Page 163 of Ghost Ribbon

It will be okay.

It will be okay.

It will not be okay.

Chapter 38 - Alexei

Ilya came over.

He hadn’t been around much lately.

That wasn’t unusual in itself - Ilya came and went in waves, his presence dictated by whatever chaos he was currently involved in. But this absence had been different.

I asked him about the bruises but he denied it.

Of course I didn’t believe it and Dimitri was trying to find out who did it. It would just be much fucking easier if he could give us a name. I don’t understand why he keeps lying and hiding from us.

He talked a bit with Marco, well more than a bit considering Ilya didn’t know when to shut the fuck up. In the middle of their conversation Marco went to the bathroom and Ilya came over to me. I was standing in the kitchen.

“Are you alright?” he asked and I nodded. “Are you?”

He tilted his head. “Don’t throw the question at me. I’m serious.”

His voice dropped lower. “He looks… He looks like he is barely holding on.”

Ilya wasn’t exaggerating. Marco did look like he was barely holding on.

Because he was barely holding on.

“Shouldn’t he be in the hospital?”

“He should but he doesn’t want to.”

Ilya stared at me. “Not to be a bitch but since when do you hear what others want? I mean he obviously needs it, he looks like—”

“I know what he looks like.”

My voice was harsher than I meant to. Ilya looked down and bit the inside of his cheek. “He’s my friend too… I’m not saying it to hurt you. I’m saying it because I don’t want…. something to happen to him.”

I swallowed. Ilya did get close to Marco. I think it’s because Marco is the only person who lets him talk his ear off. Me and Dimitri are tolerant but our patience is thin. However Marco will sit and listen to him for hours, and he won’t complain at all. So I can’t blame Ilya. I know he doesn’t want anything bad to happen to my little star.

“I won’t force him into a hospital where he’s strapped to a bed and cries all day,” I explained. “I won’t do that to him. I can take care of him here.”

Ilya sighed but then nodded. “I understand.”

“They will find him a heart soon, and it will be okay.”

Ilya looked at me strangely. I know what he was thinking, that I was in denial, but I was stating a fact.

There would be a heart for my little star.

I knew it.

Because the alternative was a world without Marco in it, and that world was not one I was willing to inhabit, and if the universe was going to try to put me in there then the universe was going to have to fucking fight me for it.

My tests came back negative.

My heart could not be given to Marco. I’m not sure if that was good or bad. But I did intend to break my promise if they said yes.