He hesitates, like he's checking whether it's allowed. “It's just that the piano is such a romantic instrument.”
I raise an eyebrow. “And I'm not a romantic?”
He flushes. “That isn't what I meant. Is it okay if I?—”
“Yes.” I cut him off.
That seems to catch him off guard. Jonah crosses the room slowly and lifts the lid. He presses a key. “It's tuned?”
“Of course it is.”
He turns back to it, unsure.
“You don't play?”
“No.”
I don't know why that surprises me, but it does.
He presses another key. “My mom did.” Another key. “Before she got sick.” Another key. “And then she died.”
I don't respond. I don't know what response he expects to that. I know what it's like to lose a mother. He plays a few more notes, softer this time. I watch his hands, the way his fingers pause between keys.
They hover over the keys. “I've always wanted to have a piano. To keep her close. But she's gone, and if I don't pay attention I'll soon be gone too.”
He stops and looks back at me. “Maybe that should terrify me, but it doesn't. I've always believed she's somewhere up there, waiting.”
I watch his fingers curl into a fist on the lid. The knuckles go pale. He says it like it's simple, but the belief sits in the room like a ghost. It's a softness I don't know how to touch, a kind of open that makes my hands drift toward the daggers on the wall. He's reaching for heaven, but he's stuck here in the dark with me. For the first time, I want to be the kind of man who can keep him.
“I won't let them kill you, Jonah.”
He dips his head, blond hair falling forward, then lets the lid drop with a heavy thunk. “Let me take a look at your injuries.”
Later, when he curls back into me, I think about the piano again. About his dead mother. About the piece of shit father who sold him to our family. I'm getting him out of here. Then I'll take this house apart from the inside. I think of Sergei in my father's chair. I think of the look he gave me in the basement.
He made a mistake letting me live long enough to remember who I am. He'll pay for it. Then I'll find the man who sold Jonah, and I'll make sure Jonah never has to remember his name again.
I lower my mouth to Jonah's hair.Mine. And I don't lose what I claim.
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
JONAH
Ever since Itouched the piano, Viktor lets me play it whenever I want. The music book lies open on the stand, the pages bent at the corners from years of use. I keep playing because the music is the only thing that still sounds like the person I was before I entered this house. Every note is a thin thread connecting me back to a life that feels more like a dream every day.
Mom never got me into real piano lessons, but she made me take music theory. She dragged me every week until I could read a score whether I wanted to or not. I never thought those hours would matter.
The notes fill the room as I look out at the snow. My fingers move slow, leaning on memory more than skill. I wonder if I'm losing my mind. A few weeks ago, I was worried about my rent and my shifts at the hospital. Now, I'm watching a man practice the art of murder, and I’m not even trying to look away. I’m tracking the ripple of muscle in his back like it’s the only thing that matters in the world.
He has been working with his dagger for hours. He rolls it from palm to blade and back again without looking at it. Every few seconds his wrist snaps and the knife hits the board on thewall in the same spot. He is practicing for a murder I know is coming.
Thunk.
What is my body doing to me? I can feel the heat radiating from him even across the room, a magnetic pull that makes my skin hum. It’s not just desire. It’s the terrifying realization that I’ve stopped seeing him as a patient or a captor. He’s become the gravity I’ve started to orbit, and I don’t know how to stop the fall.
Thunk.
