“I’ll wait until the doctor clears you for…exertion,” I agree.
“Smart girl,” the doctor remarks. “Keep legs closed until his wound can do the same.”
My cheeks flush in embarrassment of talking about our potential sex life in front of so many strangers, and possibly his ex.
I’m thankfully saved when Viktor opens the rear passenger door signaling that it’s time to go. Dominik swings his legs off the table and stands.
He reaches for his jacket, and I intercept it. “No,” I say. “I’ve got it.”
“All right,” he says. “You carry it.” He looks at me as if that small thing is more intimate than the week we agreed on. Or maybe everything is intimate after you’ve been covered in someone else’s blood because you wanted to stop the flow with your bare hands.
We load up into the SUV and head back to Dominik’s apartment. I sit closer to him than I should, my torn, jagged hem looking ridiculous across my thighs, the chemical smell of antiseptic riding shotgun with copper and clean linen.
“He’s not coming back from this,” I say, and I don’t know if I mean Archer’s choices or the way he stopped being a hero big brother in my head in an instant. My hands keep shaking long after the gunfire has stopped, as if the bullets are still landing somewhere my body remembers.
“He will,” Dominik says. “Fear is a good motivator.”
“I don’t mean physically.”
The brother I loved is now nothing more than a ghost wearing Archer’s face, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get the real one back.
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. We both stare out the glass at the blur of buildings and carry our separate, fragile griefs in the same box.
“Your week,” he says after a time, voice even.
I swallow. “Yes?”
“You can rescind rather than postpone if we find him sooner...”
It’s a generous offer for him to make. One I consider for a long moment. Still, I tell him, “No.”The word shocks me even as it leaves my mouth. “You don’t break your word. I won’t break mine,” I tell him. “I meant what I said, my week is postponed until the doctor clears you.” I should be terrified of what I’m promising. I’m not. Maybe that’s the worst part.
Silence hums for a few breaths. Dominik finally nods once. “Then we’ll postpone.” His mouth does that half-curve as he relaxes back into the seat like he just won the jackpot.
We pull under the apartment building where the other van and men all wait. They’re standing around, some smoking cigarettes, looking worried. When we all cram into the elevator, Dominik stands without help but lets my hand hover near his elbow. The doors close, the numbers climb, and I realize I’m still wearing the vest over my torn dress. I should care. I don’t. The only thing that feels important is the steady, stubborn heat of him beside me and the echoing emptiness where my brother’s courage should have been.
When the doors open, Dominik’s men spill out into the hallway ahead of us. I follow him into the penthouse. The guards may stink of nicotine, but they’re more alert than I’ve ever seen them before, eyes sharp, shoulders squared.
Viktor disappears down the hall to the study. Petrov peels off toward the kitchen, already on the phone with a perimeter detail. The door sighs shut. It’s just us and the thrum of the air conditioning and the end of a hellish day.
Dominik turns toward me with the kind of care you use when something in your body has been threaded together again. “Go get some sleep,” he says, not as an order, as a kindness. “Lock the door.”
“You’ll—”
“I’ll be here,” he says. “Where else would I be?”
I was going to ask if he would be okay, but now it seems like a stupid question. Without another word, I walk toward the guest room on legs that barely remember how and stop at the entrance of the hallway because the weight in my chest decides to speak without my permission as I turn back.
“I’m sorry,” I say, the syllables brittle with exhaustion and something too raw to look at.
“You did nothing wrong.”
“I insisted on coming today,” I remark. If I hadn’t been there, Dominik wouldn’t have been shot trying to protect me. I couldn’t stop thinking about that while the doctor was stitching him up. Each of those pokes and all the pain is my fault. “I thought I could trust him.”
Dominik inclines his head as if he understands. It’s a small motion that makes me want to stand closer to him and somehow hurts in a way that feels good.
“I’m sorry about your nose and hands too,” I blurt out. Pain ripples through me. Not from the ambush, but from realizing the only man who bled for me today wasn’t my brother.
I slip into the bedroom and turn the lock. The metal clicks. I sink to the floor and tears fall with me. All I’ve done is hurt Dominik while he’s tried to keep me safe, comfortable.
