Sasha at twenty two - Four years ago

It was the kind of attraction I had never felt toward anything or anyone until this very moment, landing on me like a blow I hadn't seen coming.

Two years. 

Two years of watching him from a distance, of pressing myself into hallway corners and the edges of crowded rooms just to catch a glimpse of a man who didn't know I existed. 

Two years of telling myself that what I felt was nothing more than foolish fascination, that it would pass the way all foolish things do.

It hadn't passed.

He was beautiful in the way that dangerous things often are, the kind of beautiful that doesn't invite you in so much as warn you to stay back. 

The first time I laid eyes on him, the air left my lungs so completely I thought my body had simply forgotten how to function. I couldn't name what I felt then, and I still couldn't now, standing in the doorway of this classroom and watching him with my pulse hammering against my ribs.

But I knew what it wasn't. It wasn't safe. It wasn't the soft, uncomplicated warmth that normal people seemed to feel for each other. He was dangerous. He would kill me the moment I stopped being interesting, and if my luck ran particularly foul, killing me wouldn't be a figure of speech.

Still, I couldn't switch off this obsession.

Zoran Kalashnikov.

His name had lived in my mind for two years. I had dreamed of him in more ways than I cared to admit, painting him into scenarios that ranged from the sweetly domestic to the filth I'd never speak aloud.

My legs carried me forward before my better judgment could intervene. He sat alone in the far corner of the classroom, a deliberate island of stillness while the rest of the room erupted around him, laughter crashing against laughter, voices tangled with voices, everyone performing the rituals of people who felt safe enough to be loud. 

He performed nothing. He simply existed, his attention bent toward his phone, thumbs moving across the screen with quiet efficiency.

Today was the fresher party.

I gathered every splinter of courage I owned and walked toward him.

I stopped in front of his desk and cleared my throat to get his attention.

His fingers stilled on the screen. Slowly, unhurried, as though I had interrupted something of far more importance than I imagined, he lifted his gaze to meet mine.

He looked at me like I was a mildly inconvenient thing that disturbed his perfect world.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" The words came out steadier than I deserved credit for, given that my fingers were twisting behind my back, each one finding the next in a restless, anxious loop.

He didn't respond. He simply stared, as though he had all the time in the world and none of it belonged to me.

A lump tightened in my throat. I forced the words up through it anyway, because I had come this far and I was not going to let my own cowardice be the reason I walked away empty-handed.

"I've known who you are for a while now." My chest felt like it was slowly caving inward. "I find you attractive. I think I like you…and I was wondering if we could spend some time together sometime. Outside of here."

There it was.

Out in the open. Finally.

The worst he could say was no, right?

His gaze traveled over me  in a slow, deliberate sweep from the top of my head all the way down, and back up again.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" His voice was low and almost conversational, which somehow made it worse. "You waltz up to me like that, run your little speech, and you actually expect me to say yes?" The corner of his mouth curved into something that wore a smile's shape with none of its warmth. "Have you ever looked at your own face?"

My heart stopped

Not metaphorically. It simply ceased for one suspended moment, before slamming back to life with a pain so sharp it felt physical. I had braced for a rejection. I had rehearsed a no, had turned it over in my mind a dozen times, had made my peace with the quiet sting of it.

Not this.

Fucking bastard.

"Get lost before I run out of patience." He dropped his gaze back to his phone, dismissing me as cleanly and completely from his sight.

I didn't move.

I stood there rooted, while the darkness and molten began to rise in the hollow of my chest. Rage bubbled within me. The urge to draw blood pulsed beneath my skin like a second heartbeat.

I stared at him.

I will kill this bastard.

One day, I will.

And his death will be on my hands.