Chapter 51
Roman
Roman woke early in his bed without her. The sheets on Elenie’s side were cold. He didn’t know how long she’d been gone. Fear settled low in his stomach. Making a quick call to Dougie, he drove across town and up the hill, parking in front of the Dax house next to the 2010 Camaro he knew belonged to Tyson.
He had no doubt at all that he’d find her here.
The front door was shut and locked. Whoever Dougie had called to mend the damage from the raid had done a good job. Walking around the side of the house, Roman crossed the shabby backyard and ducked under an empty clothesline. The handle on the back door turned easily in his grip and he let himself into the kitchen.
Something tacky on the old floor tiles pulled at the soles of his shoes. Looking beyond the mess the DEA team had caused in their search, Roman took in the cabinet doors hanging off their hinges and the pile of dirty pans on the counter. Even before the cutlery drawer had been upended on the floor, this room wouldn’t have won any awards for cleanliness.
On impulse, he pulled open the door of the fridge. Eight beers, two cans of cider, a tub of butter, and three bottles of nail polish.
Roman walked into the hall. He considered calling out but the contents of the fridge had stolen his voice and he couldn’t get Elenie’s name past the lump in his throat. He paused in the doorway of the living room. The cushions had been dragged from an enormous couch and ripped apart, the same done to an armchair. Empty cans, broken glasses, newspapers, overturned ashtrays, and random pieces of clothing were littered across a mud-colored carpet that had seen better days. A huge television stood upright and undamaged on a black glass stand, presiding over the chaos around it. The weak morning light, streaming in through the window, illuminated the room in all its bleakness. A stale smell of cigarettes, weed, and body odor hung in the air, clinging to the curtains and soft furnishings.
Roman’s eye twitched.
Crossing the dingy hallway, he began to climb the stairs. The landing was small, with two bedrooms on one side and two on the other. All the doors were open. Mattresses had been tossed, pillows cut open, drawers pulled out and the contents dumped on the floor.
The sound of movement drew him to the doorway of a compact bedroom. Inside, Elenie tugged at a thin, single mattress which leaned on its longest side against the wall. She wrestled it back onto the bedframe. Someone had taken a knife to the material and long slashes ran across its width, exposing the coils of metal inside. An open closet held nothing but hangers. She bent over to pick up some clothes from the floor.
Roman shifted in the doorway and Elenie shot him a sideways glance. The hollow expression on her face cut him to ribbons. So pale this morning she was almost translucent, she’d pulled on fresh jeans and a sweater. There was something purposeful about her movements.
“I’m sorry about the mess.”
His words fell like stones into murky water.
“Not my first raid. And you did warn me.”
Elenie folded a t-shirt in her hands and laid it on the bed, gathering up a few more pieces from the floor. Roman watched her add her denim jacket, a hairbrush, and a few items of makeup to the small pile of clothes.
“What are you doing?”
His voice sounded rough even to his own ears.
“I want my things. There’s not much. And I’m not coming back here.”
She kept moving, kept folding, and a vise clamped around Roman’s chest.
She was going to leave.
“Let me explain about Zena.”
He was dangerously close to pleading.
“I went to a work function with her because she threatened to blow your cover if I didn’t. And I couldn’t risk it. I should have told you but I thought I could save you from dealing with another complication.”
“It’s OK. I get it.”
The smile brushing Elenie’s lips was empty.
“Your relationship with Zena is none of my business. You don’t need to feel responsible for me anymore. You’ve already done so much. More than anyone else ever has. I’ll be fine.”
Her bravery crucified him, even as his fingernails bit into his palms. She was ripping his heart out with both hands, leaving him hollow and bloody.
“What about me?”
His voice broke on the question.
“What do you mean?”
“What if I won’t be fine?”
Roman pushed away from the doorframe.
Elenie wouldn’t look at him.
“Of course you’ll be fine. This was just a small setback for you. The rest of your secondment will fly by. You’ll head back to Detroit stronger than ever.”
He closed his eyes. Even now, she believed in him.
“I’m not going back to Detroit. I don’t want my old job. And I don’t want Zena.”
That stopped her folding clothes.
His senses on overdrive, synapses vibrating, Roman was hyperaware of the scent of his own shampoo in Elenie’s hair, the rhythm of her breath, the tremor of her hands.
She turned to face him, her reply choppy.
“Zena is the perfect partner for you.”
He shook his head.
“Nothing about Zena is perfect for me. She’s self-centered and egotistical and she wanted me for what I gave her, never who I was. I felt pressured into proposing at a time when I was struggling. I wasn’t thinking clearly then, but I am now.”
Roman never took his eyes off Elenie’s face.
“There’s been a space in my life exactly your size, just waiting for you. Now you’ve filled it, you’ve ruined me for anyone else.”
Elenie clasped a dress to her chest. It was the one she’d worn for their fake date at the Barrel.
“You deserve more. I’m just a complication you’re better off without. I need to make a fresh start somewhere I’m not hated for my surname.”
Roman took one long stride into the tiny room. The fuck he’d let her leave.
“I don’t know if you’ve checked your phone at all, but mine has blown up with everyone asking about you. I haven’t even had time to answer the messages. My mom and dad, Thea, Flo, Summer, Dougie, Otto—even Caitlyn called from the hospital. You have so many more friends than you realize.”
His fists clenched and released, clenched and released.
“And you’re so far from a complication it isn’t even funny. You are my calm. My place of peace. You saved me. Being able to share what I went through saved me. I’m coming to terms with my ghosts because of you and I’m managing to let them go because of you. There’s nothing I want in Detroit anymore. My home is here. Because of you.”
She opened her mouth but Roman couldn’t stop the torrent of words he’d been kicking himself for not saying last night.
“I was there yesterday. I heard your mother, so I know what you’re thinking. But Athena was wrong, Elenie. She’s selfish and desperate and she’s completely wrong. You are so much more than nothing. You’re everything to me.”
She sagged against the wall, searching his face.
“My family—”
“I don’t give a damn about your family. And I couldn’t give less of a shit if anyone else has an opinion about us. You have more strength and courage than anyone I’ve ever met. I’ll support you and protect you in any way I can if you let me. I like the person I am when I’m with you. Everything I am and everything I have belongs to you. It has from the minute we kissed at the gala dinner.”
Roman lifted his hands to grip her arms, his fingers shaking, heart hammering inside his rib cage like a concrete breaker.
“Feel it, Elenie, and believe it. Take it. I’m all yours.”
He bent his head to taste her chilled lips. She sucked in a pained breath, like someone being shocked back to life.
“I love you, Elenie.”
Roman murmured the words against her mouth, pulling her closer into his body.
“I love you and I love your beautiful face and your sexy body and your incredible facts and your odd sense of humor. I want to buy you new underwear and eat cotton candy and too much pizza and see your wonderful smile every single day.”
He kissed her again, his tongue dipping between her lips with a growl.
“I want to share my family and my friends with you because they all love you, too. There’s only half of me left when I’m not with you.”
Elenie’s eyes filled. She pulled his head back down and pressed her mouth to his, fingers curling through his hair. A sound—part sob, part laugh, part sigh—bubbled from her throat.
“I think I love you, too.”
Her voice rasped around the words he suspected she’d never said before.
“I’ll take that.”
Roman clamped her to his chest, blocking out the trashed and soulless bedroom, this house with its miserable memories and Athena’s damning words. She wasn’t alone anymore.
“Stay in Pine Springs with me, Elenie.”
“OK.”
She whispered the word into his shirt, and Roman’s throat burned with relief as he swallowed.
“Let’s get out of here, sweetheart. I want to take you home.”
Elenie’s smile was sunshine and flowers, heat and joy.
“I’m ready when you are,”
she told him.