Chapter 20
EVA
The doctors keep Evgeny sedated for almost a week to keep him calm and prevent more seizures as the poison is flushed from his body.
It’s still a few days beyond that before he’s fully conscious instead of drifting in and out of haziness.
They don’t remove the ET tube for another day.
Evgeny shows even more improvement by growling at the nursing staff when they come to change an IV bag.
I’ve been here through it all, taking shifts with Dmitri, Vasya, and even Alona, though, really, I don’t go home at all, not even during their shifts.
When Marco came to see how his new hero was doing, he brought me a sweatshirt and leggings from home, and that’s what I’ve been living in.
Several nurses I’ve come to know have even graciously let me use their shower when the doctors aren’t looking.
It has given me time to face the fact that I’ve fallen, irrevocably, for the man who took me hostage.
I’ve watched the strongest man I’ve ever known fight to keep his life. I’ve seen him weak and in the terrifying throes of a seizure, and I’ve held his hand as he lay in the hospital bed, so tough and so vulnerable at the same time.
My heart has shifted in the time we’ve been here, through the hell we’ve been in, from interest, lust, and attraction to something more profound. Something I’m in danger of never recovering from.
“What are you thinking about?” Evgeny’s voice is still husky from the ET tube, but it’s growing stronger every day.
“Sorry, what?”
“You looked like you were lost in thought.”
Lost is a good word for it. As lost as I am in the startling green of Evgeny’s eyes. But I can’t tell him what I was thinking about, I mean there’s no way. I have no idea how he feels, and I’m afraid if I tell him, he will react badly.
“The house is lonely without you.”
A line furrows his brow. “That’s what you were thinking?”
“More or less.”
Less. A lot less.
“What are you thinking?” I counter before he can ask any more probing questions.
He takes a moment to search my face, then traces the same path with his hand until his palm comes to rest, cradling my cheek. I lean into the warmth, grateful his hands aren’t ice-cold anymore, that they’re capable of the gesture instead of curling in involuntary spasms.
“You saved me.”
“I didn’t do anything. It was all the EMTs and doctors and nurses.”
“You spilled the wine. If you hadn’t been so clumsy, I would have had the whole glass.”
The bottle of wine, it turns out, was the culprit, laced with a whole lot of strychnine. The consensus is that the poison was meant for Vasya, who kept the bottle, and others, at the restaurant he frequented. It had been a gift he’d offered to Evgeny upon finding out where Evgeny was taking me.
“I suppose Vasya owes you his life, too,” Evgeny says, a small, tired smile touching his mouth.
I don’t find it funny though. I find it horrifying. One mistake, and he wouldn’t be with me anymore.
Another thought pops into my head. “If I hadn’t spilled the wine, I would have had some.”
Evgeny’s smile is gone in an instant, replaced by fury. All I feel is nausea, roiling and terrible, my mouth filling with saliva. I bolt for the bathroom before I heave up the contents of my lunch.
When I return and slump back into my chair, Evgeny is trying to rip out his IVs and get out of bed.
“Are you okay?” His gaze searches me frantically, his thumb on the help button, ready to call for backup.
“Stress,” I answer, then offer a tired smile for his sake. “Worry for you.”
Evgeny’s gaze searches my face again, but the gesture is exploratory this time. “How long has it been since you’ve slept?” he asks. “Eaten well?”
“I’m fine.”
“Eva.” The pakhan is looking at me now, his mouth a stern line.
“I’ve been here,” I say with a shrug, as if that answers his question. And really, it does.
I’ve been at the hospital almost every minute Evgeny has been there, which he knows because Vasya, Dmitri, and Alona took pains to tell him, over and over.
The stern line becomes softer, and Evgeny covers my hand with his when he’s settled back against the pillows.
“Eva, go home. Take a shower, have Alona make you food, and go to sleep. I’ll be fine.”
I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here and make sure he’s okay. But he keeps at me until I agree to go take care of myself.
Two Kucherov men have been stationed outside his door since we took up residence, first in the ICU and now in the intermediate care unit.
Big, hulking men no one wants to mess with.
I say goodbye to them as I leave, but not before extracting a promise they will watch out for him.
I know they will, but it makes me feel better.
I drag myself home and dimly realize “home” for me has become Evgeny’s estate.
I’m asleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow, and I don’t wake up again until the following day, exhausted, fuzzy-headed, and wondering where the hell I am because this isn’t the hospital.
By the time I’m out of the shower and dressed in something other than my sweatshirt and leggings, Alona has breakfast and coffee ready for me.
When I sit down, even though I should be ravenous, I’m not all that hungry.
My stomach is still queasy from yesterday’s realization about my brush with death.
I push my food around my plate and raise my head to find Alona watching me, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “I think all the stress has gotten to me. I’m not feeling great.”
“You have stomach pain?” she asks, her accent so thick I’m glad my father trained my ear.
“No.”
Her mouth bends into a frown. “You vomit?”
“Yesterday.”
“Fever? Chills?”
“No.”
Something sparks in Alona’s eyes. She must have a feeling about what might be wrong.
I have that feeling too. It won’t leave me alone, a quiet whisper in the back of my head that grows louder and louder.
It gets so loud I stop at the drugstore on the way back to the hospital and buy two pregnancy tests.
Then, because I can’t believe what I’m doing, I stop at a coffee shop and lock myself in one of their bathrooms, trying to work up the courage to pee on the damn stick.
I pee on the second stick because I can’t believe the results of the first.
I find myself in a coffee shop bathroom, entirely alone, staring down at two pregnancy tests that are undeniably, unquestionably, and extremely positive. The double lines are bright pink, almost mocking in their intensity.
“No. No, no, no, no, no, no. This can’t be happening.”
Someone knocks on the door.
“In a minute,” I call, my voice high and tight with panic.
No, this isn’t possible. I’m on birth control. I can’t be pregnant.
Except I skipped almost a week of pills when I’d first arrived at Evgeny’s, before Dmitri got me the prescription I needed. And then the first prescription was wrong, and he’d had to send someone back out to get the right one.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit!
We’d had sex way before I’d been back on my birth control routine for a month.
Several times.
I count back in my head, six, seven, eight weeks.
Fuck!
Someone knocks again, more forcefully this time.
“Miss? Are you okay in there?”
“Uh…”
Am I okay? Absolutely not.
I’m pregnant.
Pregnant.
“Miss? Other people need to use the restroom.”
“I’m coming,” I call, breathless, my fingertips numb with panic and anxiety. My heart feels like it’s trying to beat its way out of my chest.
I shove the tests into the trash, wash my hands, and yank open the door to find a barista with her hand raised to knock again. Several people hover behind her, annoyance written clearly on their faces.
“Sorry,” I mumble and rush past her before she can say anything else.
It’s all I can do to stand on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop and drag in huge gulps of air. Panic washes through my body, and I begin to shake as hot tears press against the backs of my eyes, thicken my throat, and make my nose burn.
What the fuck am I going to do?