Ivan breathed deep. Out here, away from the glares in town, his shoulders relaxed. The tension that gripped his neck and clenched his jaw was blown away on sweet mountain breezes. In moments like this, with his mother’s cooking waiting for him on the table and the sun falling behind the mountains giving everything a golden cast … moments like these Ivan could almost forget the people who inhabited the town and love the place fully and unconditionally. This was his home, no matter what others thought. Ivan closed his eyes for a second and turned his face to the giant, orange sun. It was warm on his cheeks. 

But no. It was foolish to let himself think such things. Independence Falls wasn’t perfect. It could never be perfect when there was no place for him among the people. They’d made that plain. And if they learned of this power …. 

He’d already let foolishness overtake him with the flower he’d given to June and when he’d accidentally been caught using his power by Cora and Clayton. He’d only known of his power for a handful of weeks, how would he learn to discipline himself over the coming months and years? Maybe going to the mine wasn’t a bad idea, after all.

Ivan walked faster, like he could escape the way town was creeping into his life whether he wanted it to or not.

Kostya was still in the barn with Anastasia and the stallion Nikolai, giving the horses a leisurely brushing. Ivan ran a hand down Nikolai’s flank, and the horse nosed him, snuffling for any hidden treats. Kostya leaned around Anastasia’s neck.

“Did you frighten off all my regulars yesterday?”

Ivan spared him a glare then went back to stroking Nikolai’s soft, black coat. “What regulars? I’d say by the state of things, you’re regulars are long gone.” Ivan quirked his lips in a smile. “But they’d prefer me to you any day.”

Kostya laughed at that and slapped Anastasia’s haunch. Ivan’s older brother was shorter than him, and stocky, with wide hands and a wider face. But he smiled easily and often. Ivan wondered if it was because he’d never had to attend school with these people, be subjected to the glares and insults day after day. A decade older than Ivan, Kostya was already eighteen when they’d moved to Independence Falls from Washington, D.C.

Kostya and Ivan walked back to the house together, and both sniffed the air when they ducked through the kitchen door. The smell of warm bread mixed with the scent of butter and onions, and Ivan’s stomach growled. Both men sat at the table, their father at one end and their mother at the other. 

With a nod from Abram, the family descended on the food. It was warm and dim in the house, the setting sun glowing through the western windows and the giant fireplace at the other end of the great room flickering orange. Even with the overhead lights, shadows filled the corners of the room and reached up to the vaulted ceiling. Along the back wall, where his father’s bookshelf dominated the space, a rolling ladder disappeared into the loft above—Kostya’s quarters. He’d never seemed concerned with building himself a cabin on the property. Their voices carried up to the ceiling, a mixture of Russian with a smattering of English from Ivan and Kostya.

When he was small, Ivan had thought if others just saw them at home, people would realize they were just like everyone else. They loved each other and fought and played cards by the fireplace in winter. They took great pains to make each other laugh, and would sometimes spend just as much energy arguing. 

But Ivan had grown up. The entire town could come watch them like they were animals in the zoo, and still they’d be wary. They’d point at the odd foods they ate and narrow their eyes at the shelf of books and scientific journals written in the Cyrillic alphabet. They’d be confused by the varying names they called each other—Ivan had quickly learned the traditional patronymic name was not something that appeared in America. They’d be suspicious of the Russian that filled the house instead of English and notice the way a portrait of Lenin hung in a place of prominence next to black and white photographs of Ivan’s grandparents and aunts and uncles—people he’d never met.

Maybe if they ate pot roast and read “Life” and celebrated the Fourth of July with apple pie and American flags. Ivan liked those things too, but the thought of them in this house seemed wrong somehow. Like they’d all be playing pretend, carefully acting. His family—all of them born in Russia except for him—clung to the land they knew. They’d lived in America for more than twenty years, but the Motherland was always there calling to them. And Ivan—American, but not—never quite knew where he fit. If he fit anywhere at all.

After dinner, Galina cleared the table and the three men shared tipples of vodka. Ivan stared into the fire, his eyes going blurry and his face relaxing.

June.

June.

Why was she so embedded inside of him? This woman with whom he’d shared a handful of heated words. Maybe because she hadn’t balked. She hadn’t backed away from his hard glare. There was determination in her face, courage in her eyes.

“Ivanushka,” a voice said from far away. Someone clapped him on the shoulder, and Ivan startled.

Galina’s wry smile floated before Ivan’s eyes. “There you are. We were asking about the market. You disappeared to your cabin yesterday before we could talk. Did it go any better?”

The question brought him crashing back. “Worse. They suspect us, Mama. Everything that goes wrong, they suspect us.” Ivan picked at a piece of bread. “Honestly, why are we still bothering with the market? We’re working for nothing, wasting money.”

Galina leaned back in her seat with a long sigh. “In time, they’ll realize we had nothing to do with that awful sickness. How they forget one of us was sick as well,” she said, with a look toward Ivan.

Kostya spoke up. “We’ve already talked about this, Ivan. If we leave the market now, we’d just confirm everything they suspect. It makes us seem guilty.”

Ivan couldn’t stand it anymore. How much abuse would they take from these people before realizing
nothing
they could do would ever win their acceptance. It was true for the entire town—June Powell included.

“It was another long day,” Ivan lied. He pushed away from the table. “I’d like to get some more work done on the cabin before dark.” 

But it wasn’t quite the truth. He wanted to work to chase away those stubborn thoughts of June. She was no different from the rest of town. What he thought he saw in her was a mistake, it had to be. Just like the rest of them, she wouldn’t be able to look at his family at home around the dinner table and see any differently than the rest of them. 

Ivan was out the kitchen door and past the greenhouses when he spit out a string of curse words in Russian. Maybe if he proved it to himself—made her belie that placid smile and show the small-mindedness he was sure was under the surface. Yes, that was it. He’d force the truth out of her by being his unabashed Soviet self. That’s how they all saw him anyway, why try to fight it?

Ivan hiked across the property toward his cabin and slammed the door behind him. It was ridiculous to even think of June at all. Yet when he shrugged out of his jacket to toss onto the hook behind the door, that scent enveloped him. The scent of her, still lingering a day later. Sweet, but with spiciness lingering underneath.

He stopped, froze with his arm still stretched out and ready to throw the jacket. Then in one quick motion he dragged the jacket to his face and breathed deep until she consumed him. 

Jesus, how stupid. How irrational. How intoxicating and feminine and beguiling. Her hips in that dress, her lips pursed in anger at him. She was beautiful and feisty when she wasn’t trying so hard to be simply pretty and placid. 

Ivan shoved the jacket away from him before he did something really stupid, like pull it back on and drive to her house and tug that dress over her head so he could run his tongue down her skin. 

“
Der’mo
!” Ivan swore loudly and stalked away from the damned jacket. 

Of course he couldn’t scrub June from his mind. She was beautiful. It was her job to be beautiful. What other reason did she spend a hundred years in the mirror but to make herself more pleasant and liked by others. Her beauty was so shallow. And she was nothing but her beauty.

Ivan picked up a saw and started working. 

The crickets outside his window came together in a twilight symphony. The evening birds sang until the world went quiet and dark. Yet Ivan worked, sawing wood and fitting cabinet doors together. He worked until sweat ran a course down between his shoulder blades and he shucked off his shirt. And still June remained rooted deep inside of him.

Finally, finally, he gave up. Ivan collapsed back onto his bed and stared out the window beside his bed. Lightning bugs lit the forest in flashes of gold, but Ivan felt alone in the world. Like he was the only human for miles. It had always been a comforting feeling, but moments like this he sometimes wished for a warm body against his. 

Arms locked behind his head, Ivan peered up at the ceiling. Sometimes, when a deep loneliness crept up behind him in the dark and grabbed him tight, Ivan would go into town just to walk around or sit in the back of the theater for the late movie. With people, yet apart. It’d been what had drawn him to town the evening he’d stood under those pines with June—her eyes dark in the shadows, her hair wet. Her blouse slick against her stomach, her ribs, her breasts. The pucker of her nipples.

Somewhere behind his navel, his body tightened. First with arousal, and then with his power. It was always there, coiled and waiting to stretch free. In the darkness of his room, he let it. There was a line of seeds on the windowsill beside his bed on which he’d been practicing his power in the weeks since the sickness. Ivan unhooked one hand and plucked a seed into his palm. 

It was easy—incredibly easy—and suddenly there was an unfurling leaf where once there had been only a seed. It was so sudden, so effortless, that he dropped the seedling in shock. It landed on the plane of his stomach and sprouted wispy vines that tentatively inched across his stomach and curled over his hip.

A creeping vine explored up his chest and reached into the air in front of his face. The vine hovered there, and he watched as two buds sprouted from the plant and unfurled into petals of navy blue. They were thick velvet and crowded the head of the flower in a thousand spiky petals. Navy blue like the dress June wore yesterday at the market. The petals were narrow slips, like the way her dress hugged her slim body.

Ivan propped himself up on his elbow and stuck his nose deep into the flower. It smelled almost spicy. Coriander and black pepper, with a hint of citrus.

It was the way June smelled—the scent that had clung to his jacket from her wearing it. Surprising and spicy. Sweet but with a tartness underneath. Blond hair and brown eyes that sparked with determination. She showed her teeth when she smiled, and there was a tiny gap between her two front teeth.

The vine crept faster now, exploring, poking, inching over Ivan in hunger. It curled around his wrists and caressed his neck. Ivan shut his eyes, his body relaxed but tight at the same time. Something flooded through him, hot and cold, spicy and sweet. And Ivan breathed deep and pictured June.

Pictured touching June. Kissing her. Doing things to her he’d never imagined doing to another woman he knew in real life. The vine tightened around his wrist, his thigh. It squeezed and pulsed until Ivan was nearly desperate for the release.

And then his front door banged open.

“Are you still up?” Kostya called into the dark.

Ivan gasped and the vine collapsed in on itself, pulling, pulling, pulling back until it was that tiny bud again. Ivan’s breath came quick, and he curled in on his side just as Kostya flipped on a light outside his bedroom. 

Thoughts of June fled from the light, but Ivan knew they’d return.

CHAPTER SEVEN

June

“You came!”

June hooked her thumbs into her dungaree pockets and nodded at Cora standing in her apartment door with wide eyes. 

She hadn’t planned on it, but after selling those clothes two days ago, June realized she needed to feel in charge of something. There had to be a single thing in her life that was hers—hers without guilt or shame. Maybe mastering her power would be it? Perhaps if she learned more about this peculiar ability, she’d be able to stop herself from having those dangerous thoughts.

“Clay left early to set up, so it’s just you and me,” Cora said.

June nodded, not sure what to say. She hadn’t been all that welcoming to Cora at first. But the woman was never anything but sweet to June. She was starting to consider Cora a real friend … but that didn’t mean she knew what to talk about with her.

“Congrats again,” she said. “The wedding was lovely.”

Cora beamed. “It was wonderful,” she said, unable to hide a wide smile.

With a nod of her head, Cora led June through town and across the bridge linking the east and west sides of town. The bridge was narrow, just fitting one car at a time. It was also the only way to get from the east to the west side … not that June ever had much reason to visit Independence Falls’ west side. 

The paved streets of the east side gave way to gravel, the road rutted and uneven. A handful of buildings hugged the road, but most were dark—either closed for the day or long empty. It was quieter here, without the bustle of evening in town. Or, nearly quiet. Light spilled from the grimy windows of the only building showing any signs of life. A sign over Don’s Club hung at an odd angle, and the cars parked outside the bar were dusty and battered.

June stuck close to Cora. She had to remind herself this was still Independence Falls. Somewhere behind the buildings back toward the river, from deep within the rundown houses of Mud Gulch, a dog barked. June jumped, then laughed to cover just how easily she startled—she still didn’t know Cora all that well and didn’t want her to think June a sissy. 

The dog was going mad barking, and then there was a yelp, and the dog went silent.