“It’s broken,” she said while I fiddled with the knob.
I certainly wasn’t an expert on heaters, but I didn’t think it was even connected to anything. This close to the window, I could feel the draft of wind coming to greet me.
Alisa looked so small, lying down on the floor. It shook something loose inside me. A feeling so alarming that my self preservation urged me to leave this house, and not look back.
Instead, I sighed and decided to heat up some water on the stove and make tea. Anything to stop the shivers racking her body. Except when I turned on a burner… It didn’t ignite.
Not asingleburner worked.
“Does anything work in this fucking place?”
A smile cracked across her face, and then a small laugh.
“No,” she said, and her laugh melted into hysterical hiccuping laughter.
I watched her laugh on the rotting floor, in this freezing apartment. Her body shuddered as she laughed, and I had my doubts she’d survive the night here. With a sigh, I leaned down and picked her up.
The laughter stopped, and she frowned up at me.
“You’re not staying here,” I said, already hauling her towards my car.
Chapter thirty-nine
Dmitri
Alisa whimpered half-hearted protests on the way to my apartment. Something about how her landlord would handle it. I seriously doubtedthat. Part of me was tempted to track down the man for allowing her place to fall into that state.
When she stepped into my toasty apartment and exhaled a slow sigh of relief, something unfurled inside my chest.
There was something so right about the way she felt inside my apartment. Like something had been missing before.
I hated it, and ignored it.
“I’ll make dinner. Unlike you, I have a stove that actually works,” I said, heading towards my kitchen island.
Alisa crashed down onto my oversized sofa, a contented moan escaping her lips. Her eyes zipped around the room, a small look of wonder on her face.
“Lord knows, a kitchen this nice would be wasted on me with my cooking skills,” she muttered to herself. Alisa’s expression turned defensive when she noted my expression. “What?”
“You can’t cook….” I said, thinking again of how she reminded me of a baby deer. The way she was curling into the cushions on my sofa certainly added to the image.
At least she was feeling better, the color had returned to her skin. My jaw tightened as I thought back to how small and forlorn she’d looked on the floor of her apartment.
“There’s so much you don’t know,” I said with a slow shake of my head.
Her face turned bright red. If she didn’t have drugs in her system, I would’ve flipped her onto her stomach and given her a real reason to blush.
I pulled some vegetables out of the freezer, and the utensils to go along with it.
“I’d say there might be hope for you in the kitchen, but I’ve seen how terrible you are with a knife,” I said, flipping the knife in my hand.
“I’m not that bad.”
Maybe she’d be fine if she was taking someone by surprise, but she’d been far too easy to disarm when she’d come at me two years ago. At the time, I’d found it adorable, but now unease spread through my system. If someone had found her tonight, weak and barely able to hold her head up…
“Don’t lie. I’ve fought you before. You’re shit at hand-to-hand and with a knife.”
Her expression tightened, and it was like watching a brick wall build between her and the outside world. Like she’d just remembered who I was, and that she shouldn’t be so unguarded with me.
