"Alright," I say. "Then I accept your terms."
He nods, once, as though I've confirmed something he already knew. "I'll have the medical consultation arranged by Monday. We'll discuss the wedding timeline after you've met with the surgeon."
"That's sooner than I expected."
"I don't believe in unnecessary delays."
"Neither do I." I stand, and the movement sends a flare of pain through my pelvis that I can’t entirely conceal. My hand goes to my side, two seconds of pressure, the habitual gesture that I've been performing unconsciously for so long it's become as natural as breathing.
Akyl's eyes track the movement. His expression doesn't change, but something in his posture shifts, a tension that enters his shoulders and travels down his arms to his hands, which close briefly into fists at his sides before relaxing.
"Is the pain constant?" he asks.
Shrugging, I say, "It varies."
"That's not an answer." He moves closer to me, looking over my abdomen like he could see straight through the dress, my skin, and observe my internal organs.
"It's the answer I give doctors,” I admit. “It's the truth."
His eyes come to mine as he gives a slow nod, weighing my words. Weighing his. "I'm not a doctor," he finally says. He is close enough to me now that I can see the flecks of black in his eyes.
"No," I say, the word a whisper. "You're considerably more frightening."
He almost smiles.
"Come," he says. "You will come back to my place tonight. Not negotiable,” he adds when I open my mouth to argue. “I have pain relief and all the comforts you could possibly need. I’ll take care of you.”
The first bubble of emotion, emotion I can usually squash down with the pain, tries to gurgle up my throat. I press my lips together in a bid to keep it from escaping, and I’m only successful by sheer force of will.
"Thank you." The words feel too small, and I hate that. I hate having to thank people for things that should just be mine by right. I hate the way being sick trains you into it, that automatic, flinching gratitude for every scrap of care the world hands you like it’s doing you a favor.
He must see it on my face, the conflict, the anger beneath the gratitude, because he says, very quietly, "Don't thank me, Katriona. This isn't kindness. It's strategy."
"Is it?" I ask, as he holds out his hand and helps me to my feet.
"Yes." He moves forward and opens the study door for me. "It's also fury. But we can discuss that another time."
I walk through the door, and his hand finds the small of my back as I pass, steadying me with a touch so light and so brief that it could be accidental.
He opens the car door and I slide into the seat, only allowing myself to finally let the mask slip for the split second it takes him to walk around to the other side and get into the driver’s seat.
“It’s okay,” he says, looking at me through the rear-view mirror. “It won’t take long until we’re home.”
In the car I press my forehead against the cold window and I close my eyes. Just for a moment, I let myself think about the future.
It’s terrifying. I crush the thought straight away, the way I’ve crushed every flicker of hope that’s tried to take root in me these last three years. Hope grows in the cracks, and I’ve spent so long sealing those cracks over that letting something green push through feels dangerous.
But the crack is there. Akyl Mostovoi opened it with four words.
"Treatment first. Before anything."
Underneath the pragmatism, the terror, and the careful recalculation of every assumption I've made about my own future, there is something else. Something I noticed in the study that I'm only now allowing myself to examine.
When I told him about the pain, when I said it was constant, when I refused to minimise it and he refused to let me, something in the room changed. The air between us shifted. And I recognized the quality of his attention because it was the same quality I saw in the hallway earlier, after I comforted Liv. The fierce, concentrated awareness of someone who has identified a wrong and is already engineering a solution.
Akyl Mostovoi looked at my pain with the certainty of someone who knows exactly what needs to be done and intends to do it.
Nobody has ever looked at my pain like that. Every doctor, every nurse, every well-meaning friend has looked at it with some version of helplessness.I'm sorry but… unfortunately… if only…the language of people who feel sorry and do nothing. Akyl looked at it like a problem with a fix, and the fix was already happening before I’d even left the room.
