Jonah sagged with relief. “Finally. I’ve been calling you for days. Are you okay? Where the hell are you?”
“That is lot of questions for the middle of the night.”
“You weren’t asleep,” Jonah retorted. “You called me.”
“I did.”
“So?”
“So you told me to call you if I needed something.”
“What did you need?”
“You, Jonah. Your voice. I needed to hear it, if only for a moment.”
An emotion Jonah couldn’t describe rushed over him. “It doesn’t have to be a moment. I have time.”
“No, you don’t. It is late. You have to work tomorrow.”
“I have to go to the office. I don’t actually have much to do as we’re about to shut down for Christmas. Besides, you haven’t been concerned with me losing sleep every other time we’ve communicated in the middle of the night.”
“We were naked?”
“Probably. Do I have to keep my clothes on to make you care about me?”
“I do care about you.”
“Why? We’re not friends, remember?”
Another weary sigh crackled the line. “And yet here we are,” Sacha said. “You should not listen to me. Perhaps I am not a good judge of what we should define ourselves.”
“You would leave it up to me?”
“Maybe. I was thinking of that before, but now my head is so full I cannot think of much at all.”
“I’m sorry about your father.”
Sacha inhaled a soft breath. Jonah wondered if he was smoking. He’d never seen it, but Sacha often tapped his fingers like a restless ex-smoker, and he seemed the type.
“Are you okay?” Jonah asked when Sacha didn’t speak. “I know you weren’t close, but—”
“We were not,” Sacha said. “It is a relief that he is gone. I think I should feel bad about that, but I don’t.”
“Was he sick?”
“Yes. For long time. He drank a lot. Smoked a lot. Did not take care of himself.”
“Do you have siblings?”
“Step-siblings. I am not close to them either, but I have to come to Moscow to sign things for them. I will not stay to put him in the ground.”
“You’re in Russia?”
“I am. Does that surprise you?”
“It shouldn’t,” Jonah said. “I can’t explain why it does.”
“You do not need to. You are a good person, Jonah Gray. That is always enough for me, I am sorry if I ever made you feel like it wasn’t.”