“My deadlykotik. Better?”
“Nope.”
“You are no fun.” She winds her hands around my neck. “Let’s go somewhere for dinner, hmm?”
“I’m sorry,malysh, I have some business crap to deal with tonight. We leave in twenty minutes, and I don’t know how long it’ll take, but I should probably be back by ten or eleven.”
“Be careful, Roman.”
I watch her leave, and think how strange it is to have someone waiting for me to come back from work or worry about my well-being.
Roman still hasn’t come back. I clutch my sweater tighter around me and look at the clock again, probably for the hundredth time in the past hour. It’s half past three, and he hasn’t called or texted. I didn’t want to call him and intrude on his business deal, so I checked with Maxim—who stayed at the house—around one, then again around three. He didn’t know anything.
“Damn it, Roman,” I murmur to myself, eyes glued to the gate visible on the other side of the lawn. “Don’t you dare get yourself killed.”
Sometime around four, the gate slides to the side and two cars park in front of the house. Men start exiting the cars, and I plaster my palms onto the window, looking for Roman. He exits last, and the way he gets out of the car—painfully, slowly—tells me he pushed his knee way too far this time.
“Stubborn, stubborn idiot,” I mumble.A distance he usually covers in seconds now takes him almost five minutes.
What the hell was he thinking? Warren told him he wasn’t allowed to walk long distances for at least a few more weeks, and he goes and pulls an all-nighter not even a week later.
In the bedroom, I take out the wheelchair from where he stowed it in the wardrobe, and park it just next to the door. He has this moronic idea that he won’t let his men see him in the chair ever again, so I cross my arms in front of me and wait for him.
Ten minutes later, the door opens and he hobbles inside. He looks at the chair, then at me. I guess the expression on my face shows how furious I am, because he slowly sits down and passes me the crutches.
“I am so mad at you,” I sneer through my teeth, lean the crutches on the wall, then turn to take his face in my hands. “How bad is the pain?”
He meets my eyes, but doesn’t say anything, just grinds his teeth.
“Shit, baby.” I lean in and kiss his forehead. “I’m going to get your painkillers. Two?”
“Make it three.”
“Okay. Do you need help getting on the bed?”
“If you take off your clothes and wait for me there, it would be a nice incentive.”
“Not tonight, so don’t get your hopes up.” I brush his cheek and head into the kitchen.
When I climb into bed with Roman thirty minutes later, he’s already knocked out with the triple dose of painkillers. I take the opportunity to watch him. He’s usually up before me so I don’t get the chance to catch him unguarded. I move a few strands of hair that have fallen over his forehead, and trace the line of his eyebrows, nose, and chin with my finger, admiring his harsh features. God, I was scared shitless tonight. Without a word from him, I was afraid something bad happened.
We will need to have a serious discussion on that subject tomorrow. I don’t think he did it on purpose; I have a feeling Roman simply isn’t accustomed to having people being concerned for his wellbeing. He never talks about his childhood, and I suspect it wasn’t an easy one. There is so much I still don’t know about him. He rarely shares details regarding his business, and I think he’s trying to shield me from that side of his life. But I’m not stupid. In the eyes of the world, my husband is a bad guy. In my eyes, however, he’s just Roman. I don’t give a fuck about the rest, and that fact scares me a bit, too.