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“Mmm hmm. I had to be since he gave me the world’s best sandwich for lunch.”
I looked back at the bed from the closet. “From Vinny’s?”
She nodded her head. Vinny’s was a great little hole in the wall restaurant that we discovered somewhat by accident. Vinny’s father who started the restaurant was having health problems. The family was trying to work as much as possible to come up with the money to pay for his treatments, but they fell short. Vinny came to me, explained the situation, and asked me for a loan. He had set out generous terms for paying me back. He had even brought lunch for everyone when he met with me. After one of his sandwiches, I covered all the medical bills for his father. I just asked that he pay me back in sandwiches, to which he readily agreed.
“Then we watched movies and Misha fell asleep on the couch. I watched the storm for a while, then got up and started playing. You know the rest,” she said, still sounding shy about her playing.
I walked out from the closet, my shirt in my hand. She was sitting on the bed, knees pulled up to her chest, her chin resting on her knee. Every time I saw her, I felt this invisible pull toward her. Like I had to be near her. Like I had to touch her. I pulled my shirt over my head as I walked to the bed.
She looked at me matter-of-factly and said, “I need to go back to my apartment. I need more clothes.”
“I can buy you whatever you like,” I said, sitting beside her.
“I have clothes. They’re just not here. There’s no need to buy me new clothes,” she said, rather short.
I smiled, loving this side of her. “I know, Sephie. Anthony is leaving tomorrow. I promise you will have all your stuff by the end of the week. If you need anything before then, I can send someone to buy it for you.”
She hugged her knees tighter to her chest. She nodded slightly, not saying anything. I knew she wasn’t happy with my answer, but I couldn’t let her go back to her apartment. She also didn’t know that we had already gotten all her things out of her apartment earlier this evening. If she went back to her apartment now, it would ruin the surprise.
I kissed her forehead. “Come, this talk of Vinny’s has me hungry.”
She silently got up and followed me out of the bedroom. Before we walked down the stairs, I stopped and turned toward her. I took both of her hands in mine, kissing each of them, “I won’t keep you here forever. Just until Anthony is gone, and the threat has passed.” I raised my pinky between us, “Pinky swear.”
She smiled and wrapped her pinky around mine.
After dinner, she had asked if we could take a walk as the sun hadn’t set completely yet. We walked around the property in relative silence, followed by a guard at a distance. She seemed lost in her thoughts. I was honestly impressed that she was comfortable with so much silence. I would steal glances at her regularly, watching her as she took in everything around her. The way the fading light of the day made her hair look like actual fire, with its varying shades of red and orange. The evening sun also made the brown in her eyes more prominent, making her eyes almost match her hair at the right angle.
She caught me staring at her and walked closer to me, silently grabbing my hand. We walked the rest of the way to the house in silence, hand-in-hand.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked once we got to the bedroom. She stopped, like she was thinking about it, but shook her head no. “You know you can say anything to me, anytime. I want to help.” She gave me a small smile. She walked toward me and gave me a quick kiss.
“I just want to go to bed right now. It’ll be better in the morning.”
I woke up sometime later to an empty bed. I had fallen asleep with Sephie in my arms, but now she was gone. I sat up to see if the bathroom light was on, but the room was dark. The bedroom door was slightly ajar. I got out of bed to see if she had ventured downstairs. The bedroom that she had stayed in the first night was open and I could feel the cool breeze from the balcony coming into the hallway. I quietly walked to the balcony, finding her sitting on one of the chairs. She was hugging her knees to her chest, with her head buried in her arms. I could hear her softly sobbing. My heart felt like it had just been punched at the sight of seeing her cry. I wanted to make it stop.
I said her name quietly, so I wouldn’t scare her. Kneeling in front of her, I rubbed her leg lightly. “What’s wrong, solnishko?”
She sucked in a breath but didn’t raise her head to look at me. She stayed silent.
“Sephie. Talk to me. Please.”
She raised her head enough that I could see her teary eyes. I wiped the tears from her eyes with my thumb. I looked at her, full of concern. She looked at me for so long that I thought she wasn’t going to say anything.
“Everything. Everything caught up to me at once. I miss my mom. I’ve had to relive living with my uncle. The fucked-up events with Anthony. Being here and not being able to leave. All of it.”
I found myself flinching at the last part. Did she want to leave me? Was she tired of me already? My mind was racing. How would I live without her now? It’s only been a few days, but I knew for sure that I never wanted to be without her for the rest of my life.
I heard a small laugh. She reached down and touched my face. “I don’t want to leave you, Adrik.”
I exhaled, clearly relieved. She stretched her legs down and pulled me to her. She was upset and yet, she was once again consoling me instead. I sat up again, asking, “What can I do? I promise you’ll be able to leave here after tomorrow. Anthony is supposed to be gone today, but I want to give it one more day to be safe. And then there’s the matter of your surprise at the end of the week. What about your uncle? Do you want me to have him killed? Say the word and he’s a dead man.”
She laughed, but I could tell she was seriously considering it. “He’s probably fried so many brain cells that he doesn’t even remember who I am. I don’t think he’s anything to worry about. I just don’t like having to relive it when someone new finds out.” She leaned her head back against the chair and closed her eyes.
“Sephie, I don’t know why you had to go through all of that. But it made you into the woman that I’m falling in love with today, so as weird as it sounds to say, I’m glad for it all. You’ve come into my life and made everything brighter. You light up the room when you walk in. You have five trained killers downstairs fighting over who gets to stay with you. You notice the slightest things about people. What they need, what they like, what they need to hear. You share your light with everyone and never ask for anything in return. You have my heart, Persephone. So as insane as I sound saying it, the road you’ve been forced to travel has led you here and I will spend every day of my life from this point on trying to show you how grateful I am that that road brought you to me.”
She had lifted her head when I started talking and was looking at me. A few stray tears fell from her eyes. I wiped them as she wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “I don’t know how I got so lucky,” she whispered.
“It’s me who is the lucky one here, solnishko.”
