CHAPTER 37
Squeak slept soundly, her tiny hands warm inside Brenna’s palms. Brenna kept her gaze on the baby, but out of the corner of her eye, she watched Grace cave in. Lost to her thoughts, she was probably conducting the usual end-of-life inventory that all people poised at the edge of death conducted.
She lay Squeak gently onto the floor beside the boys, stood, and looked down at Grace’s raised face. “I’m going to find a place to pee,” she said. Which was only partly true.
Grace nodded.
Tracking back through the ruined apartments, Brenna found an out-of-the-way corner and relieved herself, then returned to the living room.
Standing to one side of the gaping window, she scrutinized the street below, listening, looking for tanks and foot soldiers.
The street was a still-life, eerily tranquil, motionless in the late afternoon sun.
But the pop-pops of exchanged gunfire—bursts with distinctive echoes, thrust and parry, advance versus retreat—were getting closer.
She paced restlessly through the abandoned apartment.
She hated the dismay on Grace’s face, the regret she couldn’t hide, the fate awaiting her.
She had hoped to survive. She had a life beyond Kav?ak, family and friends awaiting her return.
Maybe she’d thought she could control what happened here, that she could experience this without being transformed.
She’d been wrong.
Brenna padded down the hallway to the rear bedroom to check the street on that side of the building.
Leaning her shoulder against the wall next to the window, she surveyed the street.
Just a burned-out car lying on its back like a dead cockroach.
Her focus blurred. Her own circumstances were different from Grace’s.
From the day Brenna had arrived, she knew she would die here.
She accepted that. Kav?ak was as good a place as any for a solitary woman to meet her end.
She also accepted that when the inevitable occurred, there would be a lot of media attention, and very little grief.
Her father would hold her memorial at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., as befitted his position as a high-ranking member of government.
Publicly, he would bemoan her death as a senseless loss.
Privately, the thorn extracted at last from his side, he would feel relief.
At the graveside, her six older brothers would line up in their dark suits and overcoats, bow their heads in prayer, and kindly oblige the media with the iconic Rease Family photo opportunity.
Of them all, only James would actually grieve for her.
Trying to protect herself after her mother’s death, and then her husband’s, she had kept human connection to a minimum, parried every hand extended in friendship, turned away everyone after Ari.
She knew Luc had always wanted romance, and that Jasha, Dr. J, and Mariana would all have welcomed deeper friendship with her.
But growing up, Brenna had learned the hard way that friendship led to confidences, and confidences ended up as tabloid headlines. So she patrolled her boundaries.
That had worked until Grace came. Grace had turned her inside out, made her yearn for intimacy and shared hearts and connection.
She heard the scratch of grit beneath shoe soles, and turned.
Grace entered, a forlorn specter moving through the gloom of dark green paint and dying day.
She rested her bottom against the side wall and stuffed her hands in her front pockets.
“I wrote a note for my parents,” she said in a husky voice.
“It’s with my passport, and has their phone numbers and address.” She hesitated. “I was wondering, if…”
“I’ll be sure they get it,” Brenna said. But it was a lie, a false comfort. She had no intention of outliving Grace Alcott, no intention of being taken alive. Someone else could find it and mail it.
Grace stared at the floor. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”
She snorted. “You didn’t bring me here,” she pointed out. “This is where I live.”
“In a hotel room,” Grace said, as if it were the saddest fact in the world. “You deserve better.”
If Grace knew the fear that kept Brenna from pulling her into her arms, if she knew how scared Brenna was of giving her the one thing she needed most—connection—she would not be so generous.
“It occurred to me…” Grace broke off.
The tone of her voice caught Brenna’s attention.
Grace lifted her eyes, determination on her face. “If anyone could get out of this mess alive, it’s you.”
Brenna stiffened. Grace was becoming quite the wartime quarterback, seeing through the chaos on the field and identifying the play that could score the touchdown.
“No.”
“I’m going to stay with the children,” she said resolutely, “and you’re going.”
Brenna’s choler rose. “Because I’m the type of woman who would abandon you?”
“No.” She shook her head, emphatically contradicting her. “Because you’re the type of woman who would stay and not abandon us—even though you, traveling alone, could reach safety.”
Brenna pressed her lips into a tight line.
“Right?” Grace insisted. “Because you could, couldn’t you? In fact, I bet you cross enemy lines all the time. You’re as stealthy as Jasha. You just can’t do it with an armload of kids and a sidekick who can’t tell a tank from a shadow.”
Brenna looked out the window at the fading day.
Grace pushed off the wall and came up behind her. “Years ago, I… I tried to get pregnant, Brenna, and never could. My wife tried to give me a son, and they were both killed. The point is, I’ve always wanted children, and now I’ve been given five.”
Brenna turned and lifted her chin in defiance. “I’m not going.”
Tired blue eyes scanned her as if she were reading a complicated paragraph. “This is just a different version of you standing in the clearing, isn’t it?”
No, she thought. This is the opposite of that. This time, she wouldn’t abandon Grace—at least, not until the last possible moment.
“Your life feels like a burden to you,” Grace said. “You don’t see its value right now. But I do. And I want you to save it.”
“Forget it,” Brenna said, her heart banging against her chest as if it were trying to escape.
Everyone she loved was taken from her. And now Grace wanted her to voluntarily leave?
No. She wouldn’t. She began pacing, restless as a jaguar behind steel bars, her emotions churning.
She’d be damned if she was going to lose Grace twice.
She was staying, giving her and the children a fighting chance.
“Go now,” Grace said. “Run while you can.”
She spun on her, eyes blazing. Run? When the only thing of value in her life was standing across from her?
“Return to the ’States,” Grace continued. “Piece a new life together. I have faith you can do that.”
Brenna strode over to her. The toes of her boots bumped the tips of Grace’s.
She stuck her face in Grace’s, irrationally angry.
Grace had made Brenna love her. She’d unsettled her, just when Brenna had resigned herself to being loveless.
She’d taught herself not to want anything.
She’d closed her life and Grace had torn it open and inserted herself in it.
What the hell was Grace thinking, proving Brenna was capable of loving again, just when there was no hope of survival?
“Don’t even think of kicking me out,” she snarled.
“We either face this together, or I swear I’m walking into the nearest gunfire I can find.”
Grace grabbed her elbows, visibly fighting the urge to shake her. “For the love of God,” she hissed. “Go! Don’t make it easy for me to be selfish. I’m not that good a woman.”
Brenna caught her face in her hands. “Yes,” she declared, fixing a hard stare on her. “You are.”
“No,” she protested, “because what I want right now is to lay you open. I want to strip you of every single one of your damned defenses. I want you unprotected—body and soul fully exposed to me, because I’m so tired of being alone, and I want to make love to the woman in you, not the warrior.”
The ground tilted beneath Brenna’s feet. She flung her hands out, flailing blindly for balance.
Grace caught her and righted her, keeping her safely at arm’s length. “Do you see me now? This is the catastrophe I would bring on you. I want you to dismantle every defense that has kept you alive, just so I can get in.”
If Grace had taken an axe to the backs of her knees, she couldn’t have toppled Brenna faster.
She was right. If Brenna consented, it would leave her gasping and exposed.
Without her emotional armor, she would be laid wide open.
But Grace’s courage and kindness in the face of Kav?ak made Brenna want to meet her with bravery and kindness of her own.
Grace’d found an ember of love in her, cast a gentle breath on it, and fanned it to life.
She led by example, like Roza, daring to love in the face of monstrous odds.
She straightened, shoulders back, making up her mind.
Keep your heart open. Give her everything.
Don’t hold back. Grace recognized artifice and there might never be another chance to make love to her, never another chance to be open and honest, and to be loved again by a deeply decent person.
What was she saving herself for? To survive?
For what? A defended and loveless life? For these few minutes, Brenna could give Grace what she needed—what she deserved.
“Come here to me,” she whispered, taking Grace’s elbows and drawing her closer.
Grace bowed her head. “Aw, Brenna. I can’t ask this of you.”
She saw the rush of emotion sweeping through Grace. All that feeling, unconcealed. Her dear, courageous woman, who took her breath away. “It’s my choice how I respond to you,” she said. “If these are the last hours of my life, I want to have spent them honoring you.”
“Oh, honey,” Grace whispered, leaning helplessly into her. “This is so unwise.”
“Hm. May be.” She rested her open palms on her chest, feeling the peaks of her nipples and the rapid thump-thump of her heart.
Brenna’s hands drifted, a slow voyage of discovery, her palms so sensitive they felt electrified, charged, hot to the touch.
Her hands glided over Grace, so exquisitely attuned that firmer contact would have blunted the sensation.
Grace’s eyes traced every move she made. Body quivering, she was taut as a bow pulled to its limit, but still she didn’t move.