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She flinches at the sound of my voice. Another sob bursts through her lips. “That’s just it,” she exclaims. “I don’t hate you.”
Then, to my utter amazement, she crawls right into my lap.
The hollowness in my gut dissipates instantly. I start to feel something. Happiness? Relief? Who the fuck knows? They don’t make names for this. They don’t make neat little stories with happy endings. Everything here is torn up and fucked up and skewed wrong from the start.
I just know that this part of it feels right.
Wrapping my arms around her, I pull her as close as I can while she buries her face in my shoulder. I rock her back and forth until her breathing drifts back to normal.
Then she pulls her head back and looks at me, her fingers grazing up and down my jaw. The strokes are soft, tender. “If I didn’t know the whole story, it would be so easy to hate you,” she says softly, like she’s talking to herself. “But now, I do know the whole story. Yes, you took something precious from me. But he took something precious from you first. And you had the power to strike back.” Another tear falls. I can feel the weight of each one. “Who’s to say I wouldn’t have done the same thing in your place?”
“You wouldn’t have,” I say confidently. “You’re far too good. Far too pure.”
She frowns. “No one is that good or that pure. You’re not a saint, Dmitri. And neither am I.” She closes her eyes for a moment. “But despite that, I’ll be honest: I don’t know where I fit into your world.”
“At my side,” I whisper to her immediately. “Always.”
Her eyes flutter open. “It’s a beautiful thought…”
“But you’re not sure?”
“How can I be?”
It’s a fair question. I nod and she leans her head back down against my chest. Whatever this is between us, it doesn’t feel resolved yet. But it doesn’t feel quite so unresolved either. I suppose you could say it’s a start.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
22
WREN
I slink down the corridor in the direction of Dmitri’s voice.
He sounds pissed, but not in a heads-are-gonna-fly, top-secret-Bratva-business kinda way. More like in a we-need-to-cinch-this-contract-or-lose-to-a-competitor kinda way. Very corporate. Weirdly, I find myself drawn to the call as much as to his voice.
It’s not that I’m bored, necessarily. It’s more that I miss the liveliness of the workplace.
I miss seeing the same faces every day and swapping stories in the lunchroom. I miss rushing to meet deadlines and worrying about missing notes during important board meetings. I miss the hustle and bustle of the grind.
I miss waking up each day and having a purpose.
Other than the purpose of growing a human being, of course.
The door to his office room is conspicuously open. I feel like that’s a new change, too. A literal open-door policy that’s meant to be reassuring to me, I think. Maybe it signifies the shift that’s taken place ever since our conversation two nights ago.
Not that anything major has happened since then. But a sense of calm has settled between us. It’s easier to be together. Easier to compartmentalize the past from the present.
Which is why there’s no guilt or discomfort attached to me actively seeking him out, for no particular reason other than I want to see him; I want to be near him.
And yeah, I may be just a little bit bored.
He’s growling at someone on the phone, his back angled towards the door as he glares at the skyline sprawled out at his feet. “For fuck’s sake, this is the third mockup you’ve shown the client. If she’s not happy, then you’re doing your fucking job wrong, Mitchell.”
“Mitchell from the design team?”
Dmitri’s gaze lobs over to me and he nods. He doesn’t seem annoyed to have me in his space, though. In fact, he waves me over and keeps talking. “Yes, I’m looking at the mockup right now. Have you talked to her?”
