"I love you." She says it looking straight at me, no darkness, no sleeping, no whisper she thinks I can't hear. Full volume. Full force. Her voice cracks on every word and she doesn't care. "I love you, Konstantin. I should have said it weeks ago. I should have said it every single day since you saved me. In my heart of hearts I know I loved you the night you scooped me up and placed me on your lap. You comforted me and my heart fell for you then. I just couldn’t admit it."
"The night I put you in my lap, huh." My voice is rough and my throat burns but the memory hits me square in the chest. Her body shook against mine. The way she curled into me like she'd been waiting her whole life for a place where she belonged. "That's when you knew?"
My thumb traces the line of her jaw, wiping blood and tears in a smear across her freckled skin. She leans into my hand and the trust in that small gesture almost breaks me.
"That's when my heart knew. My brain took a little longer to catch up."
"Stubborn to the core." I press my lips to her forehead, tasting salt and grime and the copper edge of dried blood. She's warm. She's alive. She's in my arms.
"Look who's talking." She laughs through her tears, the sound wet and broken and perfect. "I love you, Kon. I was so scared when?—"
"Shh, you don't have to say it." I kiss her left cheek, then her right, my lips lingering on the bruise Seamus's backhand left on her skin. My mouth moves to the hollow beneath her ear, pressing against the pulse hammering there, and I hold my lips to that spot until the rhythm steadies against mine. "I love you, ??????." My voice breaks against her neck. I let it. "Ya tebya lyublyu.I love you. I'm sorry. For everything. I never wanted you to see this side of me. I'm so sorry."
Her fingers slide into my hair, gripping the blood-soaked strands at my nape, and she pulls me closer instead of pushing me away.
"You came for me." She presses her forehead against mine, our breath mixing, both of us wrecked and bleeding and shaking."You saved me, bled for me and you lost so much in the process. There is nothing to be sorry for."
Then her hands start moving. Running over my chest, my arms, my torso, frantic, checking for wounds with the desperate urgency of a woman who watched me take two bullets and spent hours thinking I bled out on a rooftop.
"You were shot. I watched you get shot. Twice. In the chest." Her voice pitches up, the journalist's composure crumbling under the weight of relief and residual terror.
I show her the field dressing on my left bicep. "Arm. Through-and-through. Missed the bone."
I lift what's left of my shirt to show the graze along my waist. "Side. Superficial. Bled a lot. Looked worse than it is, I promise."
She stares at the wounds. Blinks. Processes. Her journalist brain runs the calculations and arrives at the conclusion her heart hasn't accepted yet.
"Those aren't chest wounds."
"Nyet."
"He shot you from ten feet away and missed your chest. Both times."
"Brennan couldn't hit the broad side of a building under pressure." My mouth twitches. "Turns out the man's only skill set was throwing punches. Marksmanship wasn't in his job description."
She stares at me for three full seconds, her bloody face cycling through relief, disbelief, and a fury so hot it could melt the concrete beneath our feet.
Then she punches my good arm. Hard.
"I thought you were DEAD, Konstantin." Her voice echoes off the steel rafters and her blue eyes blaze with a fury that has nothing to do with anger and everything to do with the terror she's been swallowing for hours. Her chin trembles and her nostrils flare and she jabs her finger into my chest hard enough to make my wounded side protest. "I sat in this warehouse for HOURS thinking you bled out on that rooftop. HOURS, Kon." Her voice cracks and she swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing blood and tears across her cheekbone. "Do you understand that? I thought I was never going to see you again."
"I'm not dead." I catch her hand before she can jab me again, wrapping my fingers around her fist, and the corner of my mouth pulls because she's yelling at me. Hand to God above, I have never loved her more than I do right now.
"I can SEE that." She hits my good arm with her free hand, softer this time, the punch landing without force before her fingers uncurl and flatten against my chest, pressing over my heartbeat. Her palm settles there and her shoulders drop as the steady thud registers beneath her hand. The fury drains from her face and what replaces it is raw and open and wrecked. "Don't ever do that to me again. Ever." Her voice drops to a whisper. "I will kill you myself."
"That would be counterproductive."
Her jaw tightens and for a second I think she might actually hit me again. Then the corner of her mouth twitches and the laugh that escapes her is half sob, half surrender.
"I don't care." She presses her face against my chest, right over the roses, and her shoulders shake with laughter tangled up intears and exhaustion and a relief so total it breaks her down before it builds her back up. I know because I feel the same way.
"I hate you so much right now."
"You love me. You just said so. Several times."
"Both things can be true."
I hold her. The warehouse is being secured around us. Luca is sweeping rooms. Rafael has our men filing in through the east entrance, handling Seamus with the quiet efficiency this family has perfected over two decades. Declan is on his knees near the wall, hands behind his head, offering no resistance. He meets my eyes once, briefly, and in his gaze I read a resignation that borders on relief.
