I’m groggy as I meet his smile with my own.
“How did we get upstairs?”
“You don’t remember?” he asks, raising his eyebrows and sliding his fingertips over the length of my bare shoulder.
But then it comes back to me, and a blush burns my cheeks as I recall what we did when we got upstairs.
“There you go.” He sits up, and I do the same, tucking the blanket over myself.
“What time is it? Why hasn’t Josh come barreling in here?”
“It’s ten, and I think Gleb’s keeping him busy.”
I turn to Lev, my face serious again as I study him. No cuts or bruises. But I remember the question from last night that he never answered.
“What did you do, Lev? Where did you go? I need you to tell me.”
He gets up out of bed and pulls on his jeans.
When he does that, I reach to grab his discarded T-shirt and slip it over my head, sitting up and watching as he picks up his leather jacket.
He used to have one like it before too. That and the white T-shirts he still wears. I remember how I pretty much fell into him the first time we met and smeared magenta lipstick across that pristine white shirt. It feels like an eternity ago. Another lifetime.
“I brought your things,” he starts. “From the apartment you shared with Rachel.”
“What?”
“I collected them the night you took off.”
I remember Rachel telling me that.
“They’re in my car.”
He carries his jacket over and takes two things out of a pocket, then sets the jacket aside and sits down.
“Do you remember what I promised you a long time ago?” he starts, still keeping what he’s holding out of my sight but picking up my arm and turning it over to trace the scarred skin, compliments of Mrs. George after she made me burn the record of abuse Joshua and I had been keeping.
I feel my face drain of blood and my stomach tighten.
“What did you do, Lev?”
“I promised you I’d punish her. And I promise to punish anyone who ever tries to hurt you or our family again.”
“Lev?”
“She doesn’t deserve your tears. She paid. And she’s gone now.”
He opens his hand and lets what he’s holding fall, my gut clenching as I recognize the chain that’s unraveling. The hideous cross that dangles from it.
My hand is at my mouth, and I lean away, my eyes locked on that thing. That cross she’d clutch. I can almost hear her voice, hear her prayers while she stood by as he did what he did to us.
“Hey.” Lev closes his hand around it, eyes urgent on mine when I lift mine to his. “I thought...fuck, I don’t know what I thought. I’ll get rid of it.”
He turns to walk away, but I catch his arm.
“No. It’s not...you didn’t do anything wrong. I just...seeing it again...” I swallow back the lump in my throat and steel my spine. “Give it to me.” I hold out my hand.
“I’ll take care of it. Get rid of it.”
I shake my head. “I need to do that. I need to bury it.”
He studies me for a long time, then finally pockets the thing.
“Lev—”
“We’ll do it together.”
“But—”
“There’s something else. Something much more important, Kat.”
He shows me the other thing, and my heart hammers against my chest in anticipation of what other piece of the past I’ll be confronted with.
“I know you lost your scarf. The one Joshua gave you. I know how important it was to you.”
My face falls a little at the thought. After what happened with Vasily, the hotel had cleared out our room, but when Lev picked up what was there, the scarf wasn’t among our things. I’m not surprised. It was so ragged they probably thought it was trash.
“It’s okay, Lev. I—”
“I found this. It’s not the same thing, but I thought you’d want to have it.”
I’m afraid to look down as he turns it over and holds it out to me, but I do, and this time, it’s like something squeezes my heart. I reach out to take the wrinkled old photograph.
Joshua and me. Cassie took the picture with one of those instant cameras. The photo is faded, but I can still make it out.
“We can see about having it restored,” he says.
I can’t answer him. There’s a lump in my throat I can’t quite breathe around, and I wipe away a tear.
Joshua and me in Halloween costumes. We’re both skeletons. All three of us were. The Georges wanted to show us around town, their charity cases.
“She had it framed beside her bed if you can believe that,” Lev says.
In the photo, I’m smiling, leaning my head on Joshua’s shoulder. He’s taking a bite of a huge Snickers bar and laughing around it. In my hand, I have my jack-o’-lantern to carry our candy.
We’d had fun that night.
“Kat? You okay? Shit, another bad idea?”
I shake my head and look up at him, hugging him, letting myself cry for a moment when he can’t see me. Letting myself mourn once more.
“It’s in the past now. If I could bring him back, I would, but I can’t, and the rest, it’s done. She’s dead. It’s over. Bury it, Kat. Let’s have a future.”
He draws back, digs something out of his pocket. It’s a small box. I recognize that special, happy blue.
I look up at him, and he’s watching me. He takes both my hands in his and just touches his mother’s ring, which I’m still wearing on my right ring finger.
“Time to make it official,” he says.
“What did you do?” I ask, my tone different than the last time I asked the same question.
He opens the box and turns it to me, and I try to imagine Lev in a Tiffany store, and it makes me laugh. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just nervous, but I can’t help it.
“That’s not exactly the reaction I expected.”
I look up from the engagement ring. The platinum band holding a single, perfect diamond at the center. Simple and elegant and…
“I love it.” I throw my arms around his shoulders and hug him hard. He hugs me back, dropping the box on the bed when he does, holding me so tight.
I wonder how I’d survived so long before he found us. How I survived when he wasn’t there to hold me like this.
He draws back, and there’s a warmth in the air, something just for us.
“Will you marry me, Katya?”
Six Months Later
Epilogue 1
Kat
I look at my reflection as the hairdresser pins my veil to the chignon she’d made earlier. She has set my bangs off to the side and has curled a long strand to fall softly over my right temple.
The dress is beautiful. It’s absolutely not something I would have chosen or even looked at simply because the price was insane, but Gleb insisted. I would have argued except that when I turned to look at him and saw the tears in his eyes, I couldn’t.
But the veil. My goodness.
It’s a cathedral length ivory veil of the most intricate lace I’ve ever seen. It was my grandmother’s, apparently, and I love it. I love everything about it.