Chapter 17

Seriously…

An irritating tickle rose deep in Yuri’s throat, as though he had swallowed a mouthful of down. Recognizing that he would lose if he continued the argument, he forced the conversation back toward practical matters.

“There was a phone charger in the glove compartment. Did you use it?”

From now on, he would exchange only necessary words. Handling Cherriot carefully did not require indulging every whim.

“Yeah. Your colleague packed a power bank for me but forgot the cable. You were asleep, and I didn’t want to wake you for no reason, so I looked around and borrowed yours.”

You say you’re afraid of me, yet you searched my car without hesitation.

Yuri found the contradiction absurd, but he kept it to himself.

“Give it to me.”

Cherriot nodded, then abruptly leaned across the center console. The swift movement brought him so close that Yuri flinched and seized his shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

They were nearly chest to chest, close enough to resemble an embrace. Yuri narrowed his eyes. Cherriot blinked his long lashes and glanced past Yuri’s shoulder.

“I put the power bank in the door pocket. The cable is plugged into it. I was reaching for it.”

Yuri turned sharply. Sure enough, the battery and cable sat in the storage compartment at the bottom of the driver’s door.

How had he missed that?

Blaming his own lapse in attention, Yuri tightened his grip on Cherriot’s shoulder in silent warning.

“I don’t know why you had to do this instead of simply telling me.”

“I already told you. I want to feel at least somewhat comfortable while I’m stuck in this situation with you.”

“You mean by doing this?”

Perhaps Cherriot saw the bewilderment in Yuri’s blue eyes, because he nodded.

“I’ve always liked touching people. All my friends know that about me.

“I like body heat. It reminds me I’m alive, and it makes me feel close to someone. Of course, I only do it with people I don’t find unpleasant.”

“I find it unpleasant.”

Yuri informed him without the slightest hesitation.

Cherriot did not retreat. “You’re different. You want to reassure me.”

“When did I ever—”

“Isn’t that why you bought the snacks?”

Yuri had no answer. Cherriot’s fear was indeed why he had stopped before the candy shelf.

“Snacks are nice, but touch works better.”

Only the width of two finger joints separated them when Cherriot whispered the words. He was so close that Yuri’s gaze dropped naturally to his lips. They were a vivid pink, unlike any Alpha’s lips Yuri had ever seen. The color seemed so ill suited to words like man and Alpha that he wondered whether Cherriot had applied something to them.

Yet they were not repulsive. If anything, the color inspired the absurd urge to touch them. Yuri jerked his gaze away and drew his brows together.

What am I doing, letting an Alpha I’ve known for barely a day come this close?

It was a distance he had never allowed anyone. Even Alyosha, whom he had known nearly all his life, had never faced him from so near.

Perhaps Cherriot’s words had slipped sweetly into his mind. The strength drained from the hand Yuri had been using to push him away.

Feeling the pressure ease, Cherriot lowered his gaze to Yuri’s hand on his shoulder. Then, slowly, he raised his own and laid it over the back of Yuri’s. His palm was warm and firm, the calluses formed over years of training speaking of a life Yuri had never seen.

Cherriot stroked the back of Yuri’s hand before sliding down to encircle his wrist. Yuri’s wrist was far from slender, yet Cherriot’s hand enclosed it easily. Guided by that steady pull, Yuri found his palm resting against Cherriot’s chest.

Solid heat pressed through the moderately thick sweatshirt. The vivid proof of another body beneath his hand felt strange. Touching another Alpha this way was unfamiliar enough, but placing his hand over the heart made Yuri tense.

What does he trust about me enough to expose a vital point like this?

Watching the unease flicker through Yuri’s eyes, Cherriot lowered his head. He looked at the pale, scarred hand resting against his chest and spoke in a whisper.

“My heart has been pounding like this since last night. As hard as it does before a game. I wish it were excitement, but it doesn’t feel that way.”

His breath brushed the back of Yuri’s hand.

“Make it slow down. Make it so I’m not afraid to be beside you.”

Who asked another person for gentleness in such a way?

Cherriot looked like a beast exposing its belly. A lion that had forgotten the wild, choosing not to fight but to display its weakness and say, Protect me.

“Make me certain that when you put your hands on me, there won’t come a moment when you choke me.”

Someone else might have taken the invitation and driven a knife straight into the exposed flesh.

But Yuri hated hunting. He hated blood. He did not want to witness pain.

In the end, he could not push Cherriot away. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the hand on Cherriot’s chest and held his breath. He could almost feel the heartbeat hammering beneath the dense muscle, tense and constricted like a frightened child’s pulse.

For an instant, the man who lived a life incomparably greater than Yuri’s seemed pitiful.

Yuri had forgotten. Ordinary people feared places where blood flew. No matter how powerful an Alpha might be, physical strength had nothing to do with one’s ability to face corruption without fear.

“Just for a few days,” Cherriot added.

Then he released him.

With his wrist free, Yuri slowly withdrew his hand. He turned away, removed the power bank from the door compartment, disconnected the cable, and returned the battery without meeting Cherriot’s eyes.

“When you say a few days, how long exactly?”

“Ten days at most. I contacted my family in America while you were sleeping.”

“I thought the trust meant you couldn’t allow your family to hear about this either.”

Cherriot had said a scandal would be disastrous because he needed to protect the family’s reputation. Or something along those lines.

“That applies to the household. Family is different. I didn’t want to worry my mother, so I tried to handle it alone, but now that things have gone this far, I don’t have much choice.”

At the word mother, Yuri fell silent. Perhaps because Alexei, T-Mac, and nearly everyone around him had lost their parents young, it had been a long time since he had heard anyone use the word so naturally.

Yuri’s father was still alive, but he called his late wife Katya and seldom spoke of her in Yuri’s presence. The day she died had carved too deep a wound into both father and son.

Yuri plugged the cable into the car’s USB port, connected his phone, and opened the navigation screen.

“Unlike me, they must be good people you can trust.”

“Of course,” Cherriot answered without hesitation. “They were my bodyguards when I was young. Even after I transferred to Canada, they stayed faithfully beside my mother. They’re family to me. I trust them more than the relatives whose blood I share.”

Yuri did not pry. He had heard somewhere that every unhappy family possessed its own particular grief. Everyone carried circumstances of their own.

“All right.”

Ten days at most. That much should not be a problem.

“For ten days, I’ll accommodate you within reason. But be careful about approaching me without warning, as you did just now. Even I can’t always control the reflex to defend myself.”

“I know. I’ve already experienced it.”

Perhaps relieved by Yuri’s acceptance, Cherriot brightened again, the same way he had when he received the bag of snacks, then flopped back against the passenger seat.

“But why would it take an entire ten days? Traveling up from the States should only take one.”

“There are adult complications.”

The answer was deliberately vague. Yuri understood too well how tiresome questions could become when someone did not wish to answer, so he let the matter drop.

“We should leave. Tell me where we’re going.”

Cherriot reached into the bag, drew out the chocolate bar, caught the edge of its wrapper between his teeth, and tore it open.

“Paradise.”

“What?”

“Let’s go to Paradise.”

There could not possibly be a real town with such a name. When Yuri stared at him, Cherriot laughed low in his throat.

“Type in Big Fox. If we go there, we won’t have tourists or nosy locals to worry about.”

Yuri had never heard of the place. From the way Cherriot described it, it had to be a small settlement. He entered the name into the map, and the estimated travel time appeared: approximately one hour and thirty minutes.

Their destination was not far.

Once the route was set, Yuri started the engine and pulled away without hesitation. The instant the car began moving, Cherriot lowered the window all the way, as though he had been waiting for the opportunity. Wind surged through the cabin, sweeping Yuri’s hair back from his pale forehead.

“Oh, right. There’s one more thing I should tell you.”

Nothing Cherriot had told him so far had qualified as good news, so Yuri answered with silence.

“I connected my phone to your car’s Bluetooth. Can I play music on the way?”

“What?”

“I had no choice. Driving in silence makes me sleepy, and there’s barely any signal on the highway, so the radio doesn’t work.”

Yuri disliked that Cherriot had interfered with his car for the second time, but since Yuri had fallen asleep and left him to drive, he could begrudgingly overlook it. Music was another matter.

“No.”

“Okay.”

To Yuri’s surprise, Cherriot yielded immediately.

“Then I’ll sing the entire way.”

Ha.

Yuri pressed the accelerator hard for a single instant. The car surged forward, throwing Cherriot back against the seat hard enough that his head struck the headrest. Instead of complaining, Cherriot laughed like a delighted boy and began to sing.

His low, sweet voice carried a song about summer fruit and warm evenings, about craving sweetness, breathing someone in, and finding it impossible to leave.

His pitch wandered whenever laughter slipped into the melody, but the voice itself was mellow and rich. Yuri, who had never heard anyone sing properly at such close range, found the experience disconcerting. That someone who was not merely a performer on a screen could sound so pleasant felt embarrassingly intimate.

Had Cherriot been tone-deaf, Yuri could have endured it. Instead, the sight of him reclining in the passenger seat, smiling as he sang, sent an unbearable prickling sensation over Yuri’s skin. The tickle reached his throat. He swallowed and finally forced out the words needed to stop him.

“Play the music instead. I can’t listen to that.”

“Ah, what a shame. I was just about to reach the best part.”

Yuri turned and glared at him with complete sincerity. Cherriot shrugged in theatrical disappointment.

“Nothing to be done, then. The rest of the performance will have to wait until next time.”

Having obtained exactly what he wanted, Cherriot tapped at his phone and reached for the volume control. Music flowed through the car as his long fingers turned the dial.

Yuri had expected another embarrassingly sweet pop song. Instead, a gentle, bright acoustic guitar filled the cabin.

It was an old country song about West Virginia, blue mountains, a river, and roads that carried the singer home.

Yuri thought he might have heard it somewhere before. By then the car had left the rest stop and entered the highway blazing beneath the sun. Highway 1 revealed itself in a form he had never imagined.

Dense mountains rose on either side of the road like vast walls. Beyond open grassland, countless conifers reached toward the sky, their heights shaped by years beyond counting. Far ahead, an immense peak waited for them, its stone scraped so pale it resembled snow.

The song continued, longing for country roads to carry the singer back to the place he belonged.

Sunlight poured from a cloudless blue sky and stabbed painfully at Yuri’s eyes. He narrowed them without realizing it. Cool wind rushed through the window Cherriot had opened, carrying the music with it, while the sweet scent of chocolate drifted from the passenger seat.

Ten days.

Taking in the magnificent landscape before him, Yuri repeated the thought in silence.

If I endure only ten days, I can return to being myself.

As he told himself that, his blue eyes caught the sunlight and became as clear and beautiful as the sky above. It was their original color, the one shadows usually concealed.

🜼 🜼 🜼

[END of VOLUME 1]