Yes, I do.
“Katya.”
I shake my head. “You don’t understand.” I make myself look at him.
“What don’t I understand? He touched you. He touched you when you were a child in his care.”
“I used to come when he did it.” I wait for his reaction. For his repulsion. I’ve never said this out loud. Ever. His expression, though, doesn’t change. “It’s sick, huh?” I bite my lip to keep it from trembling, but I’m shaking all over now.
“That’s physical. Just your body’s natural reaction.”
“Natural?” I almost laugh but it sounds crazed. “There’s nothing natural about that.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Katya. You know that.”
I look down now.
“Is she dead? The woman?”
I shake my head.
“But you killed him.”
My gaze snaps up to his. No one knows that.
“You stabbed him in the gut.”
“How do you know that?”
“Is that why you were sent to juvenile detention?”
I just keep staring.
“But they blamed Joshua. It doesn’t make sense, though. That Joshua died the way he did because how did George do that in self-defense if he had a knife in his gut? And just the size difference between them.” He pauses, and I think about Nina again. That expression she’d use of doing the math. Lev’s doing the math. “What was Joshua, barely a hundred and twenty pounds was what the coroner’s report said. That dick was a big guy. Did they know what he’d done to you? That the husband and wife were abusing you?”
“I don’t know if they knew all along, but if they did, they covered it up because a case like this getting out would be bad for them. Kids left in a foster home where they were abused and the caseworker was oblivious, or worse? It doesn’t look good. Joshua was dead, so he was the one they accused of doing the actual stabbing even though they knew it was me. I was sentenced as an accomplice, but they pinned the majority of the blame on Joshua. I wasn’t fully responsible because Joshua had manipulated me, they’d said. I served my time in that detention center. My records were sealed because I was a minor, but I think also, again, to cover their asses. Those people don’t care about the children they’re supposed to be protecting.”
“I’m going to make it slow when I kill her,” he says. He traces the burned skin on the inside of my arm. “Maybe show her what this feels like.”
Should I be upset by this? Tell him no? Not to do it?
I’m not, and I don’t.
Instead, I kiss him. I stand on my tiptoes and kiss his lips with mine, and I realize something at that moment. And maybe it should scare me, this thing. No, it should definitely scare me.
Lev and I are bound to one another. I feel like we were from that first meeting. But it’s more than that.
I think I love him.
“Stop crying, sweetheart,” he tells me, hugging me to him, then sliding his hand between us to that other scar, the good one. “Tell me about this. Tell me about the day my son was born.”
24
Kat
I wake up to little hands pushing the hair from my face.
“Hi, Mommy,” Josh’s smile is wide when I open my eyes, and he launches himself against me. I hug him tight, squeezing his little body. He smells like sleep and laundry detergent, and I can’t get enough.
This feeling, I think, this is joy. And I want to hold on to it for as long as I can because I know when I let him go, the fear will creep in again.
“Pasha made pancakes!”
“He did?” I ask. Sitting up, I scratch my head as I look at the clock beside the bed. It’s a little after seven in the morning, and I’m not sure when I came in here. Lev and I fell asleep on the smaller bed in what’s meant to be Josh’s room after making love for an eternity.
I warm at the memory. Last night, he’d made love to me. He’d kissed every inch of me, scars and all, and he’d loved me.
“With blueberries and even marshmallows inside them,” Josh continues, and I guess I had drifted off in the memory of last night because I must have missed part of his sentence.
“Pancakes with marshmallows in them?” I raise my eyebrows, and Josh’s huge smile makes his eyes sparkle.
He nods. “I taught him,” he says, and he knows he’s about to get away with it when I squeeze his cheeks, then pull him to me to hug him again.
When I touch his bare feet, I feel how cold they are. “Did you go downstairs all by yourself?”
He nods very proudly. “Don’t worry, I held on,” he says, trying to roll his eyes but just managing to tilt his head way back in the attempt. We don’t have stairs at our house in Colorado, and I guess they still make me nervous with him.
“Isn’t Lev here?” I ask, knowing he’s not because if he were, he’d have put socks on Josh’s feet.
“Pasha said he had to go to work. I’m going to get a toy from my room,” he says and disappears.
I get up, grab a hoodie and a pair of jeans out of our meager duffel, and quickly get dressed. I brush my teeth and comb my hair with my fingers—my brush is one of the things I forgot to pack in my haste. I don’t bother with makeup before making my way downstairs with Josh.
“Good morning,” I say to Pasha, looking around.
“Good morning, Katerina,” he says. He’s a nice guy, but having him here doesn’t make me feel as safe as when Lev is here.
“Where’s Lev?”
“He got a call earlier. Said he’ll be back as soon as he can.”
“Was it Vasily who called?”
Pasha glances at Josh and gives me a short nod before returning his attention to the pancakes.
I get myself a cup of coffee and find my phone, which is on the coffee table. It’s still strange not to have anyone’s numbers from school or from our lives in Colorado. It’s like none of that happened. Like those years didn’t exist.
When I touch the screen, I see I only have 1% battery left, but before I go searching for a charger, I see the message on the screen.
Lev: I’ll be back as soon as I can.
That’s all. Nothing else.
I consider texting him to ask where he is, but if he’s with Vasily, it’s probably best not to do that.
“Do you know where I can charge this?” I ask Pasha.
Pasha points at a drawer where I find odds and ends, including several different types of chargers. I wonder who else has used this house as a safe house. Who has been here before me, and how has it ended for them?
Finding the charger that fits my phone, I plug it into the wall and turn to watch Josh eat a marshmallow pancake.
“You know, marshmallow pancakes aren’t really a thing, right?” I say to Pasha with a smile.
He winks. “What do you mean? They’re delicious.” He plates a pancake and hands it to me.
“Thanks,” I say, noticing this one is blueberry. “Did you eat?” I ask him.
He just nods, and I see how his glance gets serious when it shifts to the window before returning to the pan on the stove. As relaxed as he looks standing there, he’s a soldier. He’s most likely armed beneath the hoodie he’s wearing, and I have no doubt he’s deadly.