“I’m okay,” she breathes, but her face is tight with pain. “What about Katya? And your brothers?”
“Everyone’s fine. They’re all in the waiting room.” I take a breath. “Your mother too.”
She swallows, her brow furrowing. “I’m surprised she cared enough to come here.”
“She does care. She cares a lot. It’s too bad it took you getting shot for her to realize it, but she’s been here the whole time, and she looks completely terrified of losing you.”
She nods weakly, then her gaze finds mine and I see the weight of everything. How close we came to losing each other. How easily this could have ended differently.
“You don’t get to do that again,” I say with a deep rasp. “You don’t get to throw yourself in front of bullets for me. That’s the first and last time, do you understand?”
Tears well in her eyes. “I couldn’t let you die.”
“I was wearing a vest,” I tell her. “From the Newtown Creek operation. I never took it off. The bullet would’ve hit Kevlar, not me.” My throat closes up and I have to stop, dragging in a breath. “It doesn’t matter now. Just know… I can’t live without you. Watching you get hit, seeing all that blood—that was the worst moment of my entire life, Dinara.”
More tears fall and I kiss away each and every one of them.
“I love you,” she whispers. “I love you so much it terrifies me.”
“Good. Be terrified. Because I’m never letting you out of my sight again. You’re mine, for the rest of this life, your next life, and the one after that. I’m going to stalk you into the afterlife and beyond. You’ll never get rid of me.”
She lets out a shaky laugh that turns into a wince. “Is that a threat or a promise?”
“Both.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“You’re going to make a full recovery. It’ll take time and it’s going to hurt like hell, but you’ll heal. And you’re doing it with me, every step of the way.”
“Okay.” She squeezes my hand weakly. “I can do that.”
“Your mother’s calling your father to tell him what happened.”
Dinara’s eyes widen. “Oh God. Papa—this is going to give him a heart attack. There’s so much he doesn’t know, so much I need to explain.”
“It’s fine,” I cut her off gently. “Let her tell your father. He deserves to hear it from her. We can fill in the rest when they get here, which I imagine will be as soon as possible.”
“We’ll have some explaining to do,” she says, lifting her hand to show me the ring still on her finger. “Starting with this.”
She stares at the ring for a long moment, then looks back at me with tears still clinging to her lashes. “I would do it all again, all of it, if it ends with you and me together.”
A sweet, heavy ache fills my bones. I lean down and kiss her forehead, then her cheek, then carefully, gently, her lips.
“That’s a promise, solnyshko.”
When I sit back, she’s fading, exhaustion and pain medication pulling her back under. Her eyelids droop and I settle back into the chair, still holding her hand.
“Sleep,” I tell her quietly, settling back into the chair but keeping hold of her hand. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here watching over you.”
Her fingers tighten around mine one last time before her breathing evens out and she slips back into sleep.
I lean back and close my eyes for just a moment, letting the relief finally crash through me.
She’s alive. She’s going to be okay.
And I’m never letting her go.
CHAPTER
