“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Are you hurt?” I looked straight into her eyes.
She shook her head once. “I’m not hurt.”
I held her gaze a moment longer, letting that settle. Believing it. “Then why are you here?”
Her eyes dropped, and she stepped back. “I needed medicine,” she said and walked out as if the conversation ended there.
I followed her. “What medicine? We have a doctor at home. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m not sick,” she said, already moving toward the car with that deliberate pace that shut people out before they could argue.
“Inna.” I caught her arm and turned her back to me. “What medicine?”
She looked at me for a moment, then sighed. “Emergency pills.”
“What emergency exactly?”
She scoffed, pulling her arm free. “Maybe use protection next time,” she declared before continuing to the car. She got in and shut the door behind her.
I stood there as the information arranged itself in my head with clarity. I should have thought of it eight hours ago. Yes, I didn’t use protection, and I finished inside her. She came here because she needed emergency contraception.
The relief that moved through me was disproportionate, and I didn’t examine why. I pushed a hand through my hair and looked at Anton. He stood a few feet away from the car, waiting. I moved to the back door and opened it.
Inna was busy picking at her fingers in her lap, a nervous habitof hers. “Why is your phone off?” I asked.
She looked at me. “You threw it at a wall. Remember? The night you decided my phone was the problem.” She turned back to the window. “And for the record, replacing it is your responsibility entirely, not mine. And even if I could afford to replace it myself, I wouldn’t, because I wasn’t the one who threw it.”
The relief of knowing she wasn’t hurt settled deeper in a place where anger had sat the whole day. I spent the entire day coming up with reasons to stay away from the mansion. But the whole time, the real problem was that I didn’t know how Inna was doing. Now I did, and this quieted the noises in my head.
“Also, I lied to Anton that I forgot my handbag so I could borrow money from him for the pills,” she added. “You are responsible for that, too. Pay him back because I genuinely don’t have money to do it myself.”
I bent closer and moved my hand to hers on her lap, and she flinched. She looked down at our hands and then up at me. One look at her and I understood she wasn’t just another girl, she wasthe girl. I left this morning because I thought looking at her after that sex meant admitting that we were done. But we weren’t, because I couldn’t have worried about her if we were. I wouldn’t want to kiss her and just hold her if we were done. I wouldn’t want to just hold her and keep her still long enough to make sense of what I did.
“Your phone is ringing,” she said. I didn’t hear it, and I didn’t care. “Dmitri?”
“Inna.” The name left my lips before I leaned in and kissed her. The kiss didn’t feel like it felt this morning or any other kiss we ever shared. It felt better than all of them. I wanted her more than I did at the start.
I pulled back and looked at her for a moment before reaching for my wallet. I took out the black card and handed it to her.“Buy a new phone.”
She looked at it without taking it. “What’s this?”
I pushed it to her fingers. “I should never call and find you unreachable again.”
Her gaze dropped to the card before lifting back to me. “You’re going to regret giving me this because I’m buying the latest model.”
“Okay.”
“It’s expensive. And you can’t add it to the old debt. I’m serious.” She pressed the card against her chest as if she already expected a fight.
I leaned forward and pressed my lips to her forehead. “Buy whatever you want and go straight home.”
“Whatever I want?” She narrowed her eyes. “You should take that back.” We stared at each other for a second before she sighed and held out her hand. “Give me your phone.”
It took me a moment, but I pulled it from my pocket and handed it over. She unlocked it, opened my messages, then paused. “How did you save my number?”
I reached over and tapped the contact’s name.
