41. Ariel
41
ARIEL
I wake to cold sheets where Sasha should be. The space beside me still holds the indent of his body, but it’s been empty long enough for the heat to fade.
My heart knows what that means long before my head does.
But it’s early in the morning, when things and thoughts are fuzzy and dreamy, so I let myself pretend for a little while that I don’t know what my bones are telling me has already begun.
When I make my way downstairs, though, each step feels heavier than the last. Down here, I won’t be able to pretend anymore. The twins are restless, turning and kicking like they’re every bit as uneasy as I am. I pause on the final stair, one hand pressed against the swell of my belly, trying to soothe them.
Or maybe trying to soothe myself.
The sound of a zipper is what draws me down the last few steps. I round the corner to see Sasha in the entryway, methodically folding clothes into a black duffel bag. His movements are precise, practiced—the routine of a man who’s packed for war before. His gun rests in a holster on the kitchen counter. I could swear I see a fleck of blood gleaming on the nozzle.
He doesn’t look up, but his shoulders tense. He knows I’m here.
“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” I croak. “You’re going back.”
He keeps packing. “We knew we’d get here eventually, Ariel. This isn’t a surprise.”
“What happened to ‘not until the babies come’?”
He’s half-turned away, but the muscle cording in his jaw is all the answer I need. “Things changed.”
“What kinds of things?”
“The kinds of things that don’t concern you.”
“Be more fucking vague, I dare you,” I snap.
He pauses, a shirt folded in his hands, before sighing and setting it down. “I thought you trusted me to make the right choices for us. For this family.”
I want to laugh in his face. Or maybe kiss it. Or maybe claw it to ribbons, I’m not sure. This is the ice I was talking about in my journal entries. I feel myself shivering from it, like little pieces of me are numbing with every passing second. “And I thought you trusted me enough to tell me when you were planning on going to do something stupid.”
“Is it ‘stupid’ to keep you safe?” he asks as he picks up the gun and pops out the clip. This time, there’s no mistaking what I see—there are two fewer bullets in there than there ought to be.
“It’s stupid if it costs you to make that happen!” I cry out. “Sasha, what don’t you understand: A safe world that doesn’t have you in it is not the world I want to live in!”
He rams the clip back into the gun with a clack that makes my heart ache. Then he looks up at me. “Two men broke in last night, Ariel. They’re buried in the garden now.” He advances on me, and I step back instinctively, almost screaming when my heel strikes the wall at my back. “They were idiots. But what happens when two more come after that? And two after that? And two after that? And what happens if those next men aren’t idiots, hm? What happens if there are trained killers slipping through our windows and rappelling down our roof? What the fuck do you think happens if I don’t put myself between you and them? I’ll tell you what happens.” He points two fingers in the shape of a gun at my forehead and whispers, “ Bang.” Then he lowers them to the crest of my belly. “ Bang. Bang. ”
My face is hot and streaked with tears as I slap his hand aside. He says something, but I don’t hear, nor do I want to. Right now, I just want to be far the fuck away from Sasha Ozerov.
I storm outside, needing air, needing space, needing anything that isn’t the sight of a duffel bag in the doorway with a half-empty gun resting on top.
But I only get about two steps into the garden before I freeze in place.
It’s an absolute disaster. Jagged basil stems, leaves ripped clean. Torn oregano roots dangle like exposed nerves. The dirt is churned everywhere, all of our neat rows completely wrecked. I’m ready to blame Sasha—didn’t he just say what he did to my garden? But it’s not so easy to blame him. It never really is, is it?
Because standing in the middle of it all is the true culprit.
A goat.
A fucking goat.
The creature lifts its head, jaw working side to side, green flecks caught in its beard. It blinks at me with rectangular pupils, thoroughly unrepentant.
“Hey,” I say. Weak. Like I’m the intruder here.
It stomps a hoof into the rosemary. Crushed needles release their pine-sharp stink.
My hands flutter uselessly. Eight weeks of Jasmine and me coaxing life from this stubborn Tuscan soil. Eight weeks of pressing seeds into dirt, whispering, “Grow, grow, please just grow” as my own body swelled.
Now, it’s all mud and teeth-marks. Ruined.
The goat bleats.
“Get—” I swipe at my cheeks. “Get out .”
It doesn’t. Just lowers its head and takes a deliberate bite of my last surviving lavender. Purple petals vanish between yellowed molars.
Something in me snaps.
I lurch forward, waving arms made clumsy by thirty-four weeks of twins. “I said go ! Shoo! Vaffanculo , you—you bastard !”
It trots three steps left. Stops. Chews. Stares.
My bare feet get sucked into the hungry mud as I give chase. The goat dodges with infuriating ease, dancing a few yards out of reach to take another bite.
“Why won’t you just listen?!”
The words rip loose from somewhere deep inside me, raw and shrill. The goat freezes. For one glorious second, I think I’ve won.
Then it pisses on the chamomile.
A sound escapes me—half-laugh, half-sob. Of course. Of course! Why would the goat do what I want it to? Why would Sasha? Why would anyone? I feel like I’ve spent my whole life being shunted from one manipulator to the next. Baba, Sasha—now, I’ve got a fucking goat bossing me around, wrecking the last things left that I care about and pissing on the remains.
I sink to my knees, the hem of my nightgown soaking up the dirty water from last night’s rain, and let the tears come. I cry like I haven’t since I was a little girl. It’s not about the garden, not really. It’s about Sasha leaving without warning, about the blood on his gun that I have to lie to myself and pretend I didn’t see, about the two fresh graves somewhere in this very soil that I’m kneeling in.
The goat chomps away, unconcerned with my breakdown. Through my tears, I watch it demolish the last of my mint.
“I hate you,” I tell it wetly. “I hate you so fucking much.”
It just bleats again, mouth full of my hard work, my careful planning, my desperate attempt at creating something permanent in a world that keeps shifting under my feet.
Mud squelches from behind. Sasha’s shadow falls across the wreckage of the herbs, long and lethal. I don’t look back, but in front of me, the goat glances up, bleats softly, then turns and scampers away into the hills.
“Ari—”
“Don’t.” I shove aside the hand offering to help me up. Instead, I get up on my own, even though it’s harder than ever these days. My knees peel from the mud with a sound like tearing skin.
That doesn’t stop him from trying to touch me again. This time, when I smack his hand away, I do it with a purpose. “I said don’t, Sasha.”
His eyes are sad and patient. “Just wait and?—”
“Wait for what? The next disaster? The next time you vanish to play mobster while I?—”
“This is why I’m going.” His scar glows white with tension. “To end the disasters. To keep you safe.”
“Safe?” A hysterical laugh escapes. I gesture at the garden. “You can’t even protect basil!”
He steps into my space, mint and cedar and misery all flowing together. “You think I want this? To leave you pregnant with my children in some?—”
“ Our children.” My voice cracks. “And yes, I do think that. Because you’re good at leaving. It’s what you do best.”
Something flickers in his eyes—a wound, swiftly buried. Good. Let him feel it.
He reaches for me. “ Ptichka ?—”
I slap his hand away for the third time. “Don’t. Don’t soothe. Don’t lie. You’ll march off to die nobly, and I’ll be here—” My palm taps my belly. “—alone with them, explaining why the dirt stays empty. Why nothing ever grows.”
His jaw knots. “We’ll replant.”
“It’s not about the plants, goddammit!” I say. “It’s about… about building something that lasts. Something the world can’t just eat.” I sweep my arm around to encompass the garden. “You want to know what this is really about? Look at this. Really look at it. Eight weeks of work destroyed in, what, twenty minutes? That’s our life right there. Everything we build gets trampled. Everything we plant gets fucking devoured. And now, you’re leaving, and I’m supposed to just sit here and twiddle my fucking thumbs while I hope you come back? While I hope you don’t end up buried in some unmarked grave while I’m changing diapers alone?”
A breeze riffles the remaining seedlings. He follows my gaze to the goat’s hoofprint sinking into soft soil.
“I’m coming back,” he says.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“Bullshit.” My laugh tastes like brine. “You’re rushing into war half-healed because you’d rather die a king than live as a man who?—”
“Who what?” He crowds me against the villa wall, hands caging my hips. “A man who stays? Who tends gardens? You think that’s who I am?”
Tears in my eyes blur his face. “I think you’re terrified to find out.”
The silence is devastating. His eyes search mine like he keeps hoping I’ll take mercy on him. But I’m not the one doing the torturing here—he is. I can’t even be mad, because I’m the one who handed my heart to a killer and told him to do with it as he pleased.
I have only myself to blame for where we’ve ended up.
“I don’t even know if I can do this without you,” I croak. “These babies… God, Sasha, what if I’m terrible at this? What if something goes wrong during the birth and you’re not here? What if—” He reaches for me again, but I step back, wrapping my arms around my belly. “No. You don’t get to comfort me right now. You’re choosing to go. You’re choosing to leave us here alone. So you have to live with seeing exactly what that does to me.”
“Ariel—”
“Just go,” I whisper. “Go back to New York. Go fight your war. But don’t expect me to pretend I’m okay with it. Because I’m not. I’m really, really not.”
For one heartbeat, I let myself believe he might stay. His eyes soften at the corners, his fingers twitch toward me, and hope blooms like a dangerous flower in my chest.
But then he turns and walks away.
My knees give out and I slide down the villa wall, unable to hold back the sobs anymore. They tear out of me like living things, these fears I’ve been carrying. Fear of being alone. Fear of raising our babies without him. Fear of him dying out there in the cold streets of New York while I’m trapped here in the sun-drenched hills of Tuscany, miserable in paradise, powerless to save him.
The burglars died first this morning.
The garden died second.
My hope is the last thing to go.