The plane isn’t quite a private jet, but it’s nicer than the cargo plane that brought me here–a craft meant for passengers, at least. I follow Max down the aisle to a pair of seats, still feeling a little shaky, as Natalia brings up the rear behind Levin. She pauses as he sits down, a smile flickering across her face.
“Is there a seat there for me?” she asks teasingly, nodding toward the empty one next to him. “Since you seem to want to keep me here with you.” She winks at him, and Levin chuckles dryly.
“You can sit wherever you like,” he tells her mildly. “But that’ll be all we do–sit next to each other.”
Natalia gives a little pout as she takes the seat anyway, brushing her blonde hair to one side as she looks at him. Max is watching the exchange with an expression that makes me think he’s trying not to laugh, as my sister very obviously tries to flirt with Levin, both of them keeping their voices low enough that I think they’re not aware that we can still hear them.
“You don’t look like the kind of man who likes to disappoint a lady,” she says, that teasing lilt still in her voice. “I don’t know where we’re going, but I can imagine it must be a pretty long flight–”
Levin smirks. “You’re right. I’m not in the habit of disappointing ladies–which is why I don’t sleep with women who might mean something to me any longer. One night, and that’s it.” He glances at her. “You’re the kind of girl who deserves more than one night.”
That clearly catches Natalia off guard. She recovers quickly, laughing softly. “Oh, I think one night would make meveryhappy.”
Something falters ever so slightly in Levin’s casual smirk. “You remind me too much of a woman I knew once,” he says quietly. “Someone I loved very much and lost. So no. Not even just the one night.”
He hesitates, and then touches her hand lightly. “I’m sorry,” he says finally, and gets up, pausing at our seats and glancing down at Max and me. “We’re headed to Santorini,” he says. “I have a contact there who might be able to help us. It’ll be about twelve hours, so you might as well get some sleep.”
And then Levin strides up to the front of the plane in silence, leaving the three of us there.
20
SASHA
I want more than anything to talk to Max about everything that’s happened, but the exhaustion is too much. I end up falling asleep with my head pillowed on his shoulder, curled inwards towards him on my seat, wanting to take advantage of every moment that I might be able to be this close to him.
I don’t know how long I sleep for. My dreams are fractured, a mess of panicked running and strange mazes, the feeling of being chased, the thread running through all of it. I wake up groggy and not as rested as I would have liked, my hair sliding out of the bun I’d tossed it up into and draping over Max’s shoulder.
I sit up, wrapping it back into the hair tie as I wipe at my eyes with my other hand. “Are we there yet?” I ask Max half-jokingly, and he laughs.
“About another six hours.” He nods towards the aisle across from us. “Your sister has been snoring the entire time.”
I glance over at Natalia, who is curled into a ball on one of the seats, fast asleep. “Did you get any rest?” I look back at Max worriedly. “You’ve got to be exhausted too.”
He smiles wryly. “I’ve gotten enough sleep before coming here with Levin to last me a while. In fact, after coming so close to never waking up, I think I’d be happy to not sleep again for a good long time.”
“I thought I’d lost you.” I pull away from him a little, so I can better see his face. “I thought you were dead. I thought I’d watched you die–”
The words catch in my throat, choking me. I can feel my eyes starting to burn with tears, and Max reaches out, his hand cupping my face as his thumb brushes away the first one that starts to fall.
“I’m sorry you had to think that for as long as you did. I wanted to come find you so much sooner, but–”
“I know.” I swallow hard, leaning into his caress. Each time he touches me feels precious, not just because I don’t know how long it will last, but because I know how close I really did come to losing him forever. It wasn’t just a misunderstanding. He’d come a hairsbreadth from it, and I can’t forget that. “You came as soon as you could.”
Max smiles wanly. “How do you know? I haven’t told you what happened yet, between that night at the estate and finding you.”
I reach up, covering his hand with mine. “Because I know you’d always come for me if you could. I know that you’d always protect me.”
“You did a pretty good job managing without me.” Max’s hand drops from my face, but his fingers slide through mine, still holding my hand.
It occurs to me then that since we’ve been reunited, Max has touched me more casually than he ever has in the past. Before, it was always a fight, both of us trying to keep from touching one another so that it didn’t spill over into a conflagration of desire that we wouldn’t be able to stop. Now, it feels different.
“A lot of it was Natalia,” I confess, tightening my fingers around his. “I would have been dead days before you got there if she hadn’t crashed into Obelensky’s office.” I glance over at my sleeping sister. “I owe her a lot.”
“So do I,” Max says quietly. “If I had lost you, Sasha–I don’t know how I would have continued on. I made so many mistakes–”
My heart speeds up in my chest, suddenly racing with a hope that I hadn’t dared to rekindle. “I felt the same way,” I whisper. “I was terrified of dying, of course, and more terrified that Edo would give me to Art, to let him do what he wanted with me.”
I see Max’s jaw tighten at the mention of that, and of Art, but I push forward anyway. “More than anything, though, I felt as if it didn’t really matter if you were gone. I didn’t want to be in a world where you weren’t, even if we weren’t together–you being gone completely–”