“Come here,” he tells me.
I go to him without hesitation. Truthfully, I think I’d do anything he says as long as he looks at me like that when he says it.
I plunk down on the bed next to him. He wraps his arm around me and pulls me close. His smell breezes over me, musky and masculine. I missed that, too.
Phoenix smiles and reaches a hand out for me. I wind my fingers through his and lean in to kiss his cheek.
“My sweet boy,” I say softly to him.
“Where’d you go?” Artem asks.
“For a walk,” I tell him. “I needed to… think.”
He nods at that, but I can’t really read his expression.
“Sara told me to give you a message,” he says suddenly.
I turn to him. “Yeah?”
“She told me to tell you that she thinks about you every day.”
I smile, feeling my eyes cloud a little. As horrific as the last few months have been, the people I’ve met along the way has made it bearable. Sara is a gem in an ugly world.
“How did she seem to you?”
“It looked like she was doing her best to cope.”
I nod. I get that. I get that so much.
“You saved her from being raped,” Artem says gently, as though waiting for me to confirm it.
I glance at him, and he’s looking me with a soft expression.
But he also looks… proud?
“I couldn’t let him do that to her,” I say. “Not after… I know what it’s like to have a man you don’t want touching you, touching you.”
Artem stiffens. He remembers that. The night we met, a lifetime ago, in that dark club bathroom…
“It’s a violation no human being should ever have to suffer,” I go on. “I was heavily pregnant. I was so scared. But I just couldn’t stand by and do nothing.”
“Of course not,” Artem says. “That’s not who you are.”
“I think I killed him.”
“You didn’t,” Artem replies.
“Really?”
“Really,” Artem nods. “I asked. You injured him. Badly. But you didn’t kill him.”
I sigh. “I don’t know how to feel about that.”
“If you had killed him, he would have deserved it,” he points out.
“True. More than most.”
He leans in and kisses my lips gently. “It seems you leave quite an impression wherever you go.”