When he turned back, the hardness had eased at the edges. He came to me and cupped my face, his thumb brushing beneath my eyes, wiping away tears I hadn’t noticed.
“Beautiful mess.”
I believed him.
I was.
chapter
twenty-one
“Don’t move.”
As if I could.
Cold metal nudged against my sternum.
Snick. Snick. Snick.
My limbs fell heavy and listless as Luka systematically destroyed the cable harness he’d taken such care to construct.
Once freed, I sat up and rolled my shoulders, the joints cracking like popcorn. Every inch of me ached. My hair clung to the back of my neck in damp ropes. My body felt like it had been through a cement mixer and poured out again, but the first full breath I took was bliss.
Luka knelt beside the table and took hold of my wrists. Bright-red twin bands circled them where the zip tie had bitten down. His touch was careful, almost reverent, as he traced the grooves and worked the circulation back into my hands. He didn’t speak. He just eased the soreness from one wrist, then the other.
“Are we…done?” I asked.
“No.” Luka’s mouth tipped in a brief grin. “But if I don’t pace you, you’ll need a wheelchair to get on the plane tomorrow.”
I let my head fall back, eyes tracing the hairline cracks in his ceiling. “Don’t remind me.”
He finished rubbing the last trace of ache from my wrists and finally looked up. His expression had closed off again—a wall, the kind made to withstand sieges.
I pulled in a breath, determined not to let the moment slide past. I’d had enough of silence. Enough of letting things go unsaid. Of letting the world happen to me.
“So what happens now?” I asked. The words sounded too thin, too flimsy, in the room. But it was all I could come up with.
Luka sat back on his heels, hands loose on his thighs. “We fuck,” he said with a shrug. “Then I’ll take you to your hotel to pack. And then to the airport in the morning.”
I waited for more.
He didn’t add anything. The words settled and stayed there.
“That’s not what I meant.” I swallowed, the taste sharp at the back of my throat. “Do we just…call it a day? That’s it?”
He stood, slow and deliberate, and began gathering the cut lengths of cable, looping them methodically between his hands. “What do you want me to say?”
I hugged my knees to my chest, balancing on the edge of his coffee table. “I don’t know. That you don’t want me to go. That you’ll miss me. That you’re as pissed off about this whole thing as I am.”
He stopped and set the bundle of cable on the sofa. “Do you need to hear those things?”
I stared at him, waiting for the crack—for the shift, the hint of softness. But he just kept his eyes locked on me, unwavering. Heat crept up my neck. I felt exposed. Ridiculous.
I looked down at my knees. “Not if you don’t mean them.”
He crossed the space in two swift strides, took my jaw in his hand, and tipped my face up. “Iwillmiss you,” he said, blue eyes blazing. “And I’m fucking pissed you have to go so soon. Butit is what it is. I can’t change it.” He crouched and dipped his forehead to mine. “We’ve got, what, twelve hours before I have to leave you at the airport?”
I nodded, but it wasn’t really a question.