"Am I?" She interrupts me with a bitter laugh. "Then tell me what this is really about. Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you've just kidnapped a pregnant woman and brought her to your apartment against her will. How is that different from what they did to me?"
“Because I’m trying to keep you safe!” I shake my head. "I know you're strong. I know you survived things that would have broken most people. But right now you need help. And all you’re trying to do is get rid of my child.” I close the distance between us, and she backs up until she hits the window. "You're alone and scared, and you need someone to take care of you."
She narrows her eyes at me. "I can take care of myself."
"Can you?" I gesture toward her. "You're living in a motel that charges by the week. You were living off chips and Twinkies until I started leaving you food. You can barely take care of yourself now, and you think you can take care of a baby?"
She slaps me.
The sting resonates before my mind catches up to what just happened. I stare at her, and there are two blazing spots of red on her pale cheeks, her eyes vicious with fury.
"I hate you," she says, and her voice is shaking. "I hate you so much."
I draw in a deep breath. “I know. But right now, all that matters is that you’re safe.”
17
SVETLANA
Ican’t believe this is happening. "Safe." I laugh in his face, the way I always wished I could laugh at Iosef and his men without consequence, and it sounds unhinged even to my own ears. "You think this is safe? You think I feel safe with you?"
"Safer than you were in that hotel room with someone following you,” Kazimir snaps back.
"At least I had a choice!"
"A choice to do what?" He leans in, and I force myself not to flinch. "To keep living in that shithole? Keep pretending you're fine when you were barely surviving? To ignore the fact that someone was watching you, tracking you, waiting for the right moment to?—"
"To what?" I snap. "To do what you just did? Congratulations, Kazimir. You got there first."
His eyes flash angrily. "That's not fair."
"Fair?" The word comes out sharp enough to cut. "You want to talk about fair? You've been watching me. Stalking me. Leaving things outside my door like some kind of—of?—"
"Like someone who gives a shit whether you live or die."
"You don't get to decide that for me!" My voice cracks, and I hate it, hate the way it betrays how close I am to breaking. "You don't get to decide what I need or where I should be or—" My breath comes out shakily. “You gave up that right when you abandoned me the first time.”
"Someone has to." He's so close to me, close enough that I can feel the heat of his skin and smell his cologne and his warm musk, a scent that makes my body respond even as my mind screams at me to run. "Because you're not taking care of yourself. You're not eating enough, you're not sleeping, you're living in a place that's barely fit for?—"
I shove at his chest, but he doesn't move. "I'm doing the best I can with what I have. Which is nothing, in case you haven't noticed. No money, no job, no?—"
"You have me."
The words hang in the air between us. "I don't want you," I whisper, but my voice wavers.
Kazimir’s eyes never leave mine. "Liar."
"I don't want this." I gesture at the apartment, at him. "I don't want to be here. I don't want this baby!”
“You don’t get to decide that without me. It’smychild, too,” he snaps, and I see red. All I want is to hurt him right now, to remind him that I’mnothis, that he gave up any right he ever had to mean anything to me when he let Ilya send me out into the cold.
"It might not even be yours," I hiss, cruel and sharp. Words that are meant to hurt.
Kazimir’s expression doesn't change. "And?”
"The baby." I force myself to hold his gaze, to not look away. "It might not be yours."
His jaw tightens, and I see him suck on the side of his teeth. “What you told me in the safe house, about Iosef and?—”
