I nod. “Yeah. We should. I just don’t know if I can walk.”
“I’ve got you.”
Before I can protest, Bastian scoops me up like I weigh nothing—which, given the small human inside me, is objectively untrue. One arm hooks under my knees, the other bands around my back, and suddenly, I’m airborne.
“Icanwalk,” I mumble against his chest. “It was a figure of speech.”
But even I don’t believe what I’m saying. My legs feel like overcooked linguine.
“Sure you could.” He doesn’t break stride. “And I could let you try. But then we’d be here all day, and I’d rather not explain to the cops why there’s a half-naked pregnant woman crawling across a sidewalk in suburban Illinois.” He deposits me back in the passenger seat gently, then reaches across me to buckle my seatbelt. “Comfortable?”
“Physically? Yes. Emotionally? Not even a little bit.”
He snorts, closes the door, and rounds the hood to climb back behind the wheel.
The whole drive back, Bastian’s hand doesn’t leave my thigh. Neither of us speaks. There’s nothing left to say that our bodies haven’t already said for us.
When we pull up to the safe house, Bastian cuts the engine but doesn’t move. “I need you to know something,” he rasps. “What happened back there, what I did—I’d do it a thousand times over. A million.”
I lick my chapped lips. “I know.”
“Do you?” He turns to face me, and even though I can’t see his expression, I can feel the intensity radiating off him like heat from a bonfire. “Because I need you to understand, Eliana, that there is no line I won’t cross for you. No version of myself I won’t become. And I’m not sorry for that. Ican’tbe sorry for that.”
“I’m not asking you to be sorry,” I whisper. “I know what you are, and I know what I’m becoming. I just—” I let that sentence hang unfinished as my chin sags down to my chest. My eyelids are headed south, too, as my whole body has apparently decided to shut down for renovations in the wake of this morning’s mayhem. “I just need time. That’s all. A lot is changing, and I need time to understand what it all means.”
Bastian exhales a long, shuddering breath. Then he’s out of the car, around to my side, and scooping me up again. This time, I don’t bother protesting.
He carries me inside the back way, his body angled to shield me from the others’ view. I hear Yasmin’s voice rise in alarm from somewhere deeper in the house—“What the fuck happened? Isthatblood?!”—but Bastian keeps taking me down the hall and into the bathroom before anyone can intercept us.
“Take a shower,” he says. “I’ll find you something to wear.”
The door clicks shut behind him.
I turn on the water as hot as it will go and step under the spray. I’m still wearing the shredded paper gown. It disintegrates and slides off in soggy pieces that pool around the drain like shed snakeskin.
I scrub myself three, four times with Yasmin’s body wash, but even still, I could swear there’s a pungent trace of blood stuck beneath the eucalyptus. “Who am I becoming?” I ask nobody as I sink down to the tile floor and let the spray beat against my shoulders.
I think about the man in that clinic. I don’t know his name and I never will. But I know what he intended to do, and I know what Bastian did to stop him, and I know that somewhere between those two facts lives a truth I’m going to have to make peace with.
I press my forehead to my knees and let the water wash away everything it can reach.
Whatever’s left, I’ll carry.
36
ELIANA
eighty-six /?ate 'siks/: verb
1: to remove an item from availability; to cancel, eliminate, or refuse to serve.
2: what he does to your mattress, your options, and your will to resist.
The shower helps. A bit. It knocks me out, if nothing else. By the time I emerge wrapped in one of Zeke’s oversized hoodies and a pair of Yasmin’s sweatpants that barely stretch over my belly, I’m asleep on my feet.
But there are still a few obstacles between me and the sweet embrace of the duvet. I come out wearily braced for the inquisition that Yasmin and Zeke are no doubt going to launch—but to my surprise, the house is empty. Frowning, I go check my phone and see a voice memo from Yas.
“Hey, love. We went out to get groceries. Be back in a little while. Kisses!”
