Page 176 of Ruthless Sin
My right hand goes to the back of my neck. One second. I drop it.
“I failed your sister.” My voice goes and I let it go. “I buried her name and yours because saying them out loud meant standing back in that room.”
I hold her eyes.
“I will not fail you. I will burn the world before I let him take you. But I need you to stay.” The word costs everything I have. “Please. Let me do this.”
She does not speak. She does not move. Her jaw stays tight and her eyes stay on mine and the silence between us has weight and I stand in it and I do not look away.
Then her feet move.
She comes the last step toward me and stops with her face lifted to mine, close enough that the chain at her throat almost touches my chest, close enough that her breath reaches my mouth, and my hands go still at my sides because if I reach for her right now I will not stop and I have not earned that yet.
She reaches up and takes my face in both her hands.
The pulse at my jaw is going wrong and she has her palms on it and she knows, and the heat that moves up the back of my neck has nothing to do with grief and I let it stay anyway. Her thumbs at the line of my jaw. Her fingers at my temples. She is the size she is and her hands are holding my face like they have the right to, like she is deciding something, and I hold still and let her decide.
She begins to speak. Her voice is rough — the same one that sang in the library, the one that cracked on the fourth bar — and it lands in my chest before the words do.
“My sister trusted you. She didn’t trust anyone. But she trusted you.”
Her thumbs press into the line of my jaw. She holds my face steady.
“She bet her life on you. She bet mine.”
She stops the first time. Her breath goes out slow. Her hands stay on my face. She breathes once. She keeps going.
“And when she was dying, the last thing she did was say my name to a stranger and ask him to find me.”
Her forehead presses to mine. The chain at her throat touches my chest. Her breath reaches my mouth and my hands close at my sides, knuckles white, because if I move them I am done. She is this close and she is breaking me open and I want her so badly it hurts.
Her voice drops and the rawness in it reaches me before the words do.
“I waited in the dark and no one came. I learned to stop waiting. I learned to stop hoping. I taught myself that no one was going to save me because that was the only way to survive it. And then you found me. You. The man she chose. The man who broke his promise and came anyway.”
She stops the second time. Her forehead presses harder against mine.
“I am not staying behind a door while you go. I am not letting you decide for me again. You buried me once. You don’t get to do it twice.”
“Yesli ty poydesh’, ya poydu. Yesli ty padesh’, ya padu.”If you go, I go. If you fall, I fall.
“I waited a long time to choose something. I am choosing this.” A breath.“Ya vybirayu tebya.”I choose you.
Her forehead presses harder against mine for one beat.
“Ne smey otnyat’ eto u menya.”Don’t you dare take that from me.
My forehead drops to her shoulder.
My hands come up to her back and I grip the fabric of her shirt at her shoulder blades and press my face into her neck and my shoulders shake, once, twice, hard, and then they go still, and years of it rise through my throat and stay there. The concrete room. Her sister’s face. The promise I said and did not keep. All of it. Not coming out as sound.
She holds me through every second of it.
Her hands move to the back of my head, her fingers in my hair, and she is steady where I am not and I let her hold me there, my ribs pulling with every breath, the tape Gia put on pressing into the places that still hurt, and I do not mind. I do not mind any of it.
She lets it stop on its own.
I breathe. I count to ten. By ten I am steady.
