“Are you okay?” I ask, my thumb brushing over the reddened spot on her chin.
“I said I’m fine. You know, maybe this was a bad idea?—”
Valentina bends to reach for her crutches, but I scoop her up before she can touch them, carrying her straight into the kitchen. She doesn’t protest, but I feel her eyes on me the whole way.
“Yeah, you going out and getting trampled was a terrible fucking idea.”
She rolls her eyes, lips forming that slight pout that deepens the dimples in her cheeks. And I can’t help the laugh that slips out. Some things never change. She used to wear that same expression whenever she’d yell at me as a kid.
“There you are,” she says, leaning away from me when I set her down on the island. “And here I thought the broody asshole was gone for good.”
“Bold assumption.”
She rolls her eyes again, then spots the bowl I left on the counter. Her expression shifts.
Fuck. Busted.
“Maksim Belov,” she says slowly, amusement threading through her voice. “Were you eating… Fruit Loops?”
I shrug, attempting to play it off. “I told you it wasn’t half-bad.”
Her smile is wide now. She’s thoroughly enjoying this. “So you rushed out to buymycereal?”
“I didn’trushanywhere. I was already out, saw it, and thought of you. I didn’t know you owned the rights.”
“You thought of me?”
Denying she’s been on my mind far too much lately is pointless. Admitting it out loud, though, is another story. I ignore her and moisten a paper towel, dabbing it against her chin. Valentina’s eyes burn into me, watching as I carefully clean her wound. In that moment, I realize what I’m doing and pause, surprised by my own actions, by the instinct I didn’t know I had to care for her this way.
“You said you were at a race?” I ask, pressing the small gash one last time before pulling back.
“Yeah…It’s something Remi and I do. Sometimes.”
Something in her eyes lights up at the mention, but she quickly looks away, as if there’s more she wants to say but can’t or won’t. The question hangs on my tongue, but maybe it’s better this way. Distance.
Before I can stop myself, I pluck a blade of grass from her hair. Like, I can’t keep my goddamn hands to myself when it comes to her.
“Why’d you come here?” I ask, harsher than I ever intended, when it comes to her.
“Do you…want me to leave?” There’s vulnerability in her voice, and it twists something inside me. I shake my head.
“You’re good. I don’t sleep anyway.” The confession slips out, wiping her smile almost instantly. Not one to hold back, I expect her to ask why, but instead she surprises me, her eyes peering around my shoulder.
“Can I have some?” My confusion lasts only a second before I turn and see my forgotten bowl of cereal.
I nod and start to walk past her, intending to grab a clean dish from the cabinet, but she catches my arm.
“No. Yours.”
“It’s probably soggy to all hell.”
“Loyal servitude, Maksim Belov. Wasn’t that the agreement? I ask, you oblige. It’s the price you pay for almost killing me.”
I let out a low chuckle, but even through the humor, my chest tightens as flashes of her lying unconscious in the street hit me all over again.
And once again, I find myself unable to refuse her. I can’t explain this pull, the way she bends my restraint. Is it guilt? Some leftover sense of responsibility from when we were kids? Or something more dangerous?
I’ve been running from those thoughts for the last two weeks.
