"Okay."
"Will you stay in the room with me? Not in the bed. Just…in the room. Can you do that?"
"Yeah." His voice was rough. "I can do that."
He helped me back to the bed and I laid down. He sat in the chair where he'd been in when I'd woken up, watching over me even though he had to be exhausted.
I pulled the blanket up to my chin and carefully turned on my side, away from him, and stared into the darkness that was always there.
And in the silence, in the space between his breathing and mine, I held the truth I couldn't say.
I was the leak, Milo.
I was always the leak.
The words stayed locked inside me. Sealed tight. Held in the vault that even an hour of torture couldn't crack. I'd held this secret while he beat me. I'd held it while Viktor watched. I'd held it through the needle and the darkness and the three seconds where I was certain I was dead.
I could hold it a little longer.
I closed my eyes. It changed nothing. It never did.
But somewhere in the dark, in a cabin in the middle of South Dakota that smelled like pine and medicine and the man who loved me enough to break me, I let myself fall asleep to the sound of his breathing.
Ragged. Uneven. Wrecked.
Mine.
CHAPTER 24
MILO
For the next few days, she slept fitfully off and on throughout the day as the last of the drugs left her system, living on nothing but coffee and Tylenol and whatever she could suck through a straw. But tonight, I finally got her to eat at dinner. Just some stew that came out of a can and a slice of bread and butter, but it was something and hearty enough to help her body heal.
She finally fell into a deep sleep around ten, with a little help from me added into her drink to make sure she stayed that way for awhile.
I sat in the chair beside the bed and watched her breathe. Counted the inhales and exhales. Measured the spaces between. Listened for any irregularity, any hitch or gurgling, any sign that something inside her had broken in a way the doctor couldn't see.
Her breathing was steady. Slow and deep. The kind of sleep that comes after the body has been pushed past its limit and finally collapses into something between peace and exhaustion.
I knew the feeling well, and I wished I could join her.
She'd turned on her side again, away from me, the blanket pulled up to her chin. Even in sleep, she'd angled herself away so her body was protecting itself from me even while unconscious.
I sat there for another hour, trying to ignore the ache in my chest. Making sure she was under. Making sure the sleep was real and not the shallow, fitful kind where a creaking floorboard or a closing door would pull her back to the surface.
Then I slowly stood, shifting my weight off the chair in increments so the frame wouldn't groan.
At the back door, I stopped and looked back at her.
The bruises on her face had darkened. Even in the dim light from the kitchen, I could see the swollen ridge of her cheekbone, the split above her eyebrow held together with butterfly bandages, the shadow along her jaw where my fist had connected hard enough to rattle her teeth. Her hands were tucked under her chin, fingers curled, like she was holding something invisible against her chest.
My jaw ached. I unclenched it. Clenched it again.
She was safe. The cabin was remote, the locks were solid, and the doctor was twenty minutes away if anything went wrong. I'd left water, food, and a burner phone on the nightstand, right where her hand would find it, just in case she woke up before I got back.
I pulled the door shut behind me and walked to the car in the dark. The South Dakota night sky was cold and black and enormous, with stars everywhere. No light pollution. The kind of sky that made you feel like the only person left on the planet.No sound except the wind whistling through the pines and the crunch of my boots on frozen dirt.
I got in the car.
