But that’s the point. Because I almost—
A strange sound rattles out of me as the scene flashes through my mind. The dark room. Lucas trapped under me on the floor, my arm around his neck.
I get dizzy. I catch myself against a wall. I slide down, wedging my back into the corner. I draw up my knees and prop my elbows on them. I drop my head and curl my hands over it and try to not exist.
SIX
Lucas
I can’t see Roman through the cell door’s small window, but I know he’s in there. I punch in the code that Vitali gave me. The lock clicks. I open the door and step inside, letting it shut behind me.
Roman is sitting in the corner where I couldn’t see him from outside. His head comes up. His eyes widen.
“No,” he rasps.
For once, for the first time, I don’t care what he says.
I also don’t care that it feels awful to see him tense at my approach. I don’t care that he pulled away from me, turned his back to me, even ran from me. I don’t care that every stupid insecurity of my own is twisting me up inside. I don’t fucking care.
I only care about Roman.
He wants to get up. He wants to avoid me, but there’s nowhere for him to go. The door is locked.
When I drop down between his drawn-up legs and curl into him, his body jerks in refusal, but I stay with him anyway, even when he starts shaking. I make him accept me. I make myself accept that his fear and horror are not about me.
It’s really hard to feel what’s happening to his body, how physical his reaction is, how much he’s resisting my presence. Every sound he makes is harsh and painful, and he hasn’t even put his arms around me. But I just stay there, wedged against him, my face against his bare chest, one hand curled around his side, the other around his leg.
Roman’s body softens slowly. His arms, eventually, close around me. He’s still shaking, but it fades to a tremble, then to stillness. We stay that way for a long time. There’s no rush. There’s nowhere to go.
Roman’s fingers start feathering over my neck. The touch is light. Hesitant. He’s worried that he hurt me.
He didn’t. Even in his confusion, he kept some control of himself.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says quietly.
“Yes, I should.”
“Vitali brought you. He’ll let you out.”
“I’m not leaving,” I tell him.
I don’t understand exactly why Roman came here, why he would want to be in a space like this again. But at this exact moment, I don’t need to understand. I just need to be here. For him, yes, but for me too. I belong with him.
“Can we lie down?” I ask. “I’m tired.”
Roman starts to get up, half lifting me. I get my feet under myself and walk the few steps to the mattress. I lie down with Roman. I let him put his back to the wall and tug me against his body.
The harsh overhead light turns off, darkening the cell. There’s a lamp glowing in the outer room, turning the cell door’s window into a sort of nightlight. No sound comes from out there, but I’m sure Vitali or Quinn is sitting on that couch. Maybe they both are, since they both brought me here.
No one intrudes. Nothing does.
It’s just me and Roman in the bleak, dark emptiness. But it doesn’t feel terrible or scary. It feels familiar, even comfortable. And in the simplicity of it, as everything else falls away, like nothing in the world exists but me and Roman, I feel, once again, his absolute possession of me—and it feels good.
I think it feels good to him too because, for the first time in months, I feel him completely relax.
That’s when I start to understand. I had forgotten, in the clutter of normal life, the clarity, the strange purity, of this kind of bleakness.
I sigh and settle and drift into sleep.
