Chapter 39
Ishouldn’t flee to the bathroom, but I need to wash off this day and compose myself before I spend the night in a room with Vadim. “I’m going to take a quick shower.” I look over my shoulder, and Nadia quirks a grin at me.
“S’okay. I’ve brushed my teeth. Dad will read me a story.”
Vadim looks like Nadia has pulled a gun on him; the expression of panic on his handsome face is so stark I choke back a laugh. The whole thing is surreal, and I can’t catch up with all the ways my world has changed since this morning.
“Nadia, you can snuggle up and start reading to yourself. You’re plenty big enough to read your own book,” I say. “I’ll be out in about five minutes.”
“Don’t rush,” she says, walking over to her father, taking his hand, and pulling him toward the bed. I’m glad she had the good sense to grab his uninjured arm. She nervously fingers the dog-eared copy of Winnie the Pooh, but her smile is bright.
“We had Winnie the Pooh cartoons when I was a kid in Russia,” Vadim says.
“Really?” she says as I pull the door to behind me and step toward the shower.
As the water pours down on my shoulders, I let the heat soften the fear and anxiety that cluster in knots along my vertebrae. I wash off the stress of the day, and my body loosens in the steam as I inhale the chemical scent of cheap soap. It reminds me of my childhood and a time when hopes and dreams came easier.
But Vadim is here with me, so a tendril of something bright and sweet unwinds in my chest as I step out of the shower and dry myself with the threadbare towel. He’s distant. Difficult. But he’s here with us, and that’s enough for hope to bud inside me, despite my better judgement.
They’re lying together on the pull-out child’s bed when I step out of the bathroom, toweling my hair in the doorway. I stand and watch them for a minute with a sharp pang in my heart. Vadim’s feet hang off the end of the narrow child’s bed. He lies next to Nadia with his hands behind his head, smiling down at her as they compare notes on their favorite Pooh stories.
“I like the one where they have the balloons and they float into the sky.” Vadim’s deep voice rolls through the shabby room.
“My favorite is when he’s a bear wedged in great tightness.” Nadia’s voice vibrates with excitement.
“What does it mean? To be wedged? How did you say it?”
Nadia snorts with laughter. “Pooh goes to Rabbit’s house, and he eats too much honey, so he gets stuck in the door because he’s too fat to move.”
Vadim concentrates on his daughter, even though she’s talking nonsense, and I wonder what it would have been like to have him in our lives. Would he have brought disaster with him like he said in the car? Or would there have been more nights like this?
“The shooting balloons out of the sky and the bees are my favorites.” He leans toward his daughter and gently rests his hand on her shoulder, waiting to see what she’ll do.
Nadia giggles. “Is that because you like guns?”
I perch on the end of the bed, next to Vadim’s huge feet, and look over at the pained expression on his face. I take hold of his instep and grip his foot, and he looks over at me and nods. It’s an innocuous enough gesture, but it makes me imagine what it would be like if his body was mine to touch. If we were a real family.
“You’re off the hook. I can take it from here,” I say.
Vadim shifts to get up, but Nadia pulls him down again. He collapses onto her pillow.
“It’s okay. Daddy said he will stay till I fall asleep.”
I raise my eyebrows in question but he doesn’t get up, so I pad over to his head and put a hand on his shoulder as I reach to turn out the light. Each innocent touch cracks my wounded heart open a little wider.
Vadim lays his hand over mine and I smile at him. He looks so right lying next to his daughter as she curls against his side. The sharp yearning for more thrums through me like a heartbeat. I grip his fingers, letting my fingertips slide against the warmth of his skin as I pull away.
“Tell me the bear story, Mama.” My little girl’s voice threads through the darkness.
“Bears are the national animal of Russia,” Vadim says. The depth of his voice and his slight accent make everything sound better. Sexier. More laden with meaning.
“Maybe that’s why I like bears. Because I’m Russian,” Nadia says, and he huffs out a laugh.
I begin the story. “Can’t you sleep, little bear?”
“No, Mama.”
“Well, the darkness is nothing to be scared of. It’s where the woods keep the moon and the stars.” I launch into the well-worn treads of a story I’ve told Nadia a hundred times about a bear who can’t sleep because she’s scared of the dark. I repeat the hypnotic words and familiar lines, ending on the closing stanza. “But the little bear didn’t say anything because she was fast asleep.”
A soft snore, barely loud enough to hear, drifts over from the pile of bedclothes.
“Does she always snore like that?” I can hear the smile in his voice.
“Baby snuffling snores like a cartoon character? Yep. It’s the cutest thing, isn’t it?”
He eases off the bed, letting her little body slide out of his arms, and comes to sit next to me. He takes my hand in his. This action is more intimate than the sex we had earlier.
“I can’t believe I’m here,” he rumbles, his Russian accent strong as he strokes his fingers across mine.
“Me neither,” I whisper, holding back the questions about Nona, the Night Governor, the men who are chasing us. I drink in these quiet moments. There will be time for all of that later.
“I thought about you a lot over the years.”
I lift my head from his shoulder and try to pick out his features in the darkness, but we’re facing away from the window, so I’m left uncertain about his expression. How he really feels. I wish I wasn’t such an open book for this man.
“Well, I think I revealed my hand with the house, if you hadn’t already guessed from the songs.” I can hear the embarrassment in my voice.
He presses a kiss to my head and then moves lower so our foreheads are pressed together. His breath mingles with mine. I can’t see him look at me, but I feel the weight of his gaze. So close. After all these years, he’s really here.
“Thank you,” he says.
“For what?” My voice is a whisper against the column of his throat. He still smells of salt and pine woods. I remember the silence of the woods. The soft light of the snow. The way he touched me.
“For being a wonderful mother and allowing me a little slice of happiness with you tonight. I will treasure it.” He makes it sound like a goodbye.
Pulling away from him, I lie down on the bed. He stretches out beside me, his head resting on his left arm. The light from the parking lot spears through thin drapes. Stripes of light and darkness paint our bodies and the space between them.
“Does your arm hurt?” I look over at his face, the sharp lines of his cheekbones and the square angles of his jaw. There is so much of him in our daughter. No wonder I couldn’t forget him.
“Not too much. I’ve had worse.”
“Do you need more painkillers? I’ve probably got some in my bag.” I start to rise, but he stretches his wounded arm to push me back to the bed, wincing slightly.
“I’d rather stay sharp. I don’t want to be foggy if something happens.” He sighs, and the exhaustion is clear in every line of his body.
I roll over to face him, feeling the heat of his skin. “Rest. Please. We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“Better to be careful. I thought we’d be okay at your place.”
He turns to me, and I can see his face in the florescent light. Dappled moonlight casts gold and silver patterns across his skin.
“Nadia brought back memories,” he says. I could listen to anything in that accent and it would sound better. “They used to replay these old Soviet-style cartoons when we were little. I sometimes watched them in the orphanage with the younger kids. Reminded me of something happier.”
“I didn’t know you grew up in an orphanage.”
“I didn’t get there till I was ten. That’s where I met Sasha and Polina. Their grandparents were still alive, but they couldn’t handle him. I was a bit softer. Had a more normal life than he did before I got there. I’d never have survived if not for him. He’s a natural gangster, but I was bigger.”
“And Polina?”
He breathes out a long sigh. “She was a sweet kid. We grew up together and I always protected her. Until I couldn’t.”
I turn toward him, looking at the stripes of light across his prominent brow and the carved profile of his nose. He traces the line of my brow with his lips and then presses a kiss against my temple before he pulls me against his side.
“You’re the only woman I’ve ever done this with since Polina.”
“What? Bedtime stories?”
He laughs. “That too. But no. You are the only woman I’ve ever spent the night with.” He tips his head down and drags his lips back and forth across mine, sending sparks of electricity through me.
“Let’s make it count.” I taste his lips as they curl into a smile against my mouth.
“What? With a kid in the room?” He sounds almost boyish with excitement.
“No. Get your mind out of the gutter.” I gust out a laugh and kiss him again. “Put your arms around me and let me pretend.”
“What do you want to pretend, zolotaya?”
“That we’re a family who will live happily ever after. Just like in the fairy tales. Even the Russian stories have happy endings, right?”
“Okay.” He draws out the second syllable, sounding dubious but also curiously hopeful. “So, what do I do?”
“You hold me,” I say as he shifts closer and pulls me against his body. I feel so sheltered in his arms as he wraps them around me. I revel in the warmth of his skin and the steady beating of his heart against my ear.
“That’s all?” His question rumbles through his chest and reverberates through my body.
“Yes. You hold me like it’s easy and you do it every night, like there’s nowhere you’d rather be.”
He presses another soft kiss against my mouth. I open to him, the gentle touch of his tongue, and the taste of mint from his chewing gum. Swallowing the wonder of being so close after longing for it all this time. There’s something achingly sweet about these chaste kisses as our daughter sleeps beside us.
“I never forgot you,” he says. “I used to lie in bed and listen to that album and imagine something just like this.”
“You did?”
“Sure I did. Well...” He chuckles. “My imagination was a bit more R-rated than what we’re doing now. I used to imagine your mouth. You sucking me while I listened to that album. God, I remember how you felt in Moscow. Turned me on so much to think about it.”
He kisses me again. Deeper this time. His tongue strokes mine, and his hips rock against me in a matching rhythm.
Then he stills and rubs his nose against mine. “I’m not pretending. There is nowhere I’d rather be, but I knew I’d be doing you a favor if I stayed away.”
His words bring me back to the reality of our lives.
I pull back slightly to look at him. “How can you possibly think that?”
“How can you not, zolotaya? I brought death to your door. Our daughter could have seen her first dead bodies courtesy of my visit if we hadn’t gotten them out of the way before she came out of the panic room. Is this what you want for her?”
“For tonight, you’re just Nadia’s dad. You’re my man, and I’m just some woman no one has heard of in an anonymous motel.”
I lie down in the crook of his shoulder and let the questions about who he is and what he does settle softly, tucking them away for another day. I edge closer to him, soaking up the comfort of his arms around me and the gentle rise and fall of his chest as sleep takes me.
Tonight we can be all the things I’ve dreamed of. Even if it’s only for a night.