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“Is she pushing you to talk to her differently?” Dr. K hasn’t been one to push Damien into anything that I’ve been aware of.
“No.”
“Then what’s bothering you?”
She shrugs her shoulders under my arms. “I guess it doesn’t feel official if we aren’t actually talking. I feel like I’m failing to do something right.”
I push back some of the hair sticking to her face, loving the way the silver shines in my fingers under the moonlight. “We all have to find our own ways to cope, to heal. Don’t think that yours is any less legitimate because of a standard you created in your mind.”
She shakes her head. “Why is that so easy for you? To just accept you are how you are?”
“Am I supposed to be anyone different?”
“No, it’s just, I feel like I’ve spent my whole life chasing the next mission and when I talk to her I feel like I should be chasing the next achievement. It’s just so different. I don’t always feel better after we talk, I have to work on things and learn to push through and it just feels like it’s all taking forever just because I don’t want to actually talk to her.”
“It’s a normal thing for healing to take time. Stop being so hard on yourself and look at how far you’ve come in just a few months. This time last year you never would have thought you could sleep for eight hours in a night and now you do almost five days a week. That’s fucking huge.”
“But…”
I press my finger to her lips. “No more buts.”
She sighs and scoots in even closer to me. “Would you stay out of this if you knew that it ended badly?”
“No. You’re mine to fight for.”
“What about the others?”
A voice from the chair in the corner of the room speaks up, startling both of us. “I may have given you your freedom, Princess. But just like you get to choose who stands by you, we get to choose who and what we put our lives on the line for. We will never let you go. You’re ours. Till the very end.” Alexi stands then gets into the bed beside me.
“Till the very end,” I echo and she nods.
“Till the very end.”
The finality in the words increases my anxiety for this trip, but I choose not to dwell on it. If this is where we all die, then so be it.
Chapter 52
The flight back to Russia was intense. I don’t think there was a moment where one of my guys wasn't touching me or where Arrow and Havoc weren’t fighting over who got to have Laney sleeping on their lap. It wasn’t until Damien slapped the both of them over the head that they got her situated between them without waking her.
Havoc keeps going through the notes on his phone, giving us bits of last-minute information that he thinks might help. I know he’s anxious about this and I don’t blame him. We know everything Adrik is capable of. He’s one of the few people on the planet we are both actually afraid of.
I toss and turn in the bed, going from being too hot to too cold, and then just downright frustrated. Eventually all of my men fall asleep, but I can’t seem to shake this feeling that we are missing something.
One more day. We only have one more day to prepare.
My mind starts to overthink everything. Is this something we should be doing? Should we just run instead? Is this worth risking all of them, their lives, just for my freedom?
I get out of bed and wander around the large mansion, eventually finding my way to the back kitchen. The lights are off except for some candles lit at the table. I make my way into the room, wondering who would have left candles burning unattended like that when a loud sound comes from the walk-in freezer.
The handle jiggles, and then a bang hits the door. I quickly run over to it, assuming the cook got himself caught or something. When I pull open the door I see Boris hovered over an intercom, a large tub of ice cream under his arm.
“Never mind,” he says.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“I needed something sweet and the door got jammed on me again. I had to have this damn intercom installed in here just so no one froze to death after the last incident.”
“Oh fuck, did someone die in there?” I ask, throwing a hand over my chest. I’m no stranger to death, but the idea of someone innocent freezing to death in there has my chest hurting.
