Except when I can hear her whimper softly in her sleep, and smell the lavender of her shampoo as the Mediterranean wind blows through the open window, it takes more than a deep breath to remind myself of that.
Fuck, this is going to be tough.
The market district of Istanbul is thick with exotic smells, colors, and sounds as Peyton and I push our way through the crowds without talking, since she’s decided to play a ridiculous silent treatment game with me since last night.
I’ve been here before, on our way out of Afghanistan before we hooked up with Blackriver in Morocco. I shake my head at the memory of those hectic, wild days, when we didn’t know what the fuck we were doing; when we were looking over our shoulders every five seconds for the State Department, or worse. Two months of uncertainty, of lying in limbo. Me, high on hashish scrounging through back-markets looking for something stronger to numb it all away, Hudson almost getting us all killed when he went home with the wrong married woman, and Logan playing fucking damage control through the whole thing. Logan keeping us together, and alive, and moving forward; always moving forward.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Out of the deserts of Afghanistan when we all made the decision to leave - when we knew we couldn’t do the horrible things that were asked of us anymore - and dive head-first into the unknown. Aimless, penniless; hell, fucking country-less. And through the whole damn thing, that tough bastard kept us going.
And you fucked his sister. Nice work, shithead.
A man in white linen meets us at the front door of the cafe where we're meeting our turncoat contact from Blackriver and quickly nods and bows as he hustles us past men in similar garb sitting drinking black tea and smoking from hookahs. He ushers us through the back door of the cafe and out into a half-shaded, tiny little courtyard with a small table with three chairs around it.
"Please," He says haltingly; "Have a seat. She'll be with you shortly."
She? Fuck.
Peyton sits at the table facing the cafe door and toys with the edge of it; "So do you know this contact? From your Blackriver days?"
I sure fucking hope not.
"I don't think so."
Peyton fidgets in her chair as I sit across from her; "I don't like it. Why's she switching teams?"
I shrug; I don't like it one bit either, but it's all we've got right now if we're ever going to figure out where Benson is with Logan; "If Lawson trusts her, we should t-"
"Bryce, darlin, how are you?."
Fuck. I can feel my jaw tighten at the sound of the Aristocratic, Queen’s English voice I mercifully haven't heard in years. It's like I'm instantly yanked back in time, back into the darkness and back into the grey clutches of addiction. Yeah, it's her. I grit my teeth as I stand, taking maybe a moment longer than normal before I steel myself and turn around to face the woman I'd hoped I'd never see again; "Hello, Sasha," I say icily, hating the smirk in her eyes and the familiarity of her face.
She looks healthier, I’ll give her that. It’s amazing what not injecting chemicals into your veins or shoving them up your nose will do to your skin and general health and well-being. From the looks of things, she’s probably clean, which is certainly something.
But she’s still got the same jet-black hair, the same dark eyes like twin black-holes dragging in the light and warmth from a room. She’s still pale, still vaguely vampiric looking, which is sort of right on the money considering the bloodsucker she is. She’s still got that crafty, cold smirk on her face, like she’s sizing up prey or looking for a weakness or chink in the armor with any and every social encounter.
There’s a coldness that seeps into me, seeing her like this. It’s not a comforting familiarity that her presence brings, it’s all the dark parts of my life from way back then; back when I was another man in another time. Sasha is a ghost from a time in my life that I just want to keep in shadow. She's like the remnants of a bad dream that you get another passing glimpse of in your memory weeks later.
It's not what I can tell Peyton thinks it was from the look on her face, even if I am getting a guilty twinge of satisfaction letting her think that. But that’s not what Sasha and I were. Heroin does lots of things for you. A libido is not one of them. Ours was - fuck, I don't know; an arrangement of convenience?
But whatever you want to call it, that woman had me in her fucking clutches, and I hate her for it.
"What's your angle here, Sasha." My voice is leaden and cold, almost as if being near this haunting from my past has me right back to the empty nothingness of heroin addiction all over again.