The Pretty Psycho (St. Vasili’s Academy #2)

14. Vega

14

VEGA

"What the fuck was that?" was the first thing that came out of Yolanda's mouth the moment we stumbled inside her room, breaking the silence we were enveloped in the past couple of minutes.

What the fuck, indeed.

The moment we split from the group, we practically ran toward her room as if the hounds of hell were after us, but considering that Adrian was more stubborn and more determined than the hounds of hell, I guess we had a reason for that.

I couldn't erase the hurt I saw in his eyes, nor could I erase the fact that I deliberately hurt him just because I didn't know how to deal with everything I was currently feeling. I felt like a walking bipolar disorder—one moment I was completely fine, ready to take on the day, and the next it was as if the claws of desperation started scratching over my throat, closing their long talons around my windpipe until it was too hard to breathe.

I wanted to meet the rest of The Brotherhood. I wanted to be included in all the plans that would no doubt start getting developed tonight, but I couldn't face them. Standing there in front of the main building, faced with all of them, made me want to hide and never come back out. It definitely didn't help that Adrian could see right through the facade I was trying to put out, asking me that one question I fucking hated hearing.

"I panicked," I said, collapsing on top of her bed right next to the window, staring at the ceiling above us. "I fucking panicked." And I hated myself for it.

I fought against men double, hell, triple my size. I went through life all alone, with no family and no friends. I fought against those goons in the hospital while still in this fucked-up state, yet I couldn't take the way Adrian was looking at me. I couldn't let him in no matter how much I wanted to, because I didn't know how.

Because no one had ever taught me how to trust people. No one had ever taught me how to love, how to feel emotions in a healthy way.

"Did you really mean it?" Yolanda asked as she sat down next to me. "That you don't trust him?" I turned toward her, seeing genuine concern in her eyes.

"I don't know," I murmured. And I didn't know.

I had no name for what I was feeling. I had no explanation for my behavior, and I really, really hated myself for acting like a fucking child when I was anything but.

"I don't know if I can trust him," I admitted out loud what had been heavily pressing on my mind since we came back from the hospital. "I want to," I whispered. "I want to trust him. I want to let him in. I want to be normal, but I don't know how."

"Because of what he did?"

"No." I shook my head, lifting myself to a seated position. "Because of who I am." And that was the truth, wasn't it?

The Schatten didn't just destroy the childhood I could've had, they also destroyed my trust in people, and then Tyler stomped on it for good measure. They destroyed any possibility of ever having a normal relationship with another person because I didn't know how. I was raised to be a soldier, a killer, a machine built to be used by other people.

I wasn't raised to enjoy the nicer things in life. I wasn't raised to fall in love or to know how to process emotions. That's one of the reasons they taught us how to shut it all off. How to be as unfeeling as they wanted us to be, because feelings could turn messy, and the last thing they wanted was an emotional bunch of soldiers who couldn't deal with the monstrosities they'd committed.

Unfortunately, once I opened that lid on all my emotions, I didn't know how to push them back in. They weren't listening to me anymore, because I was no longer in control. My heart refused to be tamed, because it too knew that I couldn't live my life the way I used to, only feeling what I deemed necessary to feel.

"I didn't have a chance to tell you why I came to the Academy," I murmured, looking straight at her. She frowned, her eyes falling to the bed. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want to lose the only friend I had."

She smiled softly before looking back up at me. "I think that somewhere between your arrival and the fact that you already knew how to fight almost as good as Adrian and the rest of them, I realized you weren't just an ordinary student. I had no idea what or who you were, but something told me we weren't on the same level."

"No," I laughed, "we definitely weren't, and I'm not saying this because I'm trying to be rude."

"Oh, you're not." She chuckled. "Trust me, I would never be able to fight like you do."

"And you don't want to," I mumbled. "Because fighting the way I fight didn't come lightly. I wasn't born into this world, Yolanda. Hell, I was never meant to be a part of it, but after they locked my mom in prison, an organization took me in, turning me into what I am today."

"A fighter."

"No, a monster." She frowned, obviously hating that word, but it was the truth. She said it herself not so long ago, and I knew where I belonged. Earth was filled with people like me. People who wanted to do better, but we couldn't. "I killed, I maimed, I tortured people. Sometimes innocent people. Sometimes not-so-innocent ones." She kept looking at me, soaking in every single word. "I've traveled all around the world, and if you asked me which city was my favorite one I wouldn't be able to tell you. But if you asked me which city had seen the biggest number of my attacks, then I would tell you London. If you wanted to know which city haunted me the most, I would tell you Beijing. If you asked me which country had seen the worst of me, I would tell you the United Arab Emirates." I took a deep breath, remembering all those screams, all the pleading, all the tears rolling down the cheeks of those I was sent to kill. "Most people counted their days in minutes and hours, I counted mine in the number of kills I had. And I was fine with what I was for such a long time that I failed to see what I was becoming. I forgot the sound of my mother's voice. I forgot the color of her eyes. I forgot every single thing, because I liked being a monster. I. Liked. It."

"Vega," she mumbled. "You're not a monster."

"Oh, trust me," I huffed. "I definitely am. You have no idea what I've done. You've no idea what I had to do to survive in this world."

"And that's exactly why I'm saying that you're not a monster. You're a survivor. You're a fighter. Yes, you did some fucked-up things, but we've all done them. There's not a single person out there who could say they were completely innocent. Not even me," she whispered that last part, making me truly look at her. She seemed ashamed of something, but I didn't want to push her to tell me what it was.

Besides, this wasn't the time or place for that. I just wanted her to know the real truth.

"I was sent here to kill Adrian, Yolanda," I blurted out, braving the words to come out. "I was sent here because it was supposed to be my last mission, my little ticket to freedom. And I failed. I fell for the man I was supposed to kill, almost letting him destroy me."

"But he didn't destroy you."

"No." I shook my head. "Not yet. But I'm terrified that I'll lose myself if I let him in. I'm unable to remember which part of me is who I truly am and which part of me is what The Schatten wanted me to be."

"The Schatten?"

"The organization I worked for," I clarified. "Which is kind of funny, because they actually sent me here hoping I would fail."

"No way."

"They wanted me dead, Yolanda." Her eyes widened, shock washing over her face. "And I almost fell into their trap."

"Does, um." She cleared her throat. "Does Adrian know?"

I nodded. "He does. But that's beside the point."

"Then what is the point?"

I took a deep breath, staring at the wall behind Yolanda. "The point is that I don't know who I am without that world. The point is that I am terrified I would lose myself if I allowed myself to feel anything but rage. The point is that I want to trust Adrian, I want to let him in, but I don't fucking know how. And now I sound like a fucking parrot, but that's the truth. Yesterday he snatched me away, taking care of me, worrying about me, and today I basically took all he had done and threw it in his face. He did some things," I continued. "Things that had me running away just before that fire."

"Yeah, when I found you, right?"

"Correct. Rationally, I know why he did it. Why he held the information he had as a secret, but I also don't know how to move past that. I thought I'd be able to. I thought I was stronger than this, but I'm not. I don't know how to trust him." And that's where the problem lay.

Yolanda shuffled on the bed, moving closer to me and taking my hand in hers. "Here's what I think, and please hear me out before trying to argue with me."

I laughed, seeing the mischievous look in her eyes. "Okay."

"Adrian is obsessed with you, Vega. Now, I don't know if it's healthy or not, but the man was out of his mind while you were gone. He was like a ticking time bomb and none of us wanted to be around him. Hell, on the night of the fire he tried running inside because he wanted to get to you." My heart shuddered at that. "But they stopped him. Trust me when I tell you, he is mad about you. I have never seen it directed at me and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't just a little bit jealous, because every single one of us wants to have someone looking at us the way he looks at you. He fucked up, I get it, but so did you." Ouch. "You both had a life before you met each other and you both had shit you had to do in order to survive. Trust me when I tell you, you don't want to push him away. Well, actually," she smiled, "I don't think you'd be able to push him away even if you tried to. He let you go with me because he probably knew you needed time to process things, but mark my words—I'm giving him maybe an hour before he comes barging in here, demanding for you to go with him. And I think you probably should go. I think you deserve what he has to offer, because that man wants only what's best for you."

"But—"

"Na-uh," she tsked. "I'm not finished. What you went through," she stammered. "What you went through was terrible. I cannot imagine what you're feeling now, and if you're all over the place, then, well, maybe you need to allow yourself to be all over the place. Maybe you need to allow yourself to feel a bit unbalanced, but you'll find your footing again. You'll get back to the way you were before, but you need time. And you need people in your corner. Don't shut him out because you're too terrified to see what is happening between you two."

"Which is?" I asked like a fucking coward, because I needed somebody else to say it out loud.

"Love, Vega. What's happening between the two of you is love. A man doesn't go that crazy over a woman he doesn't love. He wouldn't lose his mind over some chick he didn't care about. He. Fucking. Loves. You." My eyes stung, and as much as I hated her for voicing it like this, I appreciated it. "So don't punish him for things that didn't even happen yet. You never know, maybe the version of you that's going to come alive while you're with him is better than all these other versions of you from before, but you'll never know if you don't try."

"I just," I mumbled. "I don't want to have my heart broken."

Yolanda smiled, her fingers tightening around mine. "Having our hearts broken is part of growing up, my friend. If they never break we would never know how to mend them. And we would never learn not to go toward the things that are hurting us. So, allow yourself to get broken, at least once. Allow yourself to grieve the versions of you that no longer serve you and live your life without the fear of getting broken from time to time, Vega. You need to live. You are this fearless warrior, but when it comes to matters of the heart you harbor so much fear, and I don't want to see you living your life like that. Because living your life halfway is not living. It's only existing."

Goddamn her, she was right. She was so fucking right, and judging by the tears rolling down my cheeks, she knew exactly what to say to open the dam I was holding on to.

I was terrified that once I gave my heart to Adrian he would simply break it, and that fear didn't come because of him. That fear came because every single person in my life so far had either disappeared or betrayed me. It wasn't fair to him if I continued punishing him for all the things other people did, but that didn't mean I had to just dive headfirst into a relationship with him.

First step would be actually talking to him, which I didn't know how to do. It was easier fighting with him than telling him all my fears. I loved control and I knew that in a fight I could control the narrative. If I started talking about all these other things, I would have to tap into my emotions and those… Those I didn't have control over.

My body shook from the force of my sobs coming out now, and before I could compose myself, Yolanda had me wrapped in her arms, comforting me when it felt like I would fall apart.

"I'm sorry," I said, closing my eyes as I pressed my forehead to her shoulder. "I don't usually cry this much."

"It's good." She chuckled. "You're going to pee less."

"What the fuck?" I laughed. "Where did that come from?"

"Eh," she shrugged, "it’s something my nanny used to say when I was younger. If you cry a lot then it means you're going to pee less." This girl. This fucking girl that came out of nowhere. "But seriously, you need to let it out, and if this is the way, then it's good. It's better than going out there and snorting coke from a stripper's ass just because you want to forget the things boggling your mind."

I pulled back, my face scrunching. "Coke? Stripper's ass? Jesus fuck, Yolanda, what kind of things were you doing in your life?"

"The kind they write books about." She laughed. "But eh," she wiggled on the bed, "snorting coke from those hot asses is an experience. You should try it sometime."

The way she said it in this completely nonchalant way told me I didn't really know her. Yes, she didn't exactly belong in this world, but she had so much life in her. Which brought me to my next question.

"Does your father know what happened at the Academy?" Her cheerful expression diminished the moment the question came out, and I hated the way her eyes lost the light in them.

"My father doesn't give a fuck what I do, as long as I'm not embarrassing the family. And of course," she laughed darkly, "as long as I'm able to snatch myself a husband. Trust me." She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. "He doesn't care if I live or die. If it were up to him, I would've been shipped off to some boarding school a long time ago, but he needs me right now. He needs a golden goose that would give him more money and more power by getting married to someone outside of Sweden. He already has everything he needs there, but he wants more. It's always more with that man, and I don't know." She lowered her head. "Sometimes it feels as if I will never be enough."

"Oh, Yolanda."

"No," she smiled sadly, "it’s okay. I always knew where I stood with him and it's better this way. At least I would never forget it and I would never try to get his approval for anything else. Besides, maybe I will kick his ass once you show me some of those moves you have. Jax tried, but I think I would rather train with you."

"Jax, huh?" I snickered. "Don't think I haven't noticed you two."

Her cheeks flamed, her eyes looking anywhere but at me. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, come on, Yo. You can't deny that there's something."

"Even if there was, nothing could ever happen," she said sadly. "Jax is… Jax, and I know where I stand with him. It's all fun and games but I'm not here to let another man use me. And no offense, since I know he's your friend, but Jax is a womanizer, and I've had enough of those to last me a lifetime. Yeah, I like him," she admitted. "I think he's cool. He can also be nice when he wants to, but other than that, there's nothing."

Yeah, her lips were saying one thing but her eyes were telling me something else. She didn't just like him. She was falling for him, and she hated it more than I hated wanting Adrian.

"Okay," I relented, not wanting to push her even more. Jax was obviously a sore topic, and until she was ready to talk about it, I wasn't going to push. "But if you want me to kick his ass, just tell me and I'll do it." She snorted, looking at me again with a sheen in her eyes. "He might be big, but I know how to kick ass."

"I know you do."

It was weird how comfortable it was simply sitting here with her and talking about our personal things. I never had anyone who would listen. Hell, I never had a female friend who would listen to me talk about my emotions and it was… nice? Yeah, it was definitely nice. I wanted more of this in my future, and regardless of where life took us, I was just hoping that Yolanda would always be a part of it.

Fatigue started catching up with me, and before long, my yawning was getting more and more frequent.

"You need to sleep," Yolanda said.

"I slept for days. I need to move and do something."

"No," she shook her head, getting up from the bed. "You need to rest. Sleep. Whatever. Just because you slept in the hospital it doesn't mean that your body is rested. You were in a terrible state when they brought you in and you definitely need to recharge. So," she fluffed the pillow on her bed and started patting it, "down you go. I'll be here, just working on some things, but you really need to relax."

The more she talked about sleeping, the more I yawned, and without fighting with her, I kicked off my boots and slid underneath the covers, lowering my head to the pillow she was patting.

"Wake me up if we get any news about anything at all."

"I will. I'll get us something to eat as well when you wake up. I'm sure you'll be hungry." I probably would be, but as the lull of sleep pulled me under, I could no longer react.

My eyes closed, my mind shutting down slowly, and before long I was descending into a dark, dreamless abyss, ready to forget this day.