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“Asha.” The name sounds foreign, startling. I miss hearing my real name on Finn’s lips, and I realize with a start that it never occurred to me to ask Nikolai to use it. He knows it, of course—he hired me—but he’s never called me by it. Only by Asha.
“Are you alright? You’re home, aren’t you? You can take as much time as you need. I don’t want you coming back until you’re entirely ready—”
I don’t mean to cut Nikolai off. I really don’t. But the words come out before I can stop them, clogging up my throat with how quickly they burst free.
“I can’t come back. I’m sorry. I just can’t.” I don’t know what explanation to offer, because even I’m not entirely sure why. I don’t know if it’s Finn, or what happened with Matvei, or just exhaustion after so many years of dancing and escorting, a stuttering flame finally burned out. “I know I said I’d give you notice, Nikolai, and I’m sorry. But I can’t come back.”
There’s a long silence. “I can understand that,” Nikolai says finally. “Given the situation. I thought you might say that, honestly.” He pauses for another long moment. “You said something about leaving Chicago. Is that—”
He pauses, and I know what he’s asking. I don’t know if I was even entirely certain until that moment, but when he says it, I am.
“Yes.” I swallow hard, forcing myself not to think of Finn, not to think of what I’m losing. Not to think of the unanswered message, the chance I had to keep him from walking away this morning.
Not to think of him at all, because if I do, I’ll break into a thousand pieces all over again, just like I knew I would.
“Yes. I’m leaving.”
Finn
Iknow what happened between us was real. I know what I felt was real, and I know she felt the same. But in the cold light of day, she couldn’t say what I needed to hear.
In the moment, it felt like standing up for myself to walk away, like preserving what I had left of my dignity. Now, after two days of missing her and two nights of dreaming about her, remembering what we shared together, right up to that last horrible night—it feels less like that and more like I walked away without a fight.
So fight for her.
The thought is in my head from the moment I left her there on the apartment steps—but I try to shove it down. I try to tell myself that I’m only setting myself up for heartbreak again, that Asha has shown me, over and over, that she isn’t willing to try to take the chance again of loving someone.
I try to tell myself that I had my answer.
It only takes two days before I lose my resolve.
I’d told myself not to look at the message she sent me. That if I did, it would only make it worse. That I was only torturing myself, all over again, by not taking the message she gave me standing outside her apartment loud and clear, and putting her out of my head.
“What happens in the safehouse stays in the safehouse,” I mutter aloud as I stand in my kitchen, making breakfast, trying to go about my day as if my heart isn’t still lying on the pavement outside of her door. As if I wouldn’t have given anything for her to ask me what I all but begged for her to say—to ask me to come upstairs, to ask me to stay, to ask me to be hers as surely as I know she’s mine.
What if I tried? What if I did fight for her the way I wanted to?
The idea that comes immediately to mind is laughable. Ridiculous. The last time I tried it, I also ended up with a broken heart for my efforts. But my relationship with Felicity has been, from the start, nothing if not unconventional.
So why not try to repair it in an unconventional way?
What’s the worst that could happen?
I know the answer to that, of course. The worst that could happen is that she’s horrified by the gesture, or that she laughs in my face. The ending to this particular idea could be the exact opposite of preserving what’s left of my dignity.
But I’ve never been the most dignified of men, and in this moment, I know I would try anything—gamble anything, if it meant a chance at having her back.
If it meant a chance at having her for good.
Which is how, three hours later, I find myself pressing the buzzer for her apartment with a velvet box in my pocket and my heart feeling as if it’s about to leap out of my chest.
For a moment, I think she’s not going to answer. And then I hear her voice, low and sugar-sweet, coming through the speaker.
“Yes?”
“Felicity—it’s Finn. Can I come up?”
There’s a silence for a moment that I feel almost certain means no. That she’s not going to answer. That she’s going to leave me standing here. And then, just as I’m starting to question if I should turn and walk away from this place for a second time, I hear the click of a door.
