Page 112 of Ruthless Sin

---

I have hours.

I have to tell her.

I can’t tell her tonight.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow I’m going to watch the maybe die on her face.

My hand tightens on her back.

I lie awake.

21

MILA

The light at the edge of the curtain is gold.

It got through today. I don’t know what’s different about today. The gold is on the rug — the rug he slept on the first night I let him stay.

I’m curled into him.

His shirt. His arm under my head. His hand on my hip.

I haven’t left.

I always leave.

He’s awake.

He’s been awake.

He’s watching me watch him.

His hand on my hip is still, but the warmth of it goes all the way through the fabric. My pulse moves low. Not fear. Something else entirely, and I’m not going to name it with his eyes on my face.

The first morning I haven’t left before dawn is the morning he didn’t ask me to. He didn’t ask me to stay either. He just kept his arm around me and I kept waiting for myself to pull away.

I didn’t.

That means something. You know that means something.

I know.

I’ve been lying here for a long time deciding whether to say what’s been pressing at the back of my throat. About Papa. About Yelena. About when we still had a house that was ours. The parts of me that were mine before Alexei, before the selling, before I learned to make myself small and gone. The parts I haven’t given anyone.

If you tell him, you can’t untell him.

I know.

I open my mouth.

“My father threw me in the water when I was three.”

It comes out quiet. Like it costs less than it does.

It costs. You know it costs.

---