A muscle jumps in his cheek. “Do not minimize this.”
I should be annoyed. Instead, absurdly, I feel like crying.
Because he is here. Because he found me. Because I thought I was alone and then suddenly I wasn’t.
My knees wobble.
He catches me instantly. “That’s it,” he says, voice dropping again, all command and care now. “I’ve got you.”
The words break something open in me.
I make a sound I absolutely did not mean to make and fold into him, shaking, one hand clutching his coat, the other going instinctively over my belly.
His arms close around me at once.
Behind him, the man on the ground groans and tries to move. Aleksei doesn’t even turn. He just says, cold and flat, “Try it.”
The man goes still.
I bury my face against Aleksei’s chest because I do not need to see whatever expression made that happen.
He lowers his mouth to my hairline. “Did he touch your stomach?” The question is so controlled it scares me.
“No,” I whisper. “No.”
He closes his eyes for one brief second. Relief, sharp and private.
Then he pulls back enough to look at me again. “Can you walk?”
I nod.
He clearly doesn’t believe me, and scoops me up anyway.
“Aleksei—”
“No.”
“That is not a complete sentence.”
“It is tonight.”
Even now. Even carrying me with one arm under my knees and the other braced hard around my back, he still sounds like himself. Still sounds infuriatingly, solidly Aleksei.
I should tell him to put me down. I do not.
My head rests against his shoulder as he turns toward my building. Then I remember the man behind us. “He?—”
“Will be dealt with.”
I look at his face. He means it.
I should probably be more disturbed by that. Right now, all I can manage is relief.
He pauses at the building entrance, looks down at the shattered eggs and spilled groceries on the sidewalk, then at me. “You live like this?”
I let out a shaky laugh that hurts my head. “That’s your takeaway?”
“No,” he says. “My takeaway is that you’re never coming home alone again.”
