Page 8 of The Promise

• • •

Roman eventually wandered back to where Karine was still asleep. Only to find she had moved slightly, making the notebook—secured under the pillow earlier—fall to the gleaming floor.

He knew better, but he also couldn’t help himself. Getting close enough to kneel beside her without a sound, he reached for the notebook but doing so faced him directly with her. She slept peacefully, not even a knot between her brows to say her dreams were unpleasant. Like this, it was hard to imagine that she was the same troubled soul who had been in the passenger seat when he left Chicago.

The walls were up during that car ride.

All the way up.

If she regretted coming to New York with him, by her own choice or otherwise, could Roman really blame her?

No, he knew it wasn’t her fault.

Sighing in her sleep, Karine’s eyelids fluttered as she shifted a bit on the chaise. Roman straightened up and backed away with footsteps that weren’t exactly quiet, but at least put some distance between the two.

She didn’t wake up.

Roman let out the air he’d been holding as Karine rolled to her other side. Her shoulders lifted with a loud exhale, but that was it. She seemed to fall into a deeper sleep, unbothered with her surroundings. Her dark, sleek hair tumbled over one side of her face so he couldn’t see her, but the rhythmic rise and fall of the blanket said she was fine for the moment.

Roman resisted the urge to just carry her to a bedroom where she would sleep comfortably, and not be in the way. That really didn’t seem like the brightest idea. He didn’t need to wake her with a startle because he was touching her, or whatever.

Fuck it.

She could sleep where she wanted—for today.

With the distance between them, he felt safe to flip through the notebook. One he recognized. She must have discovered it in the kitchen junk drawer where everything that didn’t have a specific home found a place. Random doodles and angry marks from a pen filled the first couple of pages. Nothing he could decipher as important. On the third page, he found a sketch of himself.

Roman studied the pen strokes that made up an image of him asleep on his bed. It was a precise and artistic representation, including the peek of the tattoo on the back of his neck while he laid on his stomach, and arm stretched under his pillow to offer more support. It captured the same thing in his sleeping expression that he had found in Karine’s.

At first glance, the sketch seemed like a crude job done by a kid. It was only upon closer inspection that it became clear the messy strokes that repeated around the main lines of the sketch were only to distort the more perfected image beneath. Like the hand of the artist had been taught to hide what she was drawing ... or seeing.

More surprising was what he found written at the bottom of the page. A single sentence written and addressed to him, confirming what he’d already known the second he saw the notebook.

*

Thank you, Roman.

-Katee

*

So, even though Karine had slept her night away, a part of her had not. The morning was sacrificed because of it, apparently.

He was less concerned with the fact he had been watched for probably hours the night before as he slept, and more that he wondered how often she did get a full night’s rest. Adding that on top of the medication constantly shoved at Karine, and a world filled with people who either couldn’t stand the sight of her or only wanted to hurt her, he was no longer asking why.

Roman thought the better question might be why not. And fuck, he couldn’t afford to be any more invested in this than he already was—it was already too much for him to handle. He wasn’t equipped for this.

There was a lump in his throat that he quickly swallowed because it didn’t matter what Roman couldn’t do—there was still a lot he could. He wasn’t exactly the type to lose, and the first thing he had to handle before anything else was his father.

He owed Demyan that.

• • •

Demyan arrived at the apartment in record time—he always did have the best drivers who knew exactly how to fight their way through city traffic. One of the most unfortunate parts of being the boss, Roman knew, was the fact they were rarely behind the wheel themselves.

Roman barely had time to make it halfway through the bottle of vodka on his veranda before the people from the front desk in the lobby rang him to say Demyan—and another guest—had arrived.

Demyan wasn’t made to wait in the downstairs lobby until Roman came down to get him like the rest of the guests for the building—policy bullshit unless the front desk was told ahead of time. That happened to Demyan all of one time before his father made it very clear it had better never happen again.