Page 99 of Savage Truce

I wish I had my phone on me so I could take a photo.

Unable to stop them, the words just come. “I love you, Artem.”

Slowly, he looks at me, then tilting his head, a smile curves his lips. “I love you, too.” He comes closer and points at my shoulder where a snowflake has fallen, and when it doesn’t melt, I stand dead still while he inspects it.

“Iisus Khristos!” Rodian shouts from the back door. “We don’t need another two patients. Why the fuck is no one listening to me?”

“Let’s go in,” I say, hooking my arm through Artem’s. When we’re close to the door, I give Rodian a sweet smile. “Spending time with Andrei makes you just as grumpy as him, my love.”

“I made the ungrateful fucker toast, but he didn’t want it, saying he’ll wait for you to bring him breakfast,” Rodian complains.

“I’ll take over. Go get some work done,” I say, while popping two slices of bread into the toaster.

“He just said no to toast,” Rodian mutters, pointing at the very dark slices on the counter.

“That’s burned! How can you expect Andrei to eat that?” I walk closer and shake my head. “Did you even put butter on?”

“Of course. It soaked into the bread.”

I give my husband a patient look. “I’ve got this. Don’t worry.”

When the toast pops up, I wait for the slices to cool before I lather a thick layer of butter and strawberry jam onto them. Taking shredded cheese from the fridge, I sprinkle some over the toast.

“You spoil Andrei,” Rodian says, then he reaches around me and steals one of the slices.

Artem does the same, and as they chuckle, I place another two into the toaster while giving them playful glares.

EPILOGUE

Anastasia

Twenty-five years later…

As the actors take their final bows and the entire theater erupts with applause around us, I let out a happy sigh.

“Gosh, that was amazing,” Isobel, my youngest, says with a dreamy smile on her face. “I want to be an actress.”

God, here we go again.

At nineteen, she’s changed her mind more times than I can count. She can’t decide what she wants to do with her future. She’ll obsess about becoming an actress for three to six months until the next best thing catches her eye.

“Sure,” Andrea, our twenty-one-year-old who we named after Andrei, teases her sister. “You couldn’t even give a speech for your graduation. I’d like to see you get up on stage.”

“Shut up,” Isobel mumbles.

“Don’t start,” I say in my mom voice, and when I get up and walk toward the side corridor to say hi to Charlotte, who’s still working here, the girls quickly catch up with me.

Letting out another sigh, I say, “This is where your father and I met.”

Isobel chuckles. “We know, Mam. You’ve told us the story a kazillion times.”

Whenever I’ve come back here, I always remember the ridiculously handsome man walking into my workshop with a loose button.

In the twenty-five years we’ve been married, Rodian has never ceased to make me feel as special as he did that night.

“There’s Charlotte,” Andrea points out.

She inherited my love for sewing and is studying fashion. During our visits, she loves talking to Charlotte and picking her brain.