I open the door quietly.
She’s lying in bed, but she’s not sleeping. She’s staring at the ceiling, one hand resting on her stomach. The moonlight streaming through the window catches in her hair, turning it nearly red and my mouth grows dry.
She turns her head when I enter, and even in the dim light, I can see the exhaustion in her face along with the bruises forming on her shoulder where the seatbelt caught her. My eyes linger on the small cut on her forehead that Dr. Petrov bandaged.
She could have died yesterday. The thought steals my breath.
Your fault, your fault, your fault, my brain hisses at me.
I ignore it.
“Can’t sleep?” I ask quietly, moving into the room.
“No,” she says hoarsely. “Every time I close my eyes, I see it. The explosion. The flames. I hear the sound of metal twisting.” She swallows hard. “Your men. The ones in the second decoy car. Did they?—”
“They didn’t suffer,” I lie. I have no idea if that’s true, but she doesn’t need that image in her head. “It was instant.”
She nods, but I see tears sliding down her temples. “They had families? The guards?”
“Yes.” I sit on the edge of the bed, maintaining distance even though everything in me wants to reach for her. “I’ll take care of their families. They’ll want for nothing.”
“Of course you will.” She says it with such certainty, that it makes emotion well in my throat and I clear it before continuing.
“You should rest,” I say, even though I’m not leaving. “Dr. Petrov said you need to?—”
“I don’t want to rest, Dimitri.” She turns to look at me fully, and there’s something in her gaze that makes my breath catch. “Every time I try to sleep, I see it happening again. I feel the car flipping. I hear you shouting my name.” Her voice drops to barely above a whisper. “I keep thinking about what if you hadn’t swerved. What if we’d been in that other car. What if?—”
“We weren’t.” I don’t mean to move closer, but suddenly my hand is reaching out to brush tears from her cheek before I can stop myself. “We’re alive. We’re here. That’s what matters.”
Her breath hitches at the touch, and I should pull back, but her skin is warm and soft beneath my fingers and I can’t make myself let go.
“Someone wants us dead.” She says it matter-of-factly, like she’s stating the weather. “They’re not going to stop, are they?”
“No.” There’s no point in lying about this. “They won’t stop until they succeed or we stop them.”
She sighs. “So what do we do?”
The question hangs in the air between us.We. Not you. Not what will you do to protect me.We.
My heart clenched at that single word.
“We find them,” I say quietly. “And we end this.”
She studies my face in the moonlight, her eyes tracking over the bruises, the bandage, the evidence of how close I came to dying beside her. Then, slowly, her hand moves across the space between us.
An offering. A choice.
I take it, my fingers lacing through hers before I can think better of it. Her hand is small and delicate in mine, but her grip is strong. Certain.
“I’m scared,” she whispers.
“I know.” My thumb traces slow circles on the back of her hand, continuing what I did yesterday. I have no right to do this but I can’t make myself stop.
We sit in silence for a moment, existing in this space where the rules don’t seem to apply and we’re just two people who almost died and are trying to make sense of still being alive.
“Yesterday,” she says softly. “In the car. That was…”
She doesn’t finish the sentence, and I’m grateful because I don’t know how to finish it either. Nice? Easy? Fucked up? All of the above?
