I Would Follow Her Into Hell
RECOMMENDED TRACK: Ice Nine Kills – Can’t Help Falling In Love
Two weeks passed and the heavy cloud that was my situation—our situation now, Emma would say, which I regretted and cherished the same amount—became an uninvited third wheel in our relationship. Sometimes it interrupted a moment of quiet happiness, other times it hovered just out of view, waiting to make itself known again. Emma would ask questions, always thinking…but neither of us had a solution.
I was determined to shove the whole thing out of sight and out of mind for her birthday, at least. It was a Wednesday in late January and I was upstairs getting dressed. Jacob called up the stairs to let me know she had arrived. “Tell her I’ll be down in a minute,” I hollered back.
With a final adjustment of my tie—and a final check in the mirror—and one more adjustment of the tie…I threw perfection out the window in favor of getting to throw my arms around her sooner, rushing down the stairs two at a time. She would be in the library, I knew, she loved Sig House’s library more than anyone who wasn’t named Elliott Parker.
But as I strode down the hall, I heard voices on the other side of the wall and paused.
“…can’t accept this. This—this is a first edition, Adrian. It’s ridiculous,” I heard Emma say.
“You know it doesn’t even put a dent in my bank account,” Calloway replied evenly. He was not bragging. Just stating facts. “I want you to have it.”
I had to strain to hear what she said next as her tone softened. “Adrian…you know why I won’t take this.”
There was a short pause before he spoke again. “I want you to have this,” he repeated. “Because I loved these books when I was little, and you love them, and I…I love that you love them, Emma. Just take it.”
Emma demurred again while I wondered why I was not moving. But I was glad I stayed still in the hall, because I do not think Calloway would want to know I heard what he said next.
“Please,” he said again. “Please, Emma, I just—” Had I ever heard him say please before, without sarcasm? The surprise almost drowned out my irritation at hearing him say her name in such a tender voice, a needy one. “Why does Misha get a chance and not me? I—I’ve never felt like I had so much in common with someone. Don’t you feel like we’re in sync? Like we could be—” He stopped. “Please. Emma, I just…I just want one of those big smiles of yours to be for me. Just once.”
“That’s…” Another moment of quiet, and I could see Emma in my mind, her hand likely at one ear, maybe biting her lip, trying to find something to say that could soften the blow I was mostly sure she was about to give him. “I…this is really sweet, Adrian. I—”
Then, there was a shuffling sound. A sharp intake of breath. Then Emma spoke again, louder, firmer.
“Adrian, don’t.”
That’s when my legs remembered how to move again. I rounded the corner in two more steps to see Emma holding Adrian at arm’s length, literally, like he had tried to embrace her, or kiss her, or even just touch her, it did not matter which.
In that moment, all that mattered was that she said no, and that she was mine.
Was it possessive of me? Yes, absolutely. A dark feeling that seethed just beneath the surface of my skin and made my fists crave contact.
But the jagged edges of that dark feeling were sanded down by a protective one. Calloway had done something she did not want, and I felt nothing so strong as that I had to make sure he did not do it again. Ever.
Even so, a vicious little thought flickered through my awareness. Thank god he doesn’t know I’ll be on a plane to Moscow in three months.
I did not storm in. Every boxing instinct I’d ever learned carried me, even without taking a fighting stance. I sized him up. Calloway’s face was doing something I had never seen before, something raw and pained. If he had not just done whatever he did, I would have felt sorry for him.
His eyes flickered to me and he threw himself back a step, struggling to get his mask of superior indifference back into place. A mask. Blyat. Do we all have one? I was learning far too much empathy from Emma.
Emma. I stepped between them facing her, blocking her from him. She looked sad, not upset. Of course she felt more sorry for him than angry at him. “You are okay?” I asked her quietly, reaching out to squeeze her hands. She nodded, and I turned around to see Calloway, who at least had the decency not to try and slink away. I stepped once towards him, drawing myself up to my slight height advantage with a scowl that must have been vicious, because even though his usual expression of disdain was back, I saw his eyebrow twitch.
“Calloway,” I said, taking another step towards him. “If you lay one finger on her without her invitation to do so, I will personally see to it that the finger ceases to be available for your use. Ponyal? Do you understand?”
The mask broke again as he tried to school his own fury. Adrian Calloway V is not used to threats. “Emma, I’m sorry,” he said, ignoring me completely as he leaned around me to look at her. “That was—inappropriate. But,” he continued with a voice that lashed out with a sharp snap. “Is this is who you really want to be with? Some fucking brute?”
I had been moving to block him but froze because doing so might just prove him right.
“Is he what you really want?” He continued, stepping past me and waving his hand in my general direction. This was a Calloway who was not in control, a Calloway I doubted anyone in this damn house had ever seen before. “The Tom Buchanan, the—the Stanley Kowalski? Someone who starts with brawn over brains? Who can’t challenge you?” He stepped back then, looked at me with contempt drawn on every millimeter of his face. “You’re too smart to waste time on a brainless pretty boy,” he added, his eyes flicking back to her.
I moved towards him but before I could say anything, a small tornado barreled past my side and jabbed him in the chest. “How fucking dare you?” Emma snapped, and I watched Calloway’s eyes widen as he joined me in stunned silence. “Not that you have any say in who does or doesn’t deserve my time to begin with. But you also don’t know the first thing about how smart Misha is, because he doesn’t spend all his energy desperately trying to prove he’s the smartest guy in the room,” she huffed. Calloway’s face, which had been flushed with frustration, paled.
Never get on the bad side of someone who can see your vanities as clear as day.
“If you think I’m so smart, maybe it should occur to you to wonder why I love him.” My entire body, my entire soul stilled, if I had such a thing. “Instead, you’re just making up an excuse to suit your own damn ego.” She grabbed my arm and began to tug me away, looking over her shoulder at Calloway. “Misha is kind and smart in ways you and I could both learn from. He—” She stopped, chest still heaving as she spun back towards the door with a huff. “Let’s just go.”
What else could I do? I let her pull me away. My eyes flicked back to Calloway briefly, seeing his shock liquify into chagrin before we turned down the hallway and he was gone.
Emma stomped ahead, a little queen marching onward with me in tow.
Why I love him, she’d said.
I followed her through the house and out the front door. I would have followed her into hell itself right then.
She stopped outside my car so suddenly I almost ran into her. We were saved only because she whirled around and threw herself into my arms, burying her face in my chest. “He had no right to say that to you,” she declared, the words muffled in my shirt. “Even if he was upset. You—you don’t deserve that, just because he didn’t get what he…what he wanted.” She trailed off and looked up at me with a helpless expression, her cheeks red. Because even after three months, she did not know what to do with the fact that Calloway was in love with her.
“Emma, korolevochka,” I took her face into my hands and kissed her forehead. “It’s okay. I have been called worse things by better people. Almost every day, even,” I said, wanting to cajole her back into something resembling a good mood for her birthday. “Besides, I am a brute. I am your brute.”
“You are not. And it’s not okay,” she insisted, but she took a breath and I could feel her steady herself against me.
“Bah. I was only mad it sounded like he did…something. But hearing you defend me like that? To him? Bozhe moy.” I let out a breath and it became a chuckle, and soon I was grinning like a madman. She chose me. Even with all my baggage, even knowing she could have first editions and a real future with him, she chose me. I pulled back just enough to make her look me in the eyes. “Emma, I would take insults from a hundred Calloways just to hear you talk like that about me.”
That finally got her lips to quirk, in spite of herself. “Well, don’t. I don’t think I could handle being a hundred times more mad,” she said, giving me another squeeze around my waist before pulling away and taking a clarifying breath. “Now, what’s the big plan you were so excited about?”
I rattled it off—get out of town, enjoy a fancy dinner, and then an escape room, which she had said once she wanted to try. I thought it would be better than sitting in a quiet movie theater. As long as we could keep our hands off each other in a locked room.
Though now that she had pulled away and I could finally pay attention to what she was wearing under her coat, a dark red, short-skirted confection of a dress…keeping my hands off would be a long shot.
Fuck Calloway, I thought as I rounded the car and hopped into the driver’s seat. He doesn’t matter.Not tonight.
Bonus Content:
Sigma Founders’ Library
Author’s Note
B-Side Track: Mothica & Emlyn – Good For Her
Oh, Adrian. You’d been doing so well, and you stumbled. (Notice that, like Misha back in chapter 12, it’s a retreat into habit specifically when there’s an audience.)
“FUN” FACT:
Adrian calls back to their Gatsby/Tom conversation here, but in case anyone’s not familiar: Stanley Kowalski is the male lead/antagonist of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire Unlike Tom, Stanley is working-class, but like Tom he’s abusive and demands control over his wife, Stella. He’s connecting these characters to Misha because Tom and Stanley tend to express themselves through brutal physicality.
Next chapter: I feel like it’s been a minute since there’s been any spice. Maybe next chapter, as a treat? What do y’all think, yes or no? 😏