Page 190 of Mile High Ruin

I reach for his hand immediately. “Hey.”

His eyes open slowly. For a second, they’re unfocused, then they settle on me.

“You’re still here.”

“Obviously.”

“You should go home.”

“I went home yesterday.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“It absolutely counts.”

“You were gone for forty minutes.”

“I changed clothes.”

“You came back wearing the same coat.”

“It’s a good coat.”

He looks at me for another second, then the corner of his mouth moves. The smile is weak, but it’s there. I would do almost anything to keep it there.

“You look tired,” he says.

“That’s very rude considering your current situation.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

His thumb shifts faintly against my hand. “You need sleep.”

“I sleep.”

“Here.”

“Still sleep.”

He breathes out something that might be a laugh, then closes his eyes again. The effort of those few sentences has already taken something out of him. I look away before he can see my face change.

The city outside the window is unfamiliar enough that sometimes I still wake and forget where I am, but that happens less now. I know the streets around the hospital, the small grocery shop two blocks from the apartment I rented under a name close enough to mine that I would answer if somebody called it, the laundromat where nobody asks why I come at strange hours, the pharmacy that stays open until midnight, the café where I sit when the hospital staff force me outside long enough to eat.

I moved because staying where I lived before felt impossible. Too easy to find. Too connected to every piece of my old life.

The apartment is temporary, furnished badly, and small enough that I can stand in the center of the living room and see almost every door. I prefer it that way.

I spend very little time there. Most days I leave the hospital only when I need a shower, fresh clothes, or enough sleep to stop the headaches that begin behind my eyes after too many nights in this chair.

Sometimes I tell Ethan I have work. He knows I’m lying, but he doesn’t ask.

There are pieces of the last few months that I try not to arrange in the correct order.

Viktor’s voice on the phone telling me to stay where I was.

A driver arriving the next morning with cash, documents, and instructions that somehow took me farther away from Vadim than I had managed on my own.