Chapter Fifteen #2
Perhaps Ari should have been more upfront with him about not wanting his influence in this thing that was her own, but their relationship hadn’t been real, had it? Even when it had been, he hadn’t told her. He’d simply told her they would marry. That he enjoyed her. Keeping that careful distance.
Like right now he was telling his mother he would handle things.
He never told her why.
So he looked at her now—standing there with her back to him. Stiff and closed off. But he did not have to be.
“If Father had not been killed, he would be here, holding onto some of these burdens for you. He would have provided for you, as I have tried to do. That is what I have tried to do.”
His mother turned slowly, looking at him a bit like he was a ghost. “But your father is gone.”
Zervou sighed. There was no getting through to her. That was the only pillar in her life. Her loss.
He could not fix that for her.
But he could fix himself.
“I will handle the arrangements, though I know you will not appreciate this. I do it for you, though you’d rather feel the misery of it.
Perhaps at some point you will want something else.
Perhaps you will not. I will continue to help where I can, and I will continue to live my life in the pursuit of something more than the misery of losing him.
If you are ever ready for that, you only need contact me. ”
She said nothing. Not ready yet. Perhaps not ready ever.
But Zervou was ready. Ready to turn a page.
Ari won her fight.
The one she’d trained so hard for, even while eating decadent meals and spending evenings on Zervou’s arm.
The win should have come with triumph. Delight. Excitement. The attention she would garner might be enough to get someone—aside from Zervou—interested in sponsoring her fight in Minsk.
Or so Lefteris said. Ari couldn’t seem to manage to care. It still came from the interest people had in her because of Zervou, and while that might not hurt her integrity any, right now it hurt her heart.
So she simply wanted to be alone with her aches and pains and this empty pit inside of her that had swept away any satisfaction or pride.
She wanted to cry.
She wished he’d been here. To see her. To cheer her on. Just days ago, that was exactly what he would have done.
She could blame him fully for the change in their circumstance except…while she had not been wrong in anything she had said, she had been wrong in keeping a few things to herself.
She should have told him that she loved him, not just enjoyed him. She should have stood up and said that she wanted his ring to be real and their future to be for them, not to capture her father.
Perhaps the outcome would have been the same, perhaps he could only see everything as his mother’s refusals, but it had been cowardice to keep it to herself. To not go for broke.
She moved into the locker room, thanking people for their congratulations and trying to find a second alone to think.
Now that the fight was over, there was nothing else to do.
Or so she thought, because as she stepped into the locker room, eager to slip into the ice bath and forget all else, she was met with a figure she might not have recognized.
He seemed shorter, heavier than he’d been the last time he’d seen him. His hair had thinned, though he tried to hide it with creative combing.
“Father.” She looked around. How had he possibly gotten in here? She was too aware of her surroundings not to know Zervou’s security detail still watched after her. But somehow Erjon must have slipped by them.
“The time has come, malko momichentse.”
Little girl. How ridiculous. “I cannot imagine what time you mean,” she returned. He was inside the locker-room, and she was at the door. It would have been simple to step right back out. It would be simple to run.
She had too much pride for that.
“I know where your little boyfriend is. Off visiting his mother in that hovel of a village I once ruled.”
Congratulations, you win, she wanted to say to him.
But she didn’t.
“Now, with no protector, you will come with me.”
Ari laughed. Not even in an effort to offend him. It was just the most ridiculous thing in the world that he thought she would simply go with him. “No, Erjon. Not on the list of things happening today.”
“And if I pull my weapon?”
Her laughter might have died, but she didn’t let her fear show. “I’m willing to bet, even after already fighting my heart out, I could have you disarmed before you could do anything with it.”
“You think I can’t fight?” he demanded, his cheeks already mottled red. “You think I haven’t defended myself all these years?”
“Defended?” She laughed with all the acid churning in her stomach.
“All you’ve ever done with those fists is instigate and harm.
Actually, I imagine even that isn’t true.
You hide behind weapons bought by someone else.
You have always tried to make me your little pawn because it is all you are, all you’ll ever be. ”
He sneered, taking a threatening step toward her. But that was the goal. The closer he was, the more likely she was able to stop him from grabbing a weapon from inside his coat.
“I am a weapon,” he told her viciously. And clearly believed it. “No pawn.”
But Ari refused to. “You are a hiding coward.”
He lunged forward, but she easily dodged the blow. She knew she could outfight him, though she did worry he’d get to whatever weapon he was carrying under his jacket. She might not be able to fight that.
But she wouldn’t run. Everything she’d fought for these past ten years would not let her run. So she took two quick steps forward, feinted left, then landed an uppercut square to the jaw.
It sent him sprawling. Though her fist ached at doing so without a glove, especially after already taking the abuse of a fight, satisfaction was like a drug.
She moved toward him, but he’d gotten quickly to his feet. This time when she feinted, he must have seen it.
The blow was a shock. He’d gotten some decent power behind it, and she saw stars as she stumbled back.
“You were promised long ago, and I must keep my promises if I wish to keep my life.” He was reaching inside of his jacket, and she couldn’t let him grab whatever he had.
She charged. She did not let fear or hate control her. Luckily, the control of the fight was still in her. So she landed her blows that he could not sufficiently block, and she sent him sprawling again. This time, he stayed down.
He was laid out on the floor, blood dribbling from his mouth.
There was a sudden commotion all around her, but she couldn’t quite pay attention to it. All her attention was going into staying standing.
He’d waited until after the fight so she’d be weak, hurting, exhausted. And he’d still lost.
She spit the blood out of her mouth next to him, breathing heavily. “You will rot in jail, and I will celebrate every day of your imprisonment.”
Then she was being jostled out of the way by…well, by police. How had so many known to come, she wondered. Then she turned slightly to see Bacchus.
But not just him. Zervou stood next to him.
Ari blinked. Was she hallucinating?
Once Erjon had been dragged out of the room, she sank onto the bench, legs suddenly watery. Eyes filled with tears. But she could not let them fall.
Not in front of Zervou. Who stood before her now. Silent and foreboding. Beautiful.
Oh, she really was pathetic.
Bacchus talked in low tones with a police officer by the door, but Ari couldn’t manage to focus enough to hear what they were saying. Not with Zervou standing there.
“When did you return?” she asked, trying to sound casual but not able to meet his gaze. “I thought you weren’t going to be here.” She jutted her chin to where Erjon had been dragged. “He didn’t think you were here.”
“I watched your fight,” he said softly. “Then came back just in time to see you land the final blow on him.”
Because it infuriated her, she looked up at him now. “And you did not step in to land it yourself? How novel.”
His sigh was soft, but he did not say anything to that. He carefully crouched before her so they were eye to eye. He lifted a washcloth to her mouth, then gently wiped away what she imagined was blood.
“You were doing fine on your own. You usually do, whether you need to or not.”
So he had learned nothing, and was here to what?
Fight? “Yes, that is what survivors do, Zervou. You claim to know what that is like, but I am not altogether sure. Perhaps you have become so insulated by your power and your money you have made everyone else the problem, when you are the only one I see.”
Which was, of course, a lie. Her father was a bigger problem than anything Zervou had done to her. What was a little broken heart, after all? At least he’d broken it when she had a full stomach.
“Are you hurting me because you hate me, Ari?” he asked softly. “Or because you are hurting?”
She eyed him then, not quite certain of his tone. His gentleness. “Can’t it be both?”
His eyes met hers as he held out the cloth to Bacchus, who took it and then put an ice pack in Zervou’s hand. Zervou lifted it to her cheek.
“It would wreck me if you should actually hate me, glikí mou.”
She blinked once, winced a little at the pain there, even with the ice pack on it. Wreck. What a dramatic word. Perhaps she had a concussion. “Why are you here?” she asked him, about to lose the battle with tears.
“I went to see my mother. You were not wrong. I could only see your refusal as…refusal of everything I wanted to give. Because she has refused it all. I was wrong, to put that on you.”
The threat of tears didn’t stop, but an awful wriggle of hope bloomed in her chest. He was admitting he was wrong? Zervou?
“I want to make your life easy. I want to handle everything for you, because I love you.”
She sucked in a breath. Love. She had never believed in such a thing beyond the responsibility she felt for her mother. The symbiotic and somewhat tragically codependent relationship born of poverty, trauma and necessity.
Zervou had allowed her to believe in something else. And now he was saying he loved her.
But she couldn’t be certain he understood. If love was just a cage…
But before she could try to fight past the lump in her throat, he continued, “Ever since my father was killed, she chose her misery. And whether I was aware of it or not, I have spent all this time trying to take it away. Trying to take care of her. Because I love her as well. But she will not allow it. For so long, I internalized this as my failure.”
Ari was shaking her head before she even realized it.
“No, it is not mine,” he said, and she realized she was crying because with the hand that did not hold the ice pack, he wiped the moisture off her other cheek.
“It took you… We have worked as partners to draw your father out. And look—we succeeded. Because I gave, and you took. Because I took when you gave, even if I did not recognize it at the time. I saw this one thing you refused as a failure, as my failure, and so I lashed out. And so I destroyed. But I was wrong, and I am sorry.”
Ari had long loved someone who had failed her, and the pain of that lived in her even as she strove to forgive her mother for a disease she could not control.
But Zervou had not failed her. “You made a mistake. An honest one, born of your issues. And now you seek to fix it. I would also like to fix my mistake.”
“Ari—”
“I do not wish for you to sponsor my boxing, because I wish that to be something I did on my own. Whether this is right or wrong, I do not know, but it is important to me. Almost as important as what I should have said before. I love you, Zervou. This thing between us has turned into something real and important. And I should very much like to marry you, to love you. To…work together, to help each other and to support each other when we need to do our own thing.”
His gaze met hers. Emotion swam there. Love swam there. That thing she had trouble identifying these past few weeks.
Love.
And it was funny how her father had been taken away, and Zervou would no doubt ensure he was jailed forever. But the satisfaction of that waned in comparison to the joy she felt when Zervou gently placed his lips to her throbbing ones.
“If that is a proposal, glikí mou, I accept.” He got to his feet and drew her up with him. “Come, Ari. Let me take care of you, and then we will celebrate.”
She leaned on him as he led her out of the locker room. “What will we be celebrating? My win? Erjon in jail?”
“Us,” he said emphatically.
Because us was more important than everything else.