“Absolutely not!” I protested as I followed him through the hallway into the kitchen where he poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Do you have a thermos?”
“I’m sure there’s one in the cabinets somewhere—I’m not touching a gun.”
“Yes,” he said, casually as if discussing lunch plans, “you are.”
“I’m not touching a gun.” I crossed my arms. Westared at each other, but he was unfazed, and my heart pounded because a part of me knew when Vitali said something, it was happening.
“Katya.” He set the cup down and leaned against the table. “I’m giving you a gun because I can’t always be here, and I need to know you are capable of protecting yourself. I want nothing more than to put you somewhere you can forget guns exist, but that is not reality, so you’re getting a gun.”
“But Roman—”
“Has to sleep. He’s got twins at home, and they’re still in diapers. I can’t have him sit in a car outside your podyezd all day.”
He patted his knee, and I unthinkingly closed the distance between us, stepping in between his legs, thigh against thigh. He cupped my chin and adamantly looked me in the eyes.
“It will be alright, Kotik. I’ll teach you, and we can practice in a field. All I ask is you keep it in your nightstand. Loaded.”
Ask? He neverasked.
My defeated expression was a satisfactory answer because he said, “Good. Fill two thermoses; it’s sunny, but it’s still cold. We might be out there for a while.”
We were on the road within the hour.
White-frosted trees rushed past us as we entered the countryside. The deep winter snow had completely flattened out the already level ground. Soon, nothing remained but bright white fields with the occasional grove of bare trees fading into the horizonless sky.
I was afraid to be with you,Chloé Dae sang.Now I know love is fear you make it through…
“You never told me,” I said, and he raised an eyebrow but otherwise did not move, or look away from the road—for which I was grateful because there hardly was a road to see, “about the bus. You said you remembered it when we met.”
“I do. What’s the question?”
“Why did you break that man’s hand?”
Vitali hummed, then gave me a dismissive one-shoulder shrug.
“What were you doing on a bus anyway?” I persisted, waving a hand at the interior of yet another new car. I didn’t even know the make of this one, only that it was big and high enough off the ground that the ice wasn’t scraping the bottom as we flew down the snowed-over road.
“I don’t like to stand out.”
I snorted, and he gave me a curious glance.
“I don’t,” he repeated. “I don’t carry a cellphone. I don’t live anywhere flashy. And I don’t drive unless I have to. I have a good reason for it all, Katya.”
“You’ve never come over on a bus.”
“I will never make you ride the bus.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
He thoughtfully rubbed his jaw, his fingers tapping the steering wheel. Again, he didn’t answer me. Instead, he pulled off the raised road into the sea of sparkling white—and I yelped, grabbing onto whatever I could because the tires slipped and there was no way to tell how deep the snowdrifts were. Vitali chuckled.
“Trust.”
I did, but I still braced myself as the car tilted and bounced until we made it to a patch of trees so far from the only road that I couldn’t tell where it was without looking at our tire tracks, and stopped.
“Is this necessary?” I asked, gathering what was left of my nerves off the muddy floor mats.
