Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 63786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
My nerves calm when Lev returns.
“What was the gunshot?” I ask.
“My uncle’s driver. Don’t worry, he’s not going to be a problem anymore.” He lifts Feliks to his feet. “Come on. There’s a hospital not far from here.”
Feliks lets out a grunt of pain. “Fuck, I think I’m going to pass out.”
“You’re not going to pass out,” Lev says calmly, slowly walking him out of the building.
“I feel woozy.”
Lev helps him into the car. “Better feeling woozy than feeling nothing because you’re dead.”
Ten minutes later, we make it to the hospital. Fifteen minutes after that, Feliks is rushed into surgery.
I pace the waiting room while Lev talks to the medical staff. “That’s my best friend in there,” I hear him saying in that powerful voice of his. “I don’t care how much it costs or whatever you have to do—he survives this, you got it?”
When he joins me in the waiting room, he looks exhausted.
“Is he going to make it?” I ask.
Lev pulls me into his arms, and I can see the worry in his eyes. It’s the same worry I feel knotted in my stomach. “He has to.”
I lay my cheek against his chest and find comfort in the rhythmic hammering of his heart. And it’s how I stay for the duration of Feliks’ surgery, listening to the heavy pounding of Lev’s strong heartbeat, praying Feliks makes it. Because I don’t know how Lev will be if he loses him too. By now, he’ll be feeling the pain of his uncle and cousin’s betrayal. He lost two people close to him today. Two people he loved but who didn’t love him back. The sense of betrayal will run deep in him.
There is so much left unsaid between us, but now is not the time for talking. Now is the time to pray Feliks makes it through his surgery.
Finally, the doctor appears. “He’s going to be fine. The bullet missed his heart and lungs, so he’ll make a full recovery.”
I feel the tension ease out of the both of us.
“Can we see him?” Lev asks.
“Not until tomorrow. He’s heavily medicated and needs rest.”
Lev nods, and the doctor leaves us.
“Come on, let me get you home,” he says, taking my hand.
We’re both quiet during the car ride home. There’s a lot for the both of us to unpack. Lev has the weight of his uncle and cousin’s betrayal resting on his shoulders, while I’m still trying to process everything from having my life threatened at dinner, to being kidnapped and threatened at gunpoint in a derelict warehouse somewhere in the city at sundown.
And if that wasn’t enough, somewhere amongst all of it, is the hurt I feel because Lev didn’t believe me when I needed him too. Although, in the grand scheme of things, it feels easier to let it go now.
You would think after everything I’ve been through since the fateful day I met Lev on the plane that I would be getting used to unpacking all the shit that’s been happening to me. But I haven’t, and worst of all, I know being with him means there will always be things to unpack if I continue to share my life with him.
But I also know that whatever lies ahead will be worth it. Because I’ve had a taste of life without him, and there is nothing that could be done to me in the future that would make me want to drink that midnight poison again.
By the time we make it back to the Zarkov estate, it’s dark.
In Lev’s bedroom, I lie on the bed and watch him remove his shirt and jacket.
“I read your statement,” he says, kicking off his shoes.
I sit up.
“Statements are sealed—what am I saying, of course, that would never stop you.” I cross my arms. “So I guess about now you’re realizing what a giant asshole you are.”
“Something like that.”
I lift an eyebrow. “I’m waiting for the apology.”
“Oh, it’s coming, zayka. Every day for the rest of our lives if need be.”
“Good. And don’t think I’m letting you off that easily,” I say.
“I don’t expect you will.”
“You hurt me.”
His face softens as he walks over to the bed and gently brushes the backs of his fingers across my cheek. “I know, and I’m sorry.”
There is more to say. But after the events of today I don’t have the energy.
I take his hand. “Don’t think this conversation is finished.”
“I know I have some making up to do,” he says.
“Yes, and it starts right now.” I pull him down to me. “Take off your pants, Mr. Zarkov. Because showing me just how sorry you are starts right now.”
45
BROOKE
It’s the happiest I’ve ever seen Lev in… well, forever.
Gone are the tense shoulders and the grumpy scowl, and in their place is a man who isn’t afraid to show the world he actually has teeth. His smile is devastatingly handsome, and I like knowing that I help put it on his face.