When I reach the top of the stairs, I see him. Yaromir stands in the main hall below, surrounded by men. His suit is dirty. One sleeve is torn. There’s soot on his shoulder and blood on his shirt, his hands, the side of his neck. For one terrible second, the sight of the blood empties my lungs.
Then he looks up. Our eyes meet.
He’s alive.
I descend too quickly, one hand skimming the railing, barely feeling the steps beneath my feet. By the time I reach the bottom, everyone in the hall has gone still.
I don’t care. I go straight to him.
“Are you hurt?”
His expression changes, but he doesn’t answer fast enough.
I grab his jacket, searching him with my hands. Chest. Arms. Side. His shirt is stained near the ribs, but when I touch it, he doesn’t flinch.
“It’s not mine,” he says.
My hands stop. “What?”
“The blood. Most of it isn’t mine.”
Most.
The word nearly makes me dizzy.
“Most?”
“A cut. Nothing serious.”
I see it then, along his forearm, shallow but angry-looking beneath the ruined sleeve. I should focus on that. I should demand a doctor or bandages or explanations.
Instead, I grip the front of his shirt and kiss him.
The hall disappears. The men. The guards. Nina somewhere behind me. The entire Volkov house holding its breath.
I kiss him because he came back alive.
Because I spent hours pretending I was only worried in the normal way a wife might be worried, when the truth is something much deeper and far more terrifying.
I kiss him because when I saw blood on him, something inside me cracked open.
For a second, he’s still. Then his hand comes to the back of my head, hard and careful at the same time, and he kisses me back once. Only once, but it’s enough to make my knees weaken.
His eyes move over my face. “You were scared.”
I swallow.
The hall is silent around us.
I could lie. I could make a silly comment. I could step back and remember that we’re not alone, that half his men are watching, that wives in houses like this probably don’t throw themselves at their husbands in the foyer.
But I’m tired of pretending with him.
“Yes,” I say.
Something shifts in his eyes. A crack in the control. Small, but I see it.
I touch his face, careful of the soot near his jaw. “Are you okay?”
