Page 174 of Ruthless Sin
Heat moves low in my belly. My pulse climbs into my throat. He is hurt and exhausted and his hand is still shaking and I still want him so badly it makes me furious and I do not look away.
He does not move. His voice comes out rough and low and it lands in my chest the same way the first note of the song did.
“Mila.”
He has said my name many times. Not like that. Not like it costs him something to get it out.
“I have not been able to hear that song since Moscow. Since Yelena.” A breath. His jaw works once. “I have left rooms when it came on. Changed stations. Told Nonna to turn off the radio.”He looks at me. “I sat through every note just now and my hands were shaking and I did not want to leave.”
His voice drops.
“You did that.”
My chest aches with it, the anger and the want and the grief all sitting in the same place, and I do not look away from his face.
“I know,” I say. “I felt it.”
I look at the knife on the table. I reach over and close it and slide it toward the lamp, away from where my hand has been resting. He has not moved but his breath changes and I catch it from across the room, the slight pull of it, like something in him is holding very carefully still.
I lift my right hand from the arm of the chair.
His left hand has come to rest on the arm of the chair across from me. He crossed the distance between us without me noticing he moved, and he is close enough now that I can see the tape under his shirt where his ribs are still healing, and something in me wants to press my palm there, just to feel that he is real and here and did not die in that corridor, and I hate that I want that, and I want it anyway.
I put my hand on top of his. Light. The pads of my fingers on the back of his hand.
His breath goes audible. A muscle in his forearm pulls tight under my fingers, the tendons going taut, and his pulse at his wrist is fast against my fingers and I am wet and I am angry and his hand is warm under mine.
He does not move at first.
Then he turns his palm up. Slow. He does not move his arm. He just rotates his hand, and my fingers slide off the back of his hand and into his palm, and he laces our fingers together, his between mine, mine between his, and my throat closes because this is the most deliberate thing anyone has done to me in years,this slow turn of a palm, this asking without asking, and I cannot speak.
I am still angry. I am not letting go.
I say it quietly. Not looking at him. Looking at the window.
“I’m still angry.”
He doesn’t let go. He doesn’t speak for a moment.
“I know. You should be.” A pause. “I found out who you were and I told myself I was protecting you. That was a lie. I was protecting myself. From having to tell you. From watching you leave.”
His thumb moves across my knuckle once. Slow.
“I will not keep anything from you again. Not one thing. You have my word.”
His hand stays open under mine. He is not gripping. He is not holding me there. I could take my hand back and he would let me.
“I know that’s not enough tonight. I’m not asking for tonight.”
My throat is tight. I look at the window a long time before I look back at him.
“I know you weren’t trying to hurt me.” My voice comes out rougher than I want it to. “That almost makes it worse.”
He doesn’t say anything. He holds my hand open in his and he does not try to fix it, he does not fill the silence, and that is the thing about him I have never been able to walk away from, that he knows how to stay inside something broken.
The garden goes the rest of the way dark. The lamp on the desk is the only light. The cicadas through the cracked window go to their late pitch, the full summer sound, and the pulse at his wrist slows under my fingers.
Maria comes to the doorway. She is in her apron. She looks at us and withdraws without a sound.
