I want to agree. To tell him he never should’ve left us…left me. But I was too young then to understand what drove him away. All I knew was that I had lost my brother.
Brother.
I test the word, roll it through my mind, but it doesn’t fit. It never has.
“You’re here now,” I say instead, curling my hand into his.
He gives me a lopsided smile and strokes his thumb across my knuckles. And suddenly, I’m hyperaware of everything. Every flicker of his expression, the warmth of his skin, the weight of his voice when he speaks…
Oh, God.
Maybe it’s the meds fogging my head.
“Val!”
Remi bursts into the room, rushing straight for me. I yank my hand from Maksim’s without thinking, like I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t. I don’t even know why the thought crosses my mind, or what it means. But it lingers before I can shove it away.
“Easy, Remi,” I laugh weakly as she grabs my shoulders in a hug my body’s nowhere near ready for.
“Fuck, I’m sorry.” Her blue eyes shine behind a wall of tears.
“Hey, I’m okay. Sore as hell, but okay. Stop crying, because then I’ll start crying.”
Too late. Fat tears spill down my cheeks, and I reach for her anyway, ignoring the pain just to hold her tighter. It could’ve been her in this bed, broken, bruised, or worse. The thought makes me shudder.
One by one, my family fills the room. When my mom and dad finally reach me, standing on either side of the bed with tears in their eyes, I lose it. The dam breaks, and I sob.
“Papi…I’m sorry,” I choke out when he pulls me close. “I-I should have?—”
“You’re okay,” he murmurs, his voice thick. “That’s all that matters.”
I break against his shoulder, the sound of my cries muffled by his shirt. And just like that, I’m his little girl again. Like when I scraped my knee falling off my bike and he carried me all the way home, or when I slipped off the balance beam, sprained my ankle, and he was the first to reach me.
He’s always been my safe place. My anchor. My everything.
In his arms, nothing can touch me.
And I know that’s true, not just with him, but with all of them.
When I blink through my tears, I find him. Maksim is standing in the far corner, apart from the rest. No smile or tears. Just those eyes fixed on me.
Something shifts then, a fracture I can’t name, only feel.
And somehow, even broken and aching, I feel more whole now than I did this morning.
Four
MAKSIM
Ifold the last of my laundry and slam the drawer shut. Another sleepless night, another mindless task to keep my hands moving while my head refuses to quiet down. But it doesn’t matter how hard I try to stay busy, or how many laps I make across this condo—hell, not even the music shaking the walls drowns her out. My thoughts always crawl back to Valentina.
Guilt sits heavy on my chest. What are the odds that out of every goddamn person in this city,mydriver is the one who plows into the one person who actually means something to me?
And if she does mean that much, then why the fuck haven’t I called her back? Why haven’t I gone to see her in the five days she’s been home?
Things are different now. Even with my past, when we were kids, the world looked softer once Mom took me in. People looked different through that lens. Valentina was someone else to me back then. Someone simpler, and someone I could box neatly into family.
But she isn’t that girl anymore. And she sure as hell isn’t simple.
