Then he swallowed, the movement sharp as a blade. “Volim te?” He carried each syllable carefully, like the meaning might shatter.
I nodded. “That’s the one.” I tried for casual, to play it off, but the words snagged in my throat. “It’s beautiful. I just…don’t know what it means.”
Luka didn’t answer.
Instead, he reached for me, pulling me against him—fast enough to steal the air from my lungs. He held my head, my cheek pressed against his chest, his arm tight around my shoulders.
“You don’t have to—” I started, but he pressed a finger to my lips and held it there.
“Shh. If I don’t say it now, I never will.”
He took a breath that lifted his whole chest.
“It means…I love you.”
chapter
thirty-one
My brain scrambled for a way to react—to laugh, to dodge, to rationalize—but I just sat, stunned and raw.
My body believed him.
I pulled back just enough to see him. Put my hands on either side of his face, thumbs warm against his jaw. His eyes didn’t flicker. Didn’t hedge. He held my gaze, open and unguarded.
I leaned in and kissed him. Slow, deep, deliberate. Luka met me with equal force, hands locking around my hips, pulling me closer until the ache in my chest folded into relief. There was no music, no cinematic lighting, just the wheeze of the fridge and the purr of Atlanta traffic leaking through the kitchen window. But the moment felt, for once, like enough.
A shrill, digital ping shattered the air.
We both jerked. Luka stilled, then blinked hard, focusing on the middle distance.
“What was that?” I asked, heat prickling up my neck as I pulled away.
He was already in motion, scooping up his discarded underwear and jeans from the floor and yanking them on.
“Something’s wrong,” he said, sitting bare-chested at the kitchen table, firing off keystrokes.
I pulled on my panties and shirt, not bothering with a bra—I wasn’t entirely sure where it had landed anyway—and crossed over to him. He was staring at the center monitor, lips pinched into a thin line, blue glare slicing the angles of his face. The scrolling field of windows reflected in microcosm across the orbits of his eyes.
“Luka, what is it?”
He looked up at me.
“Richard is dead.”
The words hung in the air of my kitchen, heavy as wet laundry. I had to puncture the silence just to be sure I’d heard right. “What did you just say?”
Luka didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “Richard is dead.”
The fridge’s compressor cycled on—a high-pitched whine—while I tried to parse the implications. I glanced at the monitor, but it was all code and staccato news tickers. “Dead how?”
He pressed a key. The window shifted to the BBC homepage. A stoic professional headshot of Richard stared back at me. The key points of the article were bulleted at the top of the text.
Richard Montgomery, 57, found dead at his London residence, police confirm.