His face is covered in stubble. There are dark circles under his eyes. What have I done to this man?
“Nina? You’re back?” he croaks in the morning when I hand him a glass of water and aspirin.
“I’ve been back for a while. I think you might have been too drunk to notice when we arrived last night.”
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” he rasps as I hand him a glass of water. “I feel like death.”
“Half a bottle of whiskey’ll do that to you.”
“Especially when it’s the first drop of alcohol in five years.” He winces when I open the curtains.
Squinting at the window, he turns back to me, his face shiftinginto something like amazement. “You’re really here.”
I hold my hands out and gesture at him. “I didn’t think you’d…”
“Stop functioning completely? Start abusing substances?”
“Any of that, Art. I had decided you wouldn’t really care if we left, with everything else going on. I guess I was wrong.” I perch on the edge of the bed and play with the fringe on the comforter.
“Wrong? You were out of the ballpark, Nenoka.” He slams back the glass of water and aspirin.
“Was it this bad last time that I left?”
Art gives a mirthful laugh, his eyes flashing. He looks broken. “It was so bad that I don’t remember parts of it. Minus the alcohol, minus any kind of distraction or coping mechanism. This time, I think I expected it. Last time, there was no warning sign, you were just gone.”
“You said that last night… that you stopped drinking for me.”
He heaves a sigh. “I stopped drinking. Just in case you came back, Nenoka. I liked to think that you’d be impressed, when you found out. I guess the fact that I was already drunk when I told you ruined the effect of that one.”
I rest my head on his shoulder, looking up at him. “No. I liked it, anyway.”
He strokes my back, then takes my hand, looking at the rings I’m still wearing.
“You’re still wearing your ring. What are you about to say, Nenoka?”
I take a deep breath. “Art. I came back because I think we can make this work. But I need you to fucking listen to me, okay?”
Art’s throat bobs. He nods his head and looks down at me, his uneven eyes blazing into mine. “Whatever you want to say, you can say it. I can take it.”
“I’m deeply in love with you, Artyom Petrov. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to love anyone else.”
Art starts to speak, a smile breaking across his face for the first time all day, but I shut him up with a raised hand.
“But.”
“But?” He tilts his head, his golden curls falling to the side, the light fading from his eyes.
“But none of that fucking matters, Art, unless you can be open with me. Unless you can let me and Ava be a part of your life — your real life, your family, not just the parts that you want to show us. Unless you can be honest with me about the danger and the risks and everything else that’s going through that unfairly handsome head of yours, I can’t do this.”
“I know I should have told you more, Nenoka. I was just so damn scared that if I did, that if I let you see the truth, you’d leave me. You’d see that this wasn’t a family, it was a toxic cesspit.”
“Well, I don’t care if you come from a toxic cesspit. As long as you know that we need to be better than that, for Ava.”
“I’ll be honest with you, Nina. You can know whatever you want to know. On one condition.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Okay?”
“Never leave me like that again.”
