feet reluctantly, feeling the freight train coming up her spine. She swore under her breath.
He offered a hand, and Elena waved it away. “Kicks your ass sometimes, doesn’t it?” he said.
“I’m all right.”
She followed him out, bringing her beer with her. Snow floated out of the sky. She leaned on the railing while Ivan lit up. “What’s your story, Rasputin? Why are you still in Aspen?”
He shrugged, blowing smoke into the night. “I keep trying to get out, and keep falling right back here. It’s like there’s some anchor on my ass that won’t let me go very far.” He took a drag. Looked at her beneath long lashes. “How’d you get out of New Mexico?”
A little drunk, Elena leaned on the wooden post. She sipped her beer, made a soft noise as she mulled the possible ways to answer.
Chose.
“I was in a car accident that killed everybody but me. It was a small town, and you know…it was just weird there after that. Nobody really wanted me around. It was too hard for them. So, one of the nurses at the hospital helped me find a job in a restaurant in Santa Fe. It kind of just went from there.”
He lifted his cigarette and inhaled, blew it out again. “That’s why you limp?”
“Do I limp?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s embarrassing.”
“Nah.” He shook his head, came over and sat on the railing beside her. “You’re one strong bitch, you know it?”
“Why do I think I’m about to get hustled?”
He met her eyes. “Show me yours, I’ll show you mine.” He took a drag on the cigarette, blew out a small stream of pale blue smoke. “Scars, that is.”
“What are yours from?’
He stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and abruptly pulled up his shirt to show his belly. “Polka dots,” he said, and she could see the faint white circles all over his thin belly.
Cigarette burns, very old. Elena couldn’t help reaching for the scars and touched the ruched edge of one. He’d hate it if she cried, so she didn’t. “How old were you?”
“I don’t know. Five. Four. My mom got rid of him eventually. Funny that I smoke now, huh?” He mimed burning himself with the red ember.
To hide her face, she stood up and turned around, pulling her shirt up in the back to show him the worst part of her own worst scar, the thick ugly pink part that still looked gruesome. “I was in a ditch for a few hours before they found me.”
“Pretty ugly,” he said.
And kissed it.
Elena froze. His tongue was hot, a vivid contrast to the cold night. A bolt of need moved in her body, through her breasts, between her legs, and she desperately, desperately wanted to fuck. It didn’t even matter who. It wasn’t about love. It wasn’t about roses. It was about pure, physical hunger, like an empty stomach, like grainy eyelids, like gasping for breath after being underwater.
But not Ivan. His game was seduction, male or female, it didn’t matter. He had the pheromones to get the job done, too, and she was just drunk enough that it was very, very difficult to remember why she should not do it. What would it matter?
She willed herself not to react to the lips moving on her side. Took a swallow of beer. “You like boys, not girls, remember?”
He was standing behind her, his breath on the highly vulnerable back of her neck. “I keep telling you you’ve got it wrong.”
She turned around. “Quit it,” she said without heat. “I’m exhausted.”
“And horny,” he said, grinning with half his mouth.
And just like that, Elena was transported. The mingled scents of smoke and tequila and tomato juice, probably something about his skin, and she was looking at Edwin, not Ivan. It wasn’t that she was having a flashback, or she didn’t think so, though it sometimes happened. It was as if Edwin stepped over the body of Ivan and somehow became him. She closed her eyes, putting up a hand. “Don’t,” she said, and didn’t know if she was talking to Ivan or Edwin.
Ivan watched her with Edwin’s eyes, smoking.
“I’ve gotta get out of here,” she said, and rubbed her forehead. “I’m going to lock up. You can have the day off tomorrow.”
He stood and poured his beer over the rail. “For the dead people.”
It was something Edwin always said, long ago. Elena stared up at him, feeling cold biting her back and the taste of winter in the air.
“See you Monday,” she