And I would never come in my pants like a teenager again.
She'd called it cute. I hated that word. Cute was for puppies and children and things that didn't matter.
What I felt for her was not cute. It was a fire. An obsession. The kind of love that consumed everything it touched.
I closed my eyes and saw her face.
I smiled in the dark.
Tomorrow, I would do better.
Tomorrow, I would start learning.
12
The Ward
Monika
Isigned the papers in Aleksander's study, at a desk that had belonged to his father, with a pen that weighed more than my first stethoscope.
The room was dark—paneled in mahogany, lined with books that no one had read in decades. A fire crackled in the hearth, casting shadows that moved like living things across the walls. Aleksander sat across from me, his grey eyes steady, his hands folded on the blotter between us. He'd dressed down tonight—no suit, just a sweater the color of charcoal, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He looked almost human like this. Almost approachable.
I signed my name on the last page—Monika Cross—and pushed the papers back toward him.
"Done," I said.
He didn't look at the signatures. He was looking at me.
"You understand what this means?"
"I understand that I'm your ward now. That I'll live here. That I'll take your name." I leaned back in my chair, the leather creaking beneath me. "I understand that you're doing this to protect me. Or to control me. Or both."
"Can't it be both?"
"Can it?"
He reached across the desk and took my hand. His palm was warm, his fingers rough with calluses I'd never noticed before. "I want you safe, Monika. The people who shot at us—they know who you are now. They know you're connected to me. Every day you spend in that apartment, alone, unprotected, is a day I can't breathe."
"So you're doing this for me."
"I'm doing this for us."
The word landed like a stone in still water.Us. He'd never said that before. He'd never acknowledged that there was anusto protect.
"What's the catch?" I asked.
"No catch." He held my gaze. "You're valuable to me. I want you safe. That's the beginning and the end of it."
"I can leave whenever I want?"
"Yes."
"You're lying."
He didn't deny it. He just lifted my hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to my knuckles—a gesture so old-fashioned, so unexpectedly tender, that I felt my throat close.
"Ask me something else," he said. "Something I can answer truthfully."
