I could see myself in the glass panes of the doors, reflected back. Half my face was a mess. One eye swollen. Hair matted down on one side. I barely looked like me.
The doors slid open…
And there he was.
Matvei is standing right in the middle of the entryway, his shirt half-buttoned, his jaw clenched tight. His blue eyes find mine the moment the doors part. Like he’s been standing there the whole six weeks, waiting for me to come back.
“Cassandra.”
His voice is quiet but it cuts right through the noise of the hallway.
The paramedics stop pushing. The gurney jolts a little. One of them, the tall guy with the shaved head, looks between me and Matvei.
“Sir, you need to step back,” he says.
Matvei doesn’t move. His eyes are locked on mine. “Cassandra,” he says again.
“Ma’am.” The other paramedic, a woman with a blonde ponytail, bends down closer to me. “Do you know this man?”
I squint up at Matvei.
He looks like he did that first night. The black stubble. The sharp jaw. The shirt half-buttoned so I can see a stretch of his pale chest. His hair is messy like he’s been running his hands through it. His hands are at his sides, open, ready.
He looks like he’s been waiting.
I think about saying yes. I really do. I think about saying,Yes, that’s Matvei, he helped me once. He’s the only one who ever did.I think about reaching out a hand and letting him take it and letting him haul me off this gurney and out of here and away from all of this.
But then my thoughts turn to Raymond. He’d find out, somehow. If he sees me with Matvei, or hears even a whisper of it, there’s no telling what he’ll do.
Matvei took a knife for me once. I can’t ask him to do it again.
This is my problem, and honestly, I was selfish to ever think someone else could fix it for me.
“Ma’am?” the paramedic prods again. “Do you know him?”
I swallow. It hurts. Everything hurts.
“No,” I say. “Never seen him in my life.”
The paramedics look at each other in confusion. We all just heard him say my name. But I know how to channel my inner Raymond and sound too imperious to deny. “Can we go, please?” I ask haughtily.
“Let’s just go,” the woman mumbles to her partner. “Sir, please step aside.”
I wonder if he’s going to do something reckless. The look in his face says he might. It’s an angry, scathing look, and I know full well what he’s capable of doing.
But in the end, Matvei steps aside.
He doesn’t say anything else. He just moves out of the way and lets them wheel me past.
I keep my eyes on the ceiling. I don’t look at him as I pass. I can’t. If I look at him, I’ll change my mind. I’ll go begging and pleading for him to scoop me out of my life and carry me off somewhere else, anywhere else, as far away from Raymond as we can get.
Then doors behind me swing shut.
And he’s gone.
8
CASS
