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I’m at the clinic?
Memories rush back, flooding my thoughts. Yan! My pulse quickens. Turning my face to the side, I scan the room in a bout of panic, but then I relax. Yan is sitting in a chair next to the bed, elbows on his knees and head between his hands. As if pulled by an invisible thread of awareness, he lifts his head. The state of him makes my heart ache. More than a couple of days’ worth of stubble darkens his chiseled jaw. Under the dark rings that mar his eyes, his cheeks are sunken and hollow. He’s wearing a gray T-shirt and sweatpants with the clinic logo, and Crocs on his feet.
Those white Crocs, so uncharacteristic for Yan, put a smile on my face, but the effort cracks my lips.
He jumps up and grabs my hand. “You’re awake.”
I try to swallow away the dryness in my mouth. “Unless I’m dreaming.”
Closing his eyes briefly, he kisses my knuckles and keeps my hand pressed to his lips for a long moment. “Are you in pain?” He touches my forehead. “Cold?”
“Thirsty.”
“Water. Yes.” He looks around in consternation even though a carafe and a glass with a straw stand on the nightstand. “Ice? Maybe you prefer juice?”
I nod at the carafe. “That will do.”
He fills the glass and holds the straw to my lips. “Small sips. Don’t drink too fast.”
Mindful of my cracked lips, I keep my smile slight. “I know the drill.”
“Do you have pain?” he asks again.
“I don’t even feel my legs.”
“Dr. Adami gave you morphine.”
“Adami?” I am at the clinic, as the room and Yan’s borrowed clothes indicate.
He puts the glass on the nightstand and dabs my lips with a paper napkin. “We couldn’t risk taking you anywhere else.”
Of course not. It makes sense. “Clever. Thank you.”
“Thank you?” In contrast to his drawn features, the green of his eyes is darker and brighter, reflecting a frantic light. “You took a bullet for me and I…” He grips his hair and stares at me like a man on the verge of madness. “What the fuck was I supposed to do if that bullet had been fatal?”
I try for humor. “Be grateful to be alive?”
“Never again, do you hear me? You will never again put your life on the line. Not for me. Not for fucking anyone. Promise me.”
I reach for his hand. “I can’t make that promise. I acted automatically. If the situation is repeated, I’ll do it again.”
He grabs my fingers in his large palm, squeezing too hard. “Never again. Or…”
“Or what?”
He regards me with helpless desperation, but he doesn’t make manipulative threats. He doesn’t hold Hanna’s life over my head or say he’ll go after my only friend.
Wow. I stare at him in wonder. This is huge. It’s the first time he’s truly treated me like an equal and not his prisoner, the first time he’s not forcing me to bend to his will. He may not like my declaration, but he’s not telling me what to do or how to behave. In his own way, he’s just given me freedom.
The ultimate freedom.
Choice.
The moment is enormous. Tears well up in my eyes. They’re tears of joy for not having lost the man I love and tears of relief for being alive, but they’re also tears of gratitude for this place in our warped relationship, a place I never thought we’d reach. After the way we started out, it’s more than I ever could’ve hoped for, yet I wouldn’t want it any other way. We are what we are. We came together like our natures dictated: in violence and forced submission, in hatred and retribution. What we have now, though, is all the stronger for the obstacles we’ve overcome.
Yan once said the attraction was always there. He was right. And the kernel of love was always a part of it. We fought for this moment, for what we have between us. It didn’t come easily, and I’m not going to deny or waste it.
I’m going to grab it with both hands for as long as I have left.
“Don’t cry,” he whispers, wiping away my tears with a thumb. “I love you, Minochka, more than you can ever know.”
Taking his wrist, I kiss his palm. “I do know.”
His eyes glitter like jade stones. “I should’ve told you.” His voice sounds tormented. “Fuck. You could’ve…”
Died without knowing. I know what he’s thinking. I know how his mind works.
“Clever girls know the unsaid is sometimes more important than what’s said,” I say, repeating the words he’d spoken once upon a time in a stuffy wooden shed. It already seems like a lifetime ago.
He presses our foreheads together, his warm breath bathing my face. “Goddamn, Mina.” His anguish is so palpable I can feel it seeping through my skin.
“It’s over,” I whisper. “I’m all right.” A stark image of Ilya with a shotgun in his hands suddenly invades my memory. “How about Ilya? He wasn’t hurt, was he?”
