Two Months and Three Days (Sinister Romance #1)

Chapter 2 (part II)

Hatred. How could hatred be beautiful? It couldn't and it was unlikely that the photographer wanted to capture beauty. It was most likely something pretentious, something that followed the principle of "the more sickening the better". And yet . . . Arina was curious to find out what was so "cult" about it and for what reason all the journalists had gathered here, or, rather, for whom?

"The TV crew is waiting for Korshun, right?" a girl passing by asked Arina. She was about twenty-five, almost as tall as Arina but wearing sky-high stiletto heels. Arina hated high heels. She wore sneakers or running shoes pretty much the entire year round, except in the very cold of winter.

"Korshun?" Arina winced. "I don't know. Who's that?"

The girl gave her a scornful look, scanning Arina from head to toe, which was easy because Arina was still sitting on the bench. Then the girl took the "chocolate" booklet out of Arina's hands, opened it and pointed her finger at a picture entitled, in large white lettering, MAXIM KORSHUN.

A man's face, the expressive face of a handsome man who didn't care how handsome he was.

His face, in a bright square the color of the ocean abyss, looking straight ahead as if he were having his passport photograph taken. His hair a mess, dark bangs tangled and slightly wet as if he had recently been playing sport and started sweating. He held his head up high, neck straight and shoulders proudly stretched out. He was wearing orange overalls like a prisoner, looking straight into the lens, into the eyes of the person holding the booklet, into Arina's eyes.

His gaze is sharp and angry. Fire and ice. His lips are pressed together; his jaw tight. "Hatred?" What a piercing glance, Arina thought. Then, unexpectedly even for herself, she thought, Oh, he has such beautiful, intelligent eyes.

"Is that him?" Arina asked.

"Yup, that's him," the girl sat down right next to Arina and rubbed her foot. The high heels were making her feet sore. "Isn't he hot?"

"I guess," Arina nodded, still looking at the picture. If anybody needed to do anything to attract girls, it was definitely not this man, even despite the fact that he was unshaven, messy, and on top of that, sweating. He wasn't trying to please the camera or those who would later see his picture, yet both women instantly found him insanely attractive.

"I have to meet him. I just have to," the girl said firmly and pulled a compact out of her purse.

"Do you think that's possible?" Arina asked surprised, and in that very moment she suddenly realized that the man in the picture, who she had been looking at for the past few minutes, would arrive here at any moment. He would walk through the same glass doors as she had done a little while ago. He would be here in the flesh.

Ariana suddenly felt as if she couldn't breathe, as if she were flying down a snowy hill in a sled with the wind blowing in her face, and her heart skipped a beat from fear and happiness. At home in Vladimir, she had a poster from a magazine hanging over her bed. Jensen Ackles from Supernatural smiled at Arina with a kind, open smile. He too was beautiful by nature; everybody liked him at first glance and flames danced in his eyes too. She could think about him all she wanted. She could even imagine something unimaginable, imagine herself with him, but she had never struggled for breath before.

After all, Jensen Ankles would never descend down to her from the poster. The man from the picture, on the other hand, would be here soon.

Arina suddenly wanted to sneak behind the fence to the journalists and see Korshun in person.

What if he saw her too? What if he noticed her?

Not in this life. How stupid! If only Arina were different, dressed in beautiful clothes, with nicer arms and legs, not so pale-skinned, blond, for Christ's sake . . . Anything but an awkward teenager who was nineteen but didn't look older than fifteen. If only she were someone else, a beautiful, self-confident woman. Then, he would notice her. "Nobody wants you, you're like a hedgehog!"

"Hatred is like a dream of death, a nightmare from which you can't wake up. Hatred is similar to thoughts of suicide put into someone else's head. Hatred destroys even what it loves. Hatred defeats childhood and nourishes those who have nothing. Hatred kills." The girl in high heels was chanting the words from the booklet and Arina was listening to her paralyzed by her own absurd desires and destructive thoughts about herself. She wasn't even trying to understand the words. She couldn't look away from the doors.

"The exhibit will be here until the twenty-fifth, and then it's gone. It'll move to London," the girl went on. "But, of course, he'll be here for a couple of days."

Suddenly, Arina got up and froze on the spot. The booklets slipped out of her hand and scattered on the floor, but she hardly noticed. She was staring helplessly at the unshaven man who stopped in the glass doors. Her heart began to pound and her breathing almost stopped.

It was him.